460

CABUL RETAKEN-RELEASE OF THE PRISONERS.

[1842. detained by sickness and other impediments at Jellalabad to the end of August. He then fought his way through the Passes, and was joined by general Nott. On the 15th of September the British standard was flying on the Bala Hissar of Cabul. The prisoners of Akbar Khan had been hurried towards Turkistan. The khan who had charge of them agreed with the English officers, for the future payment of a sum of rupees and an annuity, that he would assist them to regain their freedom. The advance of the army upon Cabul secured the aid of other chieftains. On the 15th of September, the hostages, the ladies and the children, had quitted the forts of the friendly khan, and were proceeding towards Cabul, when, on the 17th, they were met by a party of six hundred mounted Kuzzilbashes, under the command of sir Richmond Shakespear, who had been sent by general Pollock to rescue them from their perils. On the 19th a horseman met the party alternating between hope and fear, to say that general Sale was close at hand with a brigade. The husband and the father met his wife and widowed daughter. Their happiness produced "a choking sensation, which could not obtain the relief of tears." The soldiers cheered; a royal salute from mountain-train guns welcomed them to the camp; the joy was proportioned to the terrible dangers that were overpast. On the 1st of October a proclamation was issued from Simla by lord Ellenborough, which stated that the disasters in Afghanistan having been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune, the British army would be withdrawn the Sutlej. On the 12th of October the army began its march back to India. Dost Mahomed was released, and returned to his sovereignty at Cabul.

Of the proclamation dated from Simla on the 1st of October there was much adverse notice in Parliament. Mr. Macaulay maintained that it was ante-dated; for that on the 1st of October the release of the captives on the 19th of September could not have been known to the Governor-general; and that knowing of this joyful event on the 12th he omitted all mention of it, that he might have the childish gratification of insulting his predecessor in the vice-royalty, by dating on the same day on which, in 1838, lord Auckland had published his unfortunate declaration of the causes and objects of the war. But there was another proclamation by lord Ellenborough which his ministerial friends could scarcely vindicate, and which brought down upon him the bitterest denunciations of his political enemies. It was as follows:

"From the Governor-General to all the Princes, and Chiefs, and People of India.

"MY BROTHERS AND MY FRIENDS,

"Our victorious army bears the gates of the temple of Somnauth in triumph from Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahomed looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee.

"The insult of eight hundred years is at last avenged. The gates of the temple of Somnauth, so long the memorial of your humiliation, are become the proudest record of your national glory; the proof of your superiority in arms over the nations beyond the Indus.

"To you, Princes and Chiefs of Sirhind, of Rajwarra, of Malwa, and of Guzerat, I shall commit this glorious trophy of successful war.

"You will yourselves, with all honour, transmit the gates of sandal-wood through your respective territories to the restored temple of Somnauth.

"The chiefs of Sirhind shall be informed at what time our victorious army will first deliver the gates of the temple into their guardianship, at the foot of the bridge of the Sutlej."

1842.] LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S PROCLAMATIONS-GATES OF SOMNAUTH. 461

The Hindoo temple of Somnauth was in ruins, and it was maintained by those to whom the pompous words of the proclamation were distasteful, that the Governor-general meant to restore it, and thus to manifest a preference for one of the great rival creeds of India-a preference which the policy of England expressly forbade. This might be a wrong inference from the words of the proclamation. But to despoil the tomb of a worshipper of Mahomed, that honour might be done the worshippers of Vishnu, was to offer an outrage to those sensibilities which more than any other cause made and still make the British rule in India so like treading on beds of lava.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Continuation of the previous notices of English literature-Law of Copyright-Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's long struggle to amend the Law-Mr. Carlyle's petition-Serjeant Talfourd's Bill rejected-Lord Mahon's Bill-Mr. Macaulay's Amendments-Application of the Act to Copyrights about to expire-Authors recently deceased-Novelists-Theodore Hook and the Silver-fork School-Ephemeral Critics and Writers without knowledgeUtilitarianism-Changes in the Character of Literature-Historians-Macaulay-Hallam -Carlyle Lingard - Fraser Tytler-Palgrave-Kemble-Forster-Mahon - NapierMitford-Thirlwall-Grote-Arnold-Novelists-Bulwer Lytton-Dickens-AinsworthThackeray-Serials-Prevalence of Fiction-Kitchen Literature-Miss Martineau's Tales illustrative of Political Economy-Social Aims of Novelists-Dickens-Mrs. GaskellKingsley Thackeray's Novels-Poets-Tennyson-Browning-E. Barrett BrowningThomas Hood-Union of Pen and Pencil-Theology-Milman-Robertson-Political Economy-Science-Criticism-Antiquarian Inquiry-Travels-Book Trade-Newspapers. BEFORE we enter upon a narrative, which may be best given continuously, of the great historical period from 1841 to 1846 during which sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister, we purpose to introduce a chapter on the Literature of that period and of the period immediately preceding. We shall attempt this in connexion with the subject of the New Law of Copyright, which was finally settled in the session of 1842.

In the present volume we have devoted a chapter to English Literature in the three latter decades of the reign of George the Third, and have given a chronological table of the principal writers of the present century, with the exception of those who were living at the end of 1861. We propose in this chapter to point out a few of the more prominent instances of the beneficial operation of the Copyright Act of 1842 with reference to the families of authors then recently deceased. Its benefits to living authors, whether in the maturity of a high reputation or rising into public notice, need not be illustrated by individual instances. The oldest writer with a dependent family, and the youngest writer who had given hostages to fortune, felt a comfort and a relief in its salutary provisions against the uncertainty of the future with regard to the descendants "of those who devote themselves to the most precarious of all pursuits." * What is now called "the Victorian Era" of Literature, in contrast with "the Georgian Era," had established its most prominent characteristics, and had produced the greater number of its eminent writers, at the period when the New Law of Copyright came into

* "Pickwick Papers," 1837; Dedication to Serjeant Talfourd.