Here we must now bring our gossip to a close, for we have already exhausted our space, and probably the patience of such of our readers as have been indulgent enough to follow us thus farwithout having by any means exhausted the subject. Other opportunities may hereafter occur to make some fresh gleanings amongst old memoirs, and forgotten records of ancient travel, which abound in interesting sketches of life and manners, and, illustrating as they do a condition of society that has passed away, claim to be rescued from that "time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things."

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ART. VI. THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF · LORD METCALFE.

The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe, late Governor General of India, Governor of Jamaica, and Governor of Canada; from unpublished Letters and Journals preserved by himself, his family and his friends. By JOHN WILLIAM KAYE, Author of the History of the War in Afghanistan. 2 vols. Bentley.

THIS is another contribution to Anglo-Indian literature by one who has deserved well of the Anglo-Indian public. Mr. Kaye by his acknowledged works, and by writings which are generally understood to be his, has added largely to the common stock of knowledge of India, and has eminently succeeded in imparting to the Indian services a taste for literary and historical research. His name, within the last few years, has been on the title page of so many volumes, that we contemplated the dimensions of the present work with some dread. Remembering the life of another Governor General, we had apprehensions of large sheaves of family papers bound up with wisps of indiscriminate laudation. But it gives us pleasure to recommend, as we can with a pure conscience, this work to our readers. Mr. Kaye writes with clearness and care; he tells his story well, and while always preserving a manly elevation of tone, appears to have a wholesome dread of fine writing. The selection from the correspondence

Sir Thomas Browne's Hydrotaphia.

His birth and education.

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has been made with judgment, and altogether the work may be pronounced an adequate record of a life which deserved to be written.

The claims of Charles Metcalfe to admission into the Valhala of Indian worthies will not be denied. His life does not display the startling incidents which mark the career of men irregularly great, of the Clive and the Hastings of our earlier Indian rule. He belonged to a purer class and a less adventurous period. But that story cannot be without instruction which depicts the man who landed on these shores a boy of fifteen years, successively ruled the three greatest dependencies of the British Crown, and upon whose tomb it was written with severe truth by an immortal pen, that he was a statesman tried in many high posts and difficult conjunctures, and found equal to all."

Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, the second son of Major Metcalfe of the Bengal Army, was born in Calcutta in 1785. His father held a lucrative Staff appointment, and retiring in 1787 from India with an ample fortune, commenced that career of decorous utility which alone can be achieved by those who enter on a public life in England in their enth lustre. He was elected an East Indian Director, was returned for Abingdon, became one of those safe practical members whom Pitt placed in his precordia, and was in 1802 created a Baronet.

Charles commenced his Latin Grammar under the ferule of Mr. Tait of Bromley, "a gentleman with an Indian connexion," and in January 1796 was removed to Eton, the nursing mother of so many Governor Generals and Governors. His tutor was the excellent Goodall, subsequently head master and provost, with whom in after years he maintained an affectionate correspondence. Mr. Kaye has given us a clear sketch of his Etonian life. It appears that he was neither distinguished in the "playing fields," nor on the water, but was very studious. In after life he often said that all his acquaintance with books was obtained at Eton, and his journal certainly displays a remarkable round of reading for a boy of fifteen. It is curious to observe how his taste turned towards controversy. In the course of the month of March 1800, he appears to have plunged into the Rowley Poems' discussion, into the Iron Mask discussion, and into Gibbon's contest with Warburton on the Sixth Book of Virgil. In addition to the usual routine of Latin and Greek, he attacked French and Italian, and the influence of one of his favourite authors, Rousseau, may we think be clearly traced in some parts of his correspondence.

His long public life was soon to commence. His father destined his two sons for the East, the elder for China, and Charles for India. Both were reluctant, but the old Director was inexorable. He gave them their fling in Portland Place for a few months, and then ship

ped them off. Charles sailed on the 14th of June 1800, spent a few pleasant days at St Helena, and anchored off Kedgeree on the first day of the present century.

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The commencement of his career presented the usual incidents of Civil " freshmanship." He entered the service with a prospect peculiarly bright. He was born in the purple, a Shazadah, fact which, while it can never raise a feeble man to responsible posts, cannot be regarded as a disadvantage to a young man of ability. But better than this, he was an Etonian, a circumstance never lost upon a Governor General, whose attachment to the scene of early triumphs was continued through a long and brilliant career, even to an old age nec turpem nec cithara carentem," and was not the least pleasing trait in a character which possessed many just claims to admiration. And perhaps, greatest advantage of all, he was the first alumnus of the College of Fort William-an institution regarded by Lord Wellesley to his latest day with a ropy which was not exempt from the usual defects of parental solicitudes.

Mr. Kaye seems inclined to think that an apology is necessary for some antipathies evinced by Metcalfe in his early Indian life. The future Governor disliked the country, and regarded the study of Hindoostani and Persian with aversion. Instances of similar failings among young men of merit are so common, that an apology was not required. In Metcalfe's case such feelings were perfectly natural. Most of those who enter the Indian services know that an honorable provision has been secured, and that no other path is open to them. But with Metcalfe it was different; he considered that his father might easily obtain for him some appointment in a public office at home, and probably long entertained the hope that such a field was reserved for his ambition. His aversion from Hindoostan was merely the daintiness of a boy fond of reading and preferring Gibbon and Pope's Homer, to the exquisite nonsense about King Vikramjit. It did not prevent him from acquitting himself creditably at the College examinations.

The Gazette of the 3rd December 1801 announced his first appointment" Assistant to the Embassy to the Arab States." This was changed at his own request on the 29th of the same month, when he appeared as Assistant to the Resident at Sindia's Court. He left Calcutta early in 1802, and was permitted to join the Camp of Lord Wellesley, then on his celebrated progress to Oude. In a very good letter to his friend Sherer, Metcalfe enthusiastically describes the pageant in which the Viceroy of India, among whose claims to greatness a severe simplicity could not be numbered, met. the Wuzeer of the Great Mogul. The Indian reader will not however take much interest in the painted streets and houses lined

His first appointment.

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with silk, the escort of four Regiments, and the Governor General distributing largesses with a monarch's hand. But he will scarcely restrain a smile when he reads, that "the Nabob and the Lord grew so attached to each other, that the Nabob declared, that he could not exist unless he always dined and breakfasted in company with the Lord." If any of our readers will refer to that most caustic chapter of Mill's caustic History, the ninth of the Sixth Book, he will there see how ardent must have been the admiration of the Nawaab, and how warmly he reciprocated the attachment of the noble Lord-an attachment which extended to one half of the Oude principality. Metcalfe says, that the spectacle surpassed" all the processions of which he had ever read, that the triumph of Aurelian when he led Zenobia and Tetricus captives was completely beggared by it." It may have been; and certainly the position of the warrior Queen was an ovation, when compared with the position of the unfortunate Nawab, whose fervent prayer had been, and was again, that he might be permitted to make a pilgrimage, or resign his functions, or do any thing rather than endure the humiliation heaped upon him by the friend out of whose company he professed he could not break bread.

Of Metcalfe's long march to Oojein where Sindia then held his court, Mr. Kaye has given an interesting account. But the youth had not been many months at the Residency before he retraced his steps. The Resident, Col. Collins, an officer of great ability, was unfortunately one of those cold, hard, imperious men, excellent in all the relations of life, who elicit from those around them a respectful detestation. King Collins was his nick name, and he was determined that his kingdom should be a despotism. No one was more ill fitted for serfdom than his new assistant. That Charles Metcalfe, the aspiring, the fond of argument, the noticed of the Most Noble the Governor General, should be told to read more and talk less-and Mr. Kaye hints that something to this effect occurred-was sufficient. "To say the best of him," writes Charles to Sherer, "he is a man whom one ought immediately to quit." Accordingly, Collins was quitted.

On his return to Calcutta, Metcalfe entered the Chief Secretary's Office as an assistant. His duties were probably of a mere routine order, and he had considerable leisure, of which he made an excellent use. Amidst many more brilliant gifts, he eminently possessed capacity for labour. We believe that the world is now pretty well agreed that this is a talent, and it is certainly one without which great success will never be achieved in India. The days were approaching when public care would demand all his time and all his thoughts. But at the present moment books afforded the aliment necessary for his youthful energy. Hallam's scornful reproach of "the languid students of the present day" was not applicable to

him. He read laboriously, like his favorite Gibbon, pen in hand. Nor should we omit to mention, that besides the note book he practised the severe discipline of the Common-place Book. From this Mr. Kaye has given us some copious extracts. These, as the reflections of a boy of eighteen, have little intrinsic value, but they shew that he was accustomed to observe the operations of his own mind, a habit probably derived from Rousseau, and we have not the slightest doubt that their preparation contributed to the clearness and facility of composition which his diplomatic papers afterwards exhibited. It is very obvious that a young man, who after office hours and after operose studies in the heat and gaiety of Calcutta, could sit down to write little essays on the "Human Intellect," Friendship," ""Self Love," and "Beauty," must have possessed a love of labor to which Government might, both for his benefit and its own, wisely give a practical direction.

But stirring work was soon to come. The ruler of India, in whose active mind large designs of policy were constantly revolving, and whose clear and disciplined intellect enabled him with as much alacrity to control the complications of Oriental diplomacy, as his resolute spirit could confront hostile armies in the field, was now addressing himself to the most momentous conjunctures of his eventful reign. On the last day of 1802, Bajee Rao had purchased an ignominious security from the talents and enterprise of Jeshwunt Rao Holkar, by the treaty of Bassein. But there were other powers to be conciliated or coerced. There was Dowlut Rao, the son of that Muhadajee Sindia, the Oriental Sforza, who had exercised the same influence over the Peishwa, as the Peishwas had exercised over the Raja of Satara. There was the Raja of Berar, the most powerful Prince of the great house of Bhonslay. These puissant Chiefs had observed, with that subtlety which the instinct of self-preservation confers, that the Peishwa and Holkar were but carpet knights compared to the inscrutable Company. They contemplated that mysterious power with the indefinable dread that the Greek contemplated the gloomy abstraction which he termed "Destiny." Unskilled in controversy they soon got worsted in the argument with a Governor affluent in dialectics, and pouring sonorous periods from a full horn; but they nevertheless regarded the Viceroy and his subsidiary alliances with the same feelings that Tara Bye regarded that Peishwa, who so fully entered into her views on the propriety of her committing "Suttee." They did not appreciate the ruler who assumed the administration of the territories of half the Rajas in India, as the French, according to that eminent politician Mrs. Western, "took the towns in Flanders, out of defensive principles." With the worst of the argument, they thought they might have the best of a contest to which the vanquished in debate occasionally