by his gallant son, and that in many moments of danger there was a generous contest between father and son, each anxious to shield the precious life of the other at the risk of his own. Shakspeare has preserved a similar instance of paternal and filial affection in the gallant Talbots.

The complete annihilation of the Sikh army which terminated this contest, can only be described by military historians, because it was the triumph of strategy and tactics over unregulated force. Let us be just to a fallen enemy; the Sikhs exhibited as much individual bravery as in the old days of chivalrous warfare must have ensured success; they were defeated by generalship rather than by soldiery; even Mouton confesses that the unhesitating confidence which the sepoys placed in their leaders, and the want of faith in their generals felt by the Sikhs, was the chief determining cause of the final and glorious issue.

The result of the campaign on the Sutlej was more than a victory or even a conquest,-it was an utter annihilation of the enemy. That mighty army which threatened to change the destinies of Asia, ceased to exist. What Runjeet Singh had so often predicted when urged to make war on the English, was fully accomplished-the Punjab lay at the mercy of the conquerors. At this crisis Sir Henry Hardinge nobly, though unconsciously, refuted the French maligners of England; while foreign journals were endeavouring to raise a popular clamour against the new acquisitions of territory about to be added to our empire, Sir Henry Hardinge was providing for the independence of Lahore, and exerting himself to secure the future prosperity of the Punjab under the rule of native sovereigns.

So far as we have been able to learn, the policy adopted by England in the Punjab has been more successful than could have been anticipated from the character of those Sikhs to whom a large share in the administration has been necessarily delegated. The agriculture and the commerce of the country were never in so flourishing a condition, and in concluding this rapid sketch, we cannot avoid expressing our gratification that the successor of the warrior and statesman whose brilliant career we have so imperfectly delineated, is a nobleman who, as President of the Board of Trade, exerted himself strenuously to establish the two great principles, that industry is the only true source of prosperity to a people, and commerce the best bond of union between nations.

Before closing this brief sketch of the brilliant career of the gallant chief, whose return to his native land, crowned with victory, is hourly expected, it is not altogether irrelevant to draw attention to a volume of drawings entitled "Recollections of India," by the noble viscount's eldest son, the Hon. Charles Stewart Hardinge. It is one of the most picturesque series of drawings of perhaps the most picturesque countries in the world, and will be prized not merely by all Anglo-Indians, but by all who can appreciate subjects so magnificent, treated with such admirable taste.

THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH.

A TRUTH.

BY ALFRED CROWQUILL.

FAIR truth the ancient sages tell,
Lies at the bottom of a well.
That truth's not truth, the reason why
Is, that no truth can ever lie.
A sage, quite anxious after truth,
Who'd lied tremendously in youth,
Resolved to take his staff and see
Whether such a thing could be.
He turned his searching eyes around,
And soon a prattling nurse he found,
With swaddled infant on her knee-
Here, surely, no deceit could be!
But lies on lies she told by score
To please herself, and nothing more;
For babyhood knew not one word
Of all the fairy trash it heard.
He turned disgusted from her side
And, sitting on a bank, espied
A little boy, with book in hand
Of wondrous tales of fairy land.
All lies again, but yet the youth
Read and received them all as truth.
As near a copse he chanced to pass,
He saw a shepherd and his lass;
He crept behind a neighbouring tree
To listen to his rhapsody,

But only listened to deplore

And hear love's lies he'd lied of yore.

For how can love of any kind

See the truth when it is blind?

He sought the mansions of the great,

The doors were thronged with liveried state,

Expressly kept, to his surprise,

To help their masters with their lies.

He entered where th' ennobled sat,

But all unprofitable, flat.

There fair ones kissed, and smirked, and smiled,

But each the other still beguiled

With flattery and friendly sneers,

All being still such loves and dears.
He blushed for truth, and felt ashamed
For here he never heard him named.
There noble lords, in whispering knots,
Political in all their plots,

Looked on each other but as tools,
And left sincerity to fools.

He left, and sought a hovel door

Of one most desolately poor,

And as he stooped to lift the latch
A loaf was hidden in the thatch;
The pauper then with canting moan
Bewail'd his fate to starve alone.
No bread, he said, his lips had passed
Since the day before the last :
The sage upraised his hand and took
The loaf from out its hidden nook
And held it out before his eye
A silent prover of the lie.
Invectives deep the beggar swore,
And thrust him from his hovel door.
He bit his lip and took his way,
For yet of truth he'd seen no ray.
He sought stern Justice with her scales;
To find the truth she never fails.

Wise men were there to find out lies
Alas! the scales were on her eyes,
And all their tricks she could not see,
Lying for hire-a paltry fee,

To free great rogues who made a flaw,
And could not lie to please the law.
A patriot passed with cheering mob,
He saw 'twas an election job;
And yet the patriot promised all
To stand with them, or with them fall.
Knowing that he was bought and sold
To party, for some trifling gold,
He fled the town in sheer disgust,
And losing all his former trust
He lay upon a bank to rest,
Resolved to give up further quest,
When o'er the little sparkling brook
A brown young boy, with shepherd's crook
Approached, and standing by his side,
With mouth and eyes both open wide,
Stared out his fill, then grinned a grin
To see the taking he was in.

Here's one imbued with truth, no doubt,
I think I here have found it out.

So thought the sage, his heart was glad,
So, smiling on the rustic lad,

He spoke, and said, "Come here, my man;
Pray answer me, I think you can;

Do

you know truth, and what it is ?" The youth looked sly, he feared a quiz, He gnawed his thumb and scratch'd his ear, Then, with a most uncommon leer, He said the young ingenuous youth"You are a fool, and that's the truth!" The sage got up and seized his staff, The boy had fled with hearty laugh. He said, when reaching home that night, "Upon my soul, that boy was right !"

THE COUNTRY TOWNS AND INNS OF FRANCE.

GAZETTEERS.

-

BY J. MARVEL.

INNS AND CAFES OF LYONS. SHOWS OF LYONS. THE MESSAGERIES GENERALES,-FRENCH ROADSIDE.-LIMOGES.

I ALWAYS felt a strong curiosity to learn something about those great inland cities of France which maintain a somewhat doubtful and precarious existence in the public mind, by being set down in the books of geographers. I had been whipped to learn in my old school a long paragraph about Lyons, I dare say, ten times over; and yet, when bowling down the mountains in a crazy diligence, at midnight, between Geneva and the city of silks, I could not tell a syllable about it.

I had half a memory of its having been the scene of dreadful murders in the time of the Revolution, and shuddered at thought of its bloody and dark streets; I knew the richest silks of the West came from Lyons, and so thought it must be full of silk-shops and factories; I remembered how Tristam Shandy had broke down his chaise, and gone "higgledy-piggledy" in a cart into Lyons, and so I thought the roads must be very rough around the city; my old tutor, in his explication of the text of Tacitus,* had given me the idea that Lyons was a cold city, far away to the north; and as for the tourists, if I had undertaken to entertain upon the midnight in question one half of the contradictory notions which they had put in my mind from time to time, my thoughts about Lyons would have been more "higgledy-piggledy" than poor Sterne's post-chaise, and worse twisted than his papers in the curls of the chaise-vamper's wife.

I had predetermined to disregard all that the tourists had written, and to find things (a very needless resolve), quite the opposite of what they had been described to be.

I nudged F, who was dozing in the corner under the lantern, and took his Pocket Gazetteer, and turning to the place where we were going, read, "Lyons is the second city of France: it is situated on the Rhone, near its junction with the Saone; it has large silk manufactories, and a venerable old cathedral." We shall see, thought I. What a help to the digestion of previously acquired information, is the simple seeing for one's self!

The whole budget of history and of fiction, whether of travel-writers or romancers, and of geographers, fades into insignificance in comparison with one glance of an actual observer. Particular positions and events may be vivid to the mind, but they can tell no story of noise and presence, of rivers rushing, wheels rolling, sun shining, voices talking. And why can not these all be so pictured that a man might wake up in a far off city as if it were an old story? Simply because each observer has his individualities, which it is as impossible to convey to the mind of another by writing, as it would have been for me to have kept awake that night in the diligence, after reading so sleepy a paragraph as that in the Gazetteer.

Cohortem duodevicesimam Lugduni, solitis sibi hybernis, relinqui placuit.— TACITUS, lib. 1. cap. 64.

I dreamed of silk cravats, and gaping cut-throats, until F nudged me in his turn at two in the morning, and said we had got to Lyons.

"Hôtel du Nord," I say to the porter who has my luggage on his back, and away I follow through the dim and silent streets to where, opposite the Grand Theatre, with its arcades running round it, our facteur stops, and tinkles a bell at the heavy doors opening into the court of the Hôtel du Nord. At first sight, it seems not unlike some of the larger and more substantial inns which may be met with in some of our inland towns, but in a street narrower and dimmer by half than are American streets. Up four pair of stairs the waiter conducts me, in his shirt sleeves, to a snug bedroom, where in ten minutes I am fast asleep. The porter goes off satisfied with a third of his demand, and I have just fallen to dreaming again the old diligence dreams, when the noise of the rising world, and the roll of cars over the heavy stone pavement below, shakes me into broad wakefulness.

A fat lady in the office does the honours of the house. Various companies are seated about the salon, which in most of the provincial hotels serves also as breakfast-room. Yet, altogether, the house has a city air, and might be-saving the language, with its mon Dieus, up the five pair of stairs, and the waxen brick floors, and the open court, a New-York hotel, dropped down within stone's throw of the bounding Rhone.

White-aproned waiters, like cats, are stealing over the stone staircases, and a fox-eyed valet is on the look-out for you at the door. There are very few towns in France in which the stranger is not detected, and made game of. But what, pray, is there worth seeing, that an eye, though undirected, cannot see even in so great a city as Lyons?

Besides, there was always to me an infinite deal of satisfaction in stroll→ ing through a strange place, led only by my own vagaries; in threading long labyrinths of lanes, to break on a sudden upon some strange sight; in losing myself, as in the old woods at home, in the bewilderment that my curiosity and ignorance always led me into.

What on earth matters it, if you do not see this queer bit of mechanisin, or some old fragment of armour, or some rich mercer's shop, that your valet would lead you to ?-do you not get a better idea of the city, its houses, noise, habits, position, and extent, in tramping off with your map and guide-book, as you would tramp over fields at home, lost in your own dreams of comparison and analysis?

You know, for instance, there are bridges over the river worth the seeing, and with no guide but the roar of the water, you push your way down toward the long, stately quay. The heavy, old arches of stone wallowing out of the stream, contrast strongly with the graceful curves of the long bridge of iron. Steamers and barges breast to breast, three deep, lie along the margin of the river, and huge piles of merchandise are packed upon the quay.

The stately line of the great hospital, the Hôtel Dieu, stretches near half a mile, with heavy stone front along the river. Opposite is a busy suburb, which has won itself a name, and numbers population enough for a city, were it not in the shadow of the greater one of Lyons.

You would have hardly looked-if you had no more correct notions than I-for such tall, substantial warehouses, along such a noisy quay