Barrackpore, the great Sepoy cantonment near Calcutta, traversed the length and breadth of the land, and kept the people's minds on the alert. The local effect produced by these strange missives in Budaon is thus described :

"As soon as the disturbances broke out at Meerut and Delhi, the cakes explained themselves, and the people at once perceived what was expected of them. In Budaon the mass of the population rose in a body, and the entire district became a scene of anarchy and confusion. The ancient proprietary body took the opportunity of murdering or expelling the auction purchasers, and resumed possession of their hereditary estates. The danger now is that this vast mass of our subjects, who are numbered by tens of thousands, and who are the real thews and sinews of the country, will never consent to the restoration of a Government to power which they consider treated them with harshness; whose system tended to depress and dispossess them; and whose first measures, after the return of tranquillity, they consider must be to put back the auction pur chasers, and eject them. I feel convinced that no amount of force will restore us to power, unless at the same time some measures be taken for undoing the evils of the past, and coming to some compromise, by which the old families may be reinstated, and their sympathies and interests enlisted on our behalf, while those of the auction purchasers are also duly cared for. I am fully satisfied that the rural classes would never have joined in rebelling with the Sepoys, whom they hated, had not these causes of discontent already existed. They evinced no sympathy whatever about the cartridges, or flour, said to be made of human bones, and could not thus have been acted upon by any cry of their religion being in danger. It is questions involving their rights and interests in the soil and hereditary holdings invariably termed by them as 'jan se azeez,'' dearer than life' which excite them to a dangerous degree."

This is perhaps the most pregnant passage in Mr Edwards's work; and the sentence by us placed in italics contains a suggestion, to recommend which to our readers' notice has been the main object of the present article. A glorious opportunity now presents itself for inaugurating Her Majesty's direct rule in Upper India by

a graceful act of conciliation and justice. A Royal Commission, formed of the very highest personages who can be impressed into such a service, and intrusted with power to reinstate every landholder who has been ejected, either through the formalities of the judicial or the theories of the revenue department, and to revive every rent-free tenure that has been wrongfully or even harshly extinguished, would give a popularity to the commencement of the Royal administration such as it could derive from no other initiatory measure. Soothed and calmed as the minds of the people would be by such an act

of unlooked-for consideration on the part of Her Majesty, they might not be startled by another measure at which we can here only glance.

Looking at the question as one of mere policy, it must be evident that the people of England will not be satisfied without further provision being made for the extension of a knowledge of Christianity; and this is a task which the proposed Commission will have the best means of performing in a manner to give the least alarm to any class of our subjects in India. Salaried proselytising establishments in direct connection with the Government would have no good end, and would be viewed with suspicion and hate. But to endowments there might not be the same objection; and the large estates thrown into the hands of Government by many recent forfeitures, will furnish the means of founding many such institutions, whence instruction may gradually be extended, and where converts would find places of refuge. Such a commission as we contemplate would, of course, be officially free from all partiality; and as, governed by justice, it must probably find occasion to confirm and restore many a Mohammedan and Hindoo endowment, no exception could be taken to its proceedings if, in a spirit of fairness, it were also to introduce some institutions having for their object the support and maintenance of a Christian Establishment, and deriving their revenues from the lands that might be allotted to them.

"ON the 11th ult., at Point de Galle, Ceylon, on the voyage home, John Simpson, Esq., her Majesty's Consul at Tranquebar."

"Bless my life, Sally," said Mr Simpson, almost choking himself with his muffin, "here's cousin John dead!"

Mr Simpson had the Times for an hour every morning (at sixpence per week), and that hour being his breakfast allowance also, he read and ate against time, taking a bite of muffin, a sip of tea, and a glance at the paper alternately; and as he was very short-sighted, and always in a hurry, there seemed imminent risk sometimes of his putting the paper into his mouth instead of the muffin. "You don't mean to say so, Simpson," said the lady on the other side of the little fireplace. "Cousin John dead! Why, he was to be in town next month-it's impossible! Where do it say so?"

And she made an attempt to reach across for the paper; but it was a long stretch, and Mrs Simpson was stout, and hardly made due allow ance for that fact in her instructions to her staymaker; so Mr Simpson found himself master of the position, and proceeded to read the announcement again, with a proper sense of importance. Miss Augusta Simpson, and her brother, Master Samuel, who occupied the seats at the other side of the family breakfast-table, had risen from their places, and with their mouths and eyes open, and Master Samuel's knife arrested in a threatening position, formed rather a striking tableau.

"Then that Surrey property comes to us, Mr S.," exclaimed the lady, as she left her arm-chair, and made good her hold on one side of the Times, of which her husband still pertinaciously retained possession.

"It comes to me, my dear, as next heir, by uncle Sam's will-no doubt of it." If Mr Simpson intended a little gentle self-assertion in this speech, it was so unusual with him, that Mrs Simpson was good enough

not to notice it.

"It's worth two or three thousand a-year, Simpson, isn't it?"

"About one thousand, or fourteen hundred at most, my dear, as I have told you before," replied the husband. "It's a very nice property. Dear me! poor John! only to think! that he should never have come home to enjoy it!" and the good-natured Mr Simpson gave an honest sigh to the memory of his departed cousin, and for a moment forgot his own accession of fortune.

"Well, well, life's uncertain with all of us. I never thought as you'd have outlived him, Simpson; he was ten years younger than you, if he were a day. I did think it might have been our Samuel's in days to come, supposing he died without children, as was always likely from what I heard of him. I often did say to myself I hoped Sammy might be a gentleman."

Samuel wiped his lips in preparation for that crisis. He had been eating a second egg surreptitiously and hastily. Only a mother's eyes could have detected the future gentleman under the pinafore at that moment. "There's the 'bus, father," he shouted, jumping up with the view of effecting a diversion from his own seat of operations; "there's the 'bus coming round!"

Mr Simpson rose mechanically, and dropped the Times. The habits of twenty years were not to be shaken even by the sudden prospect of a thousand a-year. But his daughter, with the spirit of a true British maiden in the hour of fortune, showed herself equal to the occasion.

"Who wants the 'bus?" said she, with an indignant shove to Samuel. "Pa a'nt going by 'busses now."

Like all truly great speeches, it was short, and to the purpose. As such, it was long remembered in the family. It awoke them at once to the duties and the pleasures of their new position. That useful public vehicle did not take Mr Simpson to Aldermanbury that morning. The conductor looked at the well-known door in vain ; the civil driver even

let his horses linger a little ere he turned the corner; and both turned a long and last inquiring gaze in the direction of Portland Terrace, No. 4. "What's come o' the governor this morning, Bill? Are we arter or afore our time?"

"Not above two minutes arter; he've never been and gone by the Royal Blue ?"

Don't think he'd be so mean as that; summat's amiss, how ever." And with this compliment to Mr Simpson's business habits, the omnibus lumbered on without him. Great was the surprise, and as the morning wore on, even the anxiety, in the little dark offices in Aldermanbury. Such a thing as Mr Simpson's absence, without due cause assigned, was unknown hitherto in that most punctual and respectable establishment; and Mr Styles, the old clerk, who had a sincere, if not a very demonstrative affection for his principal, was scarcely prevented, by a sense of what was due to the dignity of both parties, from taking his passage down to Notting Hill to inquire.

But indeed, even had Mr Simpson made his usual appearance at his place of business that morning, it would have been too much to expect from human nature that he should have devoted himself with his old attention to ledgers and invoices. When he did arrive there towards the afternoon, the youngest clerk saw that there was something "on the governor's mind." He scarcely staid half an hour; and if his unblemished commercial repute were any longer valuable to him, it would have been undoubtedly better if he had not looked in at all; for he left the impression on the minds of his subordinates, that even the small and cautious house of Simpson & Son had not escaped in the last great commercial whirlpool; and the errand-boy, who was well up in that department of newspaper literature, gave it as his private opinion to his mother at home, that it was a 66 Paul & Bates"

case.

But Mr Simpson was thinking little of his business, and still less what people thought of him.

"I'll go to town at once, my dear," he had said to his wife, after their

first shock of surprise was over. “I'll go and see Grindles, poor John's agents, and hear what they can tell me about it; they'll be able to give me every information of course, and advise me as to what to do. I'll go to Grindles' at once; and I'll just look into the counting-house and set Styles's mind at rest before I come back. I can bring my letters down here to answer." (How far Styles's mind was set at rest has been already recorded.)

To Messrs Grindles' accordingly, at an unusual expense of cab-hire, Mr Simpson proceeded. If he had any floating doubts in his mind before as to the correctness of the announcement in the Times, the remarkably grave and polite manner in which the junior Mr Grindle (whom he remembered hitherto as a rapid and somewhat supercilious young man) received him on his entrance, would have gone far to remove them. "Have you heard anything lately of my cousin, Mr John?" asked Mr Simpson, with a voice which he felt was nervous and unsteady-that, however, was becoming under the supposed circumstances.

"Sit down, I beg, my dear sir,pray sit down; sorry to say we have, very sorry indeed. Have you seen this, my dear sir?" producing a copy of the Homeward Mail, and pointing to a paragraph containing the same brief but important words as those which had caught the eyes of the Simpsons.

"I saw it in the Times this morning, and came to you to hear more about it. He was coming home, I fancy, this month?"

"He was," said Mr Grindle; "he wrote us by last mail to say we might expect him by the Formosa, which brought the mails, as I understand, yesterday: he had taken his passage in her, he says in this letter. We were just going to telegraph down to Plymouth, to know if she has landed her passengers, and whether your poor cousin is among them. I should fear there can be doubt of the correctness of this sad newsmost sad, indeed, and sudden; but we shall have an answer to-night, and will at once let you know. You are aware, of course," continued Mr

Grindle, delicately, "that you are your cousin's representative?"

"I am aware of it, sir," said Mr Simpson, bowing awkwardly, "I assure you-"

"Of course, my dear sir, of course these considerations are premature. I trust, I do most sincerely trust, that we may have some intelligence of our valued friend by the Formosa. You may depend upon our making the most particular inquiries, and giving you the earliest information. Expecting him in town we were this very day, and now! Well, Mr Simpson, life is "

But Mr Grindle felt himself hardly equal to the definition, and filled up his unfinished sentence by lifting up his eyes and hands. But allow me to offer you-"

"Nothing in the world, thank you" -and so they parted.

It was not natural that Mr Simpson should either feel or affect much sorrow for the death of a cousin whom he had not seen for nearly fifteen years. Yet sometimes, on his way home, when he remembered the days when they had played together as boys, the worthy tradesman's heart reproached him for the feelings of positive elation which he was conscious of since the news of the morning. He had never thought much of the possibility of such an event as his own accession to the little Surrey estate. Mrs Simpson, it is true, had been fond at all times of descanting, even before their acquaintances, on her children's future expectations," not altogether to her husband's satisfaction; he had no notion, as he said, of teaching the young folks to set themselves up above their father and mother, which the younger daughter, Augusta, was rather inclined to do. And it was not without some little misgiving that he contemplated, during his solitary ride home, some of the possible effects of the change in their position upon the female members of his household. Still, it is very pleasant to feel one's-self independent. The Simpsons were by no means rich; the son had succeeded the father in a long-established but not very lucrative business, and had neither the means nor the energy to extend it. He had had his anxieties and losses, and he was fond of ease

and quiet. To drop unexpectedly into a thousand a-year was, he confessed to himself, a piece of good fortune almost bewildering. If he and Mrs Simpson sent the young folks to bed early that night (to Miss Augusta's great dudgeon), and sat over the fire themselves somewhat later than usual, discussing their future prospects, they are not to be set down as more greedy and selfish than their neighbours.

Again, at nine o'clock exactly the following morning, did the 'bus which Mr Simpson usually patronised go to town without him and an aspiring young banker's clerk, who lived close by, usurped from that time forward the well-known corner-seat, which had belonged by a prescriptive right, willingly recognised by other pas sengers, to the "highly-respectable old city gent" from No. 4. For Mr Simpson himself, at that hour, was busy reading to Mrs S., for the second time, the following important communication from Messrs Grindle:

"DEAR SIR,-On receipt of telegraphic message yesterday evening, informing us that no such passenger as 'Mr John Simpson' had arrived per steamer Formosa, we despatched a clerk at once per night-mail to make further inquiries. He has just returned, and brings word that Mr John Simpson had engaged his passage by that vessel, and that some of his luggage is now actually on board. He had himself, as it appeared, left Tranquebar for Point de Galle some weeks previously; and the Ceylon papers, put on board the Formosa just before sailing, contained the intelligence of his death. We shall write by this mail to our correspondents in both places, and obtain all particulars. Meantime you may command our best advice and assistance.- Faithfully yours," &c.

The breakfast at No. 4 that morning was little more than a nominal meal to any of the party except Master Samuel. Either his imagination was less lively, or his appetite less liable to be affected by his feelings. Mrs Simpson and Augusta were in a state of mind abhorrent from the coarse but comfortable substantials before them. Mr Simpson played

with his knife and fork, but allowed his rasher to grow cold before him untasted. After Messrs Grindles' letter had been discussed, they had been rather a silent party. The first dreams of sudden affluence were too vague and luxuriant to shape into words. The ladies were in a little fairy-land of their own, in which visions of smart carriages and unlimited millinery flashed before the eyes of their fancy. The husband felt, on the whole, almost as inuch puzzled as pleased. He had not yet succeeded in combining, to his own satisfaction, the proprietorship of Barton End-so uncle Sam's country house was named with the warehouses in Aldermanbury. A snug place down at Wandsworth, or any other favourite locality a few miles out of town, where he might have run down every day to dinner, and spent his Sundays with an old friend or two for company-this had long been an object of innocent ambition with him, and a favourite castle-in-the-air when he was in the mood for that kind of building, which, to do him justice, was but seldom; and if ever he had been inclined to trespass on the tenth commandment, it was as often as he passed a certain smart new villa on the Harrow Road, belonging to a retired tobacconist of his acquaintance, where the pillars at the entrance gate represented two enormous cigars, and which bore the name of Havannah Cottage. That was very much Mr Simpson's pattern of rural elegance and felicity. "I should like such a little place as Snuffson's very well," had been the nearest approach to enthusiastic admiration which he had ever been heard to utter with regard to that or any other of the numerous snug retreats of British industry which he and Mrs Simpson noticed in their summer-evening drives; but it had been repeated more than once, and was evidently a pet dream of his. Mrs Simpson's ambition had always been on a grander scale, and more comprehensive in its objects; indeed, it had varied from the possession of Buckingham Palace, Life Guards included, to the occupation of No. 1 in their own terrace, which had a

second drawing-room and plate-glass windows. Either sphere, she felt, she could adorn; meanwhile she was content to make an excellent wife in her present contracted orbit. An excellent wife, as Simpson often said to himself and to his city friends, in his social confidences. Did she not insist upon his always wearing worsted hose and flannel waistcoats from a given date which was assumed as the beginning of winter? And if the peculiar irritability of Mr Simpson's skin made this style of clothing especially disagreeable to him, could that be laid to her charge? Was he to catch cold, and risk his precious life, because he "didn't like the feel" of what was good for him? All Mr Simpson's shirts were made at home, either by her own hands or by those of her daughters. They did not cost much less, that was admitted; the collars-being made after an old and approved pattern belonging to Mrs Simpson's papa, treasured up as a sort of standard of what a collar should be- did, as Mr Simpson averred, cut him under the ears, and double over behind but Mr Simpson had a short neck, which was certainly no fault either of Mrs S.'s or the collars. She put the cayenne pepper, to which Mr S. was rather addicted, carefully out of reach at dinner time-it was so bad for his digestion; she woke him up ruthlessly from his afterdinner nap-those things grew upon people, and were very bad for a man of his full habit. She hid his snuffbox, banished his old "down-at-heel" slippers and worked him a smart tight pair instead; and, in short, tried as far as possible to keep him in the way in which he should go. Mr Simpson, it must be said, was ungrateful for some of these attentions, and evaded her well-meant efforts with a perverse ingenuity. He continually ignored or disputed the date of resuming the flannel and worsted, wore the new slippers down at heel, kept snuff in his waistcoat pocket, and had gradually acquired the faculty of sleeping, like a fish, with his eyes open. But Simpson was the best-tempered man in the world; and he and his wife, in spite of these little antagonistic peculiarities, might almost have been claimants for the