at Hong-Kong, and many other of our foreign possessions in every part of the world?

It is to our decayed and corrupt military system that this and many such-like follies and incongruities may assuredly be traced; it is that system which is responsible for all this: a system which has for so long a period been rotten to the very core.

*

* Since the above was written, the disclosures which have been elicited by Colonel Tulloch's evidence before the Chelsea Board of Inquiry, are the most convincing proofs of the necessity of military reform. With reference, however, to the ill-chosen sites for, and badlyconstructed barracks in India, the Court of Directors is chiefly to blame; though why-in this latter respectit may be asked, is such wretched, such inhuman parsimony allowed by the Government at home?

66

Parliamentary notice should be taken of the bad barracks in India, for it is a vital question to our soldiers, whose whole life is to be spent in them. My duty to those brave men makes me press this point on Members, because when a Commander-in-Chief fails to obtain redress, there is no other chance of forcing the Court of Directors to spare the lives, the health, and happiness of the British soldiers in India.

"Those noble soldiers, so ready to die when the service demands their death! never do they flinch from any trial called forth by honour; but the Military Board, the Court

But the voice of popular opinion, is even now, urging the vigorous application of the knife, may it succeed in cutting out the gangrene from the very root!

of Directors, the East India Company of Merchants, with vile parsimony, selfish idleness, and ingratitude, consigned them to destruction!"

"So incurable in Leadenhall Street is that diseasedoting on dividends!-From " Indian Misgovernment," by General Sir Charles Napier.

CHAPTER IV.

66

66

DISAPPOINTED LOVE.

Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, And with so fair a vizor hide dissimulation deep!"

Richard III.

Think not that guilt, that falsehood made me fall; No, no 'twas grief-'twas madness did it all!”

MOORE.

AMONG the Native regiments which were recalled, on the termination of hostilities at Rangoon, was the one to which my old and valued friend, George Staunton, belonged, and on returning to Madras with his corps, he was so fortunate not only to get re-appointed to the Staff, but to obtain a step of rank, and be posted to what was, on many accounts, considered the very desirable station of Hyderabad, whither he had gone, shortly previous to my return from England to Madras.

Most truly rejoiced was I again to meet my old schoolfellow, with whom I had continued in constant correspondence since we had parted at Rangoon.

I immediately went to see him on arriving at Secunderabad, where I found him occupying a spacious bungalow, which he invited me to share, and I gladly complied with his request.

After the usual bustle had subsided which is always incident to the arrival of a regiment at a new station, we at last got fairly settled down; and, still bent on the object I had in view, I prosecuted with unabated ardour, the course of my prescribed studies.

Whilst at Madras I continued regularly to receive letters from Agnes, reciprocating all the ardour of my own warm and undiminished attachment. By degrees, however, the intervals between her epistles became longer ;-her tone of expression insensibly grew colder and more cold, until, a few months after our arrival at Secunderabad I received a letter, directed in her usual well-known characters; -and on eagerly breaking the seal, I found, to my utter surprise and consternation, that it was merely an envelope, enclosing one of my

own epistles, thus returned to me unopened, and, consequently, unread!

A thousand conjectures, each more improbable than the other, were instantly conjured up to account for so unlooked-for, so mortifying an event. At last the only conclusion I could possibly arrive at, was the supposition that our correspondence must have been discovered, and that she had thus acted in obedience to her parents' commands; whilst I endeavoured to persuade myself that some letter of explanation would, no doubt, shortly follow the unwelcome missive I had received.

After vainly endeavouring to soothe my wounded vanity, and heart-felt mortification, by such a surmise, I restlessly passed the remainder of the day, and then strolled over to the mess-house, some time before the hour of dinner, in order to divert my thoughts, by the perusal of the newspapers, which had just arrived from England.

"Hulloa! Beresford!" cried out the "Paul Pry" of the regiment: a gossiping old Captain, who made it a rule to know and to meddle with every one's affairs, and who was then devouring the contents of a heap of "Here's something to interest

newspapers.