The hellish, rushing crowd is now within a few yards of themselves—is separated from them only by a couple of rows of fruit-trees and the cactus hedge encompassing the orchard. "You could not get near them now; the crowd is round them." His listeners shudder. "You are only endangering the lives of these other women too," says the gardener, as Hay again puts his hand on his shoulder, as if to thrust him aside. "If you stand here any longer you will all be killed. They will be sure to come to the wicket, and there would be no difficulty in their bursting it open. Come behind me - quick! "Give me your arm, William," cries Beatrice, claiming for his sake that help she would not have claimed for her own. Then, as they run swiftly along the walk which runs down the middle of the orchard, the gardener says, "You must get out of the garden as soon as you can. Those children of Satan will be sure to make search for you. They will be sure to think that those other two ladies would not have been by them selves." He leads them to the gate at the opposite end of the garden. They are in the lane the crowd has passed up. "Now run," says the friendly owner of the orchard, which has been of such use to them. "We will not forget what you have done for us," says Hay, as they move quickly "If I find you can remain here safely, I will go back and see what has become of her," says Hay, as they pass in at the gateway. "I must go back, or I should never have a happy day in my life again.' "Oh! this is terrible," cries Beatrice, clinging to his arm. They pass along under the beautiful avenue, some of the trees in which are casting a sweet fragrance into the air. How delightfully cool and fresh that air is now! They are walking up the slight acclivity on the crest of which the mansion stands, when the gardener enters the avenue from a side path, and seeing them, utters an exclamation, and stops them. "You must not go up to the front of the house," he says; "there are many people, people of all sorts, standing there. Follow me." He brings them to the line of lower rooms which had been built up from the front of the declivity in order to form a terrace in front of the side of the house which faced it, and one of which is used as a billiard-room. Into this he leads them. "I will go and fetch the khansaman-jee" (the "Sir Butler "), he says. When that venerable servitor, who has passed the whole of his life - all but the first fourteen years of it-in the service of the Melvil family, enters the room, he is in a state of terrible agitation. "What a twirl of the world is this!" exclaims the old man, as he makes them the profound yet graceful and dignified salaam which has been one of his accomplishments. My master, Melvil Sahib, the commissioner sahib, a prisoner!" "A prisoner!” cries Hay. 66 "And some of the servants are proving unfaithful to their salt. The coachman says that he will take the big carriage with the pair of horses belonging to it. He says it is his right." "We want something to eat and drink," cries Hay, interrupting him. "But you cannot remain here, sir. They have been killing all the English people. What a turn of the world is this! And they will kill you too if they find you here." beer. How delicious is the fragrance of the latter as the old man draws the corks! I have drunk many a tankard of cool ale in this our native land with the sensation of great delight, but the drinking of a glass of Bass's pale ale, iced, in India, in the hot weather, is an orgasm! How it diffuses itself through you! How it revives and re-invigorates you! It would produce a soul under the ribs of death. The clean, wholesome, hoppy perfume! What bouquet of what wine ever equalled it? And as you hold the glass lovingly up before you, what ruby or purple of what wine ever equalled that amber tint? The "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" of a glass of champagne, what are they compared to that tender froth? Many of our poets have celebrated the praises of this our national drink; to what a height would their strains have risen had they ever enjoyed a glass of it at the end of a long, hot day in India! Old Brodie insists that the ladies too shall partake of the refreshing, strengthening, tonic draught. And they eat and drink very quickly, for they are very hungry and very thirsty; they eat and drink very quickly, for the old khansaman earnestly urges them to do so. "Very different meal this from the last one we had here," says Hamilton, speak ing, as clearly as he can with his mouth so full, to Lilian. A very good meal in its way, but still very different. In place of the blaze of the innumerable candles, the flickering of a single common oil lamp; in place of the dainty and magnificent appointments of the table, nothing at all, their plates on their knees, their glasses on the billiard table; in place of the long row of guests with their bright, proud, happy, cheerful faces, their bright uniforms, their dainty, fresh white evening dresses, they, with their dirty, grimy hands and faces, with their dust-filled hair and their bedraggled garments, which clung so clammily about them, with their sorrowful, anxious faces. The changed condition of their clothing they can see and feel; the changed condition of their faces they can see mirrored in the faces of those around them. But now the old khansaman is very urgent with them to be gone. "We had better take the advice of the immortal Captain Dalgetty, and lay in provender while we can," says Hay, and he takes another glass of beer, swallows it at a gulp, and puts some bread and cold meat into his pockets. They move with quick feet across the lawn, where so few nights before their footsteps had been hurried only by the music. They steal anxiously along the walks over which they had wandered in such perfect security and high delight, without any thought of danger, on that festive occasion which was so recent to them this morning, and seems so far away to them now. The night has come, and the long avenues, then SO brightly lighted, are now dark to the eye as well as to the heart. But they welcome that darkness, for the yells and shouts proclaim that the marauders have reached the hall and begun the work of plunder - have asserted their dominion over the place. They quicken their already by no means tardy footsteps. "They have begun to loot the house," cries the old khansaman, with quavering voice. "They will break all the things in it- the beautiful things- the china and glass, of which I have had charge for over thirty years now. It is for so long a period as that that I have been khansaman here." That eleventh of May was a distressful day to many different people in many different ways. They have arrived at the gateway on the west, or cantonmentward, side of the grounds. This places them once more on the road they had parted from so short a time before; under circumstances_on which none of them dare look back. The brief, bright afterglow has faded away and left the world quite dark. It is inky black under the avenues of umbrageous trees, with interlacing boughs, which border the road on either hand. As the fugitives move along in the soothing coolness and sheltering darkness of one of these avenues each one of them falls into a reverie. A dead silence reigns around them; they are not disturbed by the present, so they begin to recall the past, and to forecast the future, the future on which the immediate past must have so great an influence. (Strange that the mind should derive so much misery from the past which is dead and the future which has no existence ! How lucky it is that the flesh does not remember or forebode - that our bodily pains are of to-day and not of yesterday or to-morrow; that the tooth does not ache in remembrance or by anticipation.) Old Dr. Brodie broods over the plunder of the bank, which may mean so great a loss to him. William Hay is reflecting with bitterness on the mutiny of his men. The tears run silently down her cheeks, flowing now for the first time, as Mrs. Fane mourns for her husband, notwithstanding the glorious manner of his death. What is she to do now? The thought is a perfectly which relieves the main canal, from which legitimate one, and Mrs. Fane entertains the water-courses running into the town it as much for the sake of her children as are supplied, of its surplus water and carher own. But it is curious how much our ries it off to the Jumna. They cannot concern for others, even those nearest and forego the chance of enjoying the delight dearest to us, is connected rather with of washing their hands and faces. Before ourselves than with them. David did not crossing the bridge that spans the stream mourn for the lost man Jonathan, but for they move down the bank a little, and then his lost son Jonathan. And Beatrice is descend to the water's edge. Fortunate mourning for her father, the noble and the that they did so. For now along the hard, kindly, if also the affected, of whom she metalled road ahead of them comes the was so fond and proud. And she mourns sharp clang of horses' hoofs, the sharp, for her wedding dress. There was no commingled clatter of many horses' hoofs, want of feeling, no defect of filial piety in that sound, so difficult to describe in this. The big things of the next world words, which arises from the movement of and the small things of this, the eternal many horses together. It comes nearer verities and the small, every-day verities, and nearer, and now a hollower sound stand together in dramatic juxtaposition. tells that the horsemen are upon the You may mourn deeply for the father or bridge, and those down below pause in the mother, daughter or son, brother or sister, lavement of their hands, and looking up who died last night, but you must brush see the bridge crowded from end to end your hair this morning, see to its parting. with horses and horsemen; they stand Lilian, too, mourns for her father, whom out clear against the sky, now brightening she so greatly loved and admired, and the with the rising moon. The hearts of the ghastly face of poor dead Tommy Walton women leap into their mouths. Will they rises up before her. They are startled be seen? Surely they must be, with their from their reveries by a voice crying out white clothing and so large a group of of the darkness, “Koun log?" (What them. But they are not. The thoughts, people?) "Who are you?" Hay calls in return. "That is enough you are Feringhees. Do not go on to the cantonment." Why not? 66 "It is in possession of the sepoys. The English people have fled from it. The evil-livers of the city have all gone out to it to plunder it." "But who are you?" "What does it matter? Bunda Khoda" (Servant of God · the usual signature to anonymous documents), "do not go on to the cantonment if you wish to preserve your lives. You had better get down into the low lands of the Jumna. Turn into the first road leading to the right; that will take you down to it." "Come and let us see who you are. Come and show us the way." But there is no answer. They have seen no one; that is not to be wondered at, the darkness is so thick; they have heard no footsteps; the man might have been squatted down somewhere, might have sped away noiselessly on his naked feet. At all events, the voice came out of the darkness and has vanished away into the darkness. They hear it no more. As they move onward they discuss what they have heard, almost determine not to go on to the cantonment, and keep a sharp lookout for the road to the right. And now they have arrived at the channel as well as the eyes, of the horsemen are turned upon the city toward which they are hastening, and above which they note a gleam instead of the usual glimmer, and know that the usual feeble illumination by means of lamps has this night been supplemented by the strong light from the burning bungalows of the English. Their attention was the more strongly directed that way because hitherto the thickly wooded banks of the escape channel had lain between them and the city; it was on crossing the bridge that they had a clear, open view toward it. And though the moon was rising it was still very dark down below in the narrow, deep channel, with its thickly wooded banks. The body of horsemen had passed on with its confused clatter of hoofs and its confused sound of men's voices. The continually increasing silence affects the fugitives like a material thing, like a substantial pleasure, like a tangible gain; it is to them like food, like gold; what food would be to the starving man and gold to the beggar. When it has become complete and full they breathe freely once more. Hay offers up a silent prayer. Had they kept on straight across the bridge they must have met the horsemen face to face. That might have meant immediate death for some; it might have meant worse than death for others. Crossing the bridge with a curious feel stream, to the margin of the much-worshipped Jumna. They know that the water here can be of no great depth, for the main stream of the river runs, just now, under the opposite bank of the valley, more than a mile away. But still Hay thinks it better to try the stream before letting the ladies go in, and so he wades across it and back. It is nowhere more than knee-deep. But there is another danger connected with the sacred stream besides that of drowning: it abounds with alligators; and only a few days before the talk of the station had been about the quantity of jewellery, anklets, and bangles, and finger-rings, and toe-rings, the jewellery of women and children, that had been found in the stomach of a monstrous specimen of the class shot by an officer. And so the girls splash across the water with no pleasant feelings. ing they pursue their way. They have come now to the end of the fruitful, treecovered tract, and a wide stretch of the open, barren, denuded land which borders the valley of the Jumna stretches far before them, and looking across this they see a red glow in the sky. That is the west, and so it is not the glow of the rising moon. It is the light of a conflagration, and that is the direction in which the cantonment lies; it is the glare of their burning bungalows. Old Brodie groans. He owns a great many of the bungalows in the cantonment, as he does in many other cantonments. This is a day of severe loss to him. And as they advance toward it the gleam becomes higher and brighter, higher and brighter to a degree which the short distance they have traversed cannot account for. The conflagration must be fast increasing. And when they come to the road that runs off to the right, that increasing brightness adds force to the advice of the voice from out the darkness, and they finally determine to follow it, the advice, and the road. They soon arrive at the edge of the reticulation of ravines which lies between the margin of the valley of the river and the high lands above. The night sounds have begun; the weird, unearthly, demoniacal yelling of the jackals; the baying of the dogs in the villages; the harsh cry of the peafowl disturbed in their roosting-places; the hooting of owls and the screak of the night-jar. These ravines are very much the haunt of wild beasts, and they hear the horrible laugh of the hyæna not far off, and a couple of wolves go across the road in front of them, with long, smooth, lolloping gallop, and a switching of tails. This trough or valley of the Jumna, cut out by the stream and in which it oscillates, is a region of a peculiar character, a wild and uninhabited region, and is made up of the present and past channels of the river, with their wide stretches of dry sand, and the quagmires and morasses, the occasional patches of cultivation, the long reaches covered with tall grass or the thick-growing tamarisk, which lie between those channels. The road they are on is simply an earthen track. After they have been walking for some time they find themselves at the edge of a morass, across which there is no sign of a road, where the track ceases to have any further existence. They must have got off the cart track, as was easy enough to do, for it was not everywhere very clearly defined, and there were many other tracks. In fact they find themselves in the midst of a labyrinth of tracks, cattle tracks, for the valley is a great grazing ground, especially at this season of the year. One of these tracks conducts them to the edge of a quagmire; so does another; and another; in fact, most of the tracks lead to the morasses in which the buffaloes love to wallow, to the pools of water which they work up into quagmires. Then they take a track which leads them through the midst of a long stretch of the bushy tamarisk, whose branches cut them like whips, and where they disturb a huge sounder of wild pigs, and send them scuttling away. Now they have to push their way through tall, dry, crackling reeds, now through thorny bushes, bushes armed with terrible thorns, thorns curved and straight, thorns like hooks and daggers. And now the track they have chosen leads them to the And now they can see far around them, far over the treeless, broken, barren ground, and looking to the right they see the glow that marks the position of the city, the dwelling-place of the ancient ruling race; and looking to the left they see the glare that marks the position of "the cantonment,' ," the dwelling-place of the latest conquering race; and behind them are dark masses of trees, and before them seems nothingness, they seem to be looking, that way, into infinite space. They are in fact looking over the wide, shallow trough, or valley, of the river. By this time the moon has raised her huge red disc some distance above the horizon, and flooded the high land and the low land with her silvery light. The road begins to descend, and after winding for some time through the valleys of the ravines, brings them to the edge of the sacred edge of a sullen, impassable ditch; now | the wife who has lost her husband, even across a dry jheel, where the little clay the children who have lost their father, ripples crackle under their feet. Then even the old man who has lost his money; the track leads them across a rudely cul- they have all soon obtained oblivion and tivated tract, where the clods are as large rest-active, waking, sentient life had and hard as boulders, and where the poor been carried to the verge of endurance women, having only their thin house shoes all but Hay, who determines to keep on, suffer very much. And so they keep watch, and lifting himself up when he wandering about, but cannot find the knows the others are asleep, seats himself wheeled track again. cross-legged. Their physical energy is now very low. Brodie and Hamilton have begun to quarrel. What they had all gone through that day was enough to strain the powers of any one to the utmost. With some, the exhaustion is complete; they have begun to trench on the capital stock of existence, on the vital principle; they have begun, as it were, to devour themselves. They are overpowered by an intense and irresistible desire for sleep. It is said that the most cruel of all forms of torture is that of preventing a man from sleeping, keeping him awake until he dies. They must sleep, they must lie down and sleep, come what may. All thought of the past, all care for the future, is lost in that want of the present, that overpowering desire for sleep. Hamilton stumbles over a clod with a curse. "I cannot walk any farther," he says. I must have a sleep. I do not care to find the road-damn it." And he yawns a loud and prolonged yawn. The two brave girls have said never a word, but Hay has observed how often Beatrice stumbles and staggers, and how frequently Lilian lags behind. "It would have been as well to have got to the other side of the khadir" (valley of the river), he says; "though I do not suppose we could have got out of it before morning. We could not have crossed the river by night. We must have slept on the bank of the main channel there, and we may as well sleep here. We must have slept in the open and on the bare ground. It is probably safer that we should not sleep too near a public road." 66 Oh, yes; this place will do very well," says Hamilton, with another huge yawn. He would probably have lain down on the trunk of a tree laid across a roaring torrent, at the edge of a precipice. "But we need not sleep in this rough field. That would not do for you," says Hay to Beatrice tenderly. Á little way off is a sand ridge; and the clean, dry slope of that will do very well; and they have soon reached it; and they have soon cast themselves down upon it, and they are all soon fast asleep - even And in the dead silence that now reigns around, the sound of their own movements ended, there fall upon his ear the twelve vibrations from the great palace-gong he can only hear the first strong strokes - that proclaim the midnight hour. He would rather have been out of hearing of the strokes altogether. And so that memorable 11th of May, 1857, has come to an end. The fourth day of our tale has passed we have gone through half our time. From Macmillan's Magazine. THE CONTRASTS OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH LITERATURE.* To compass the extent, so as to exhibit the contrasts, of two such literatures as English and French- the greatest of the merit-in the space of sixty minutes, may world, if mass be considered as well as It would be hazardous indeed if it preseem no doubt a rather hazardous attempt. tended to be complete in that period; still more if it pretended to dispense hearers from the study necessary to verify the contrasts for themselves. I think, however, as I have on one or two occasions endeavored to maintain by the written if not by the spoken word, that the study of literature, almost more than any other study, gains by being, and indeed needs to be, carried on by the method of contrast and comparison. I am quite sure that the enjoyment of that study which I am dis posed to believe as important as what is commonly called the edification of it, is enormously increased by the comparative method. But I should like to explain at the outset what sort of contrast and what sort of comparison you are to be invited to make. The senses of the words have misinterpreted by persons whom I should been sometimes curiously confused and hardly have supposed likely to be guilty of such confusion. Our comparison here will not be in the least ungracious. What * A paper was read before the Bradford Philosophical Society on February 16th. |