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greatest battles. It is not correct to say that the enemy encamped in the neighbourhood for several days," inasmuch as Lal Singh did not join Tej Singh opposite to Ferozepore till the morning of the 16th, and on the 17th the Sikh Army took up their position at Ferozshah. The 16th then is the only day on which the combined Army could have attacked Ferozepore. Tej Singh and Lal Singh both, elsewhere described as cravens, are here represented to have been "in favour of an attempt on the place, but the Troops were irresolute." In the next page it was the Sikhs that were valiant and their Commander that was cowardly. The very reverse was the case; for it was chiefly if not solely to Lal Singh's advice that the southward move was made and Ferozepore avoided. Múdki was not "about five coss in his front;" it was fully ten coss. The whole story of the Sikhs stumbling" on a picquet of about a hundred horse,' can only be characterized, in plain language, as nonsense. The Sikhs are made to have engaged at Múdki with only fourteen guns, "the other two having been left on the road." This is singular considering that twenty were captured on the 18th. Not a word here is given in praise of Her Majesty's 13th Light Dragoons," the Múdkiwalahs," although the Editor is a Čavalry officer.

At page 25 of the introduction, Sir John Littler, as already observed, is made to come to the rescue of the army Head Quarters; but here at page 174, we were told that the doomed Troops, before so rescued, "continued steadily and rapidly to advance" in the face of the fire of grape from the Sikh artillery, and two lines further on is noted" the fierce attack of the British." All this is true, and these are facts diametrically opposed to Major Symth's own reasonings and opinions. The British army is made to have" encamped on the ground;" they did no such thing but returned to Múdkí.

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We cannot conceive how an officer who was himself present at Ferozshah could have written that the Sikhs had advanced to give battle that morning, and that they were finally taken by surprize and at disadvantage,-the fact being that the combined force were within three miles of Ferozshah from about twelve o'clock, though the attack was not made till near 4 P. M. Sikhs must therefore have seen the dust of the advancing columns hours before the attack, and they had met with too warm reception at Múdkí to prefer giving battle in the plain rather than behind their entrenchments. Moreover they had not the means of moving their heavy guns in and out of the works, and they assuredly would not have fought without them.

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We now come to one of the most obnoxious passages of this precious narrative :

"Before daylight however, even this division, finding itself unsupported, and in fact deserted, deemed it best to retire after the others, so that by sunrise not a man that could get away was to be seen in the Sikh camp, &c."

The desertion of the Sikh camp during the night of the 21st, was by no means so general as is stated in the book. The Sikh artillery was manned on the morning of the 22d, and did execution there as well as during the previous night. His countrymen, then, according to Major Smyth, only advanced on "hearing that the Sikhs had fled to the river!" Most patriotic, independent, and truthful of Editors! The whole of the succeeding passage regarding Tej Singh is erroneous; but supposing the panic among the Sikhs to have been half what Major Smyth represents it, the more natural way of accounting for his conduct would be to suppose that he too took fright. The real fact of the case, we believe to be that Tej Singh did not advance on the 22d with the purpose of fighting, but solely with the view of covering the retreat of the discomfited Battalions of Ferozshah, in which he succeeded. He did not turn back without firing a shot" as the friends of many a poor fellow who fell on the morning of the 22d can testify. We have here picked out only a few of the blunders and mis-representations of the three pages we have quoted, but a full article would scarcely expose them all.

We commend the following reasoning to our readers, especially the set speech of the indignant soldiery to their leader. It wants the verisimilitude of the writers of romantic history. When Thucydides and Livy put words into men's mouths, they make them say something like what they might be expected to say; but can any one who ever saw a Sikh soldier conceive him holding forth in the following rodomontade :

"It has been already remarked, that the troops who formed the Sikh army on the Sutlej, strongly suspected that they had been betrayed into the hands of the enemy by their own chiefs, acting under secret instructions from the Ranee. The conduct of those chiefs, and specially that of Teja Sing, was, it must be owned, such as to strengthen, if not confirm, those suspicions. There was but too much reason for them to believe that the whole or nearly the whole of their Sirdars and officers, were combined in a treacherous scheme to entrap them, and deliver them up an easy prey to the British army. Instead of watching for opportunities to employ the force to the best advantage against the enemy, it seemed as if the leaders of the Sikhs were intent only on placing their troops in such a position as might render them an easy and complete conquest to their foes. Notwithstanding, however, that the Sikh soldiery more than suspected these designs and intentions of their chiefs, they were unable to extricate themselves from the

position into which they had been thrown. They gave vent to their alarm and indignation in fierce reproaches on the treachery of their leaders, but that was all they could do. "We know," they said to their leaders, "that you have leagued with the Court to send us against the British and to pen us up here like sheep for them to come and slaughter us at their convenience; but, remember, that in thus acting, you play the part not only of traitors to your country, but of ruthless butchers and murderers. You destroy a whole army, which, whatever its faults and crimes may have been, has always been ready to obey the orders of the state and its officers. We might even now punish you as you deserve, but we will leave you to answer to your Gooroo and your God, while we, deserted and betrayed, as we are, will do what we can to preserve independence of our country."

Not less absurd is the following quotation, which is the last we shall inflict on our readers. We have already accounted for Tej Singh's conduct on the 22d, but we beg to inform Major Smyth that, however "wearied and defenceless" were our Troops on that morning, one-half the force that was on the British side when Tej Singh approached, had served to clear the works of Ferozshah and to capture seventy-five guns. Sir H. Smith and Sir J. Littler's Divisions, which had not fired a shot that day, had come up; and however deficient we may have been in ammunition, the Sikhs knew nothing of it. No, the speech of the "old Sikh horseman," like that just quoted has been concocted since the event:

"It has been said that the conduct of Teja Sing, in particular, savoured much of treason to the Khalsa. His strange conduct in ordering a retreat before the wearied and almost defenceless British force at Ferozshah, on the morning of the 22d December, is inexplicable on any other supposition than that of treachery. It was on this occasion, while he was haranguing the troops, and persuading them of the necessity for retiring, assuring them that unless they did so, their bridge of boats and the whole line of the river in their rear would be immediately occupied by the British,-while he was thus discoursing, an old Sikh horseman, soldier of the time of Runjeet, galloped up to him, and drawing his sword, strove by threats and fierce invectives to induce the Sirdar to order the advance instead of the retreat of the army. He pointed to the exhausted British forces unable to fire a shot, and asked what was to be feared from them, who he declared, would not be able to stand a victorious charge from the fresh troops now opposed to them. The conduct and language of this brave old trooper induced Teja Sing with joined hands solemnly to protest and swear by the name of God and his Gooroo, that he had no other intent in retiring than that of saving the troops by preventing their retreat from being cut off by the British; but the old horseman, still convinced of the treachery of the Sirdar, cursed him as a traitor and a coward before the whole army, and then quietly returned to his post in the ranks."

All this talk of treachery tends to a wrong impression. No mfen could have exerted themselves more than did the majority of the Sikh Generals; and even Tej Singh and Lal Singh, once engaged, had no choice but to fight. One proof that the chiefs

did act honestly by their men then, is, that now they pretend to no credit for treachery; but rather boast of their prowess during the war. But to suspect them and accuse them is quite in keeping with Mr. Gardner's own character. He very naturally judges them by himself. The European character has not shone in the Punjab.

The book of the war, as regards the Sikhs as well as the British, has yet to be written. Many a tale of gallantry and soldierly devotion has yet to be told of friends and of foes. The men who saw how the Sikhs stood to their guns and who witnessed the compact retreat of the two French Battalions through a British Regiment at Sobraon, when the works had long been in our possession, can appreciate the qualities of the Sikh soldier, and can understand that honour is due to those that subdued him. But it is neither by exaggerated nor distorted pictures such as Colonel Monton's or Major Smyth's that credit is to be obtained or truth elicited. In noticing the work of the latter, we have discharged a necessary but painful duty-necessary, as regards the cause of truth and faithfulness-painful, as respects those feelings which we would ever desire to cherish towards a British officer. But Major Smyth has himself entirely to blame. He has, not anonymously, but in his own proper name, published a book, the downright untruthfulness of many of whose details can only be paralleled by the surpassing vileness of some and the surpassing absurdity of others. It is, for the most part, not a "florid" but an ugly deformed romance—a romance which merits the utmost severity of reprehension, not merely on account of its indecencies and puerilities, its wretched fabrications and exhibitions of evil temper, but because, while in reality, to a great extent, no more trustworthy than the veriest fiction; it yet pretends to the sober dignity of authentic history.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES.

Panorama of the city of Dacca, lithographed and published by Messrs. Dickenson, 114, New Bond Street.

ART is the handmaid of History—or ought in a great measure to be so. Though the cloud capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples of ages have crumbled away for the most part; yet are traces of their grandeur to be found in such of the writings of some of their admirers as have survived the wreck of many centuries. Some fragmentary portions of them still remain, like the foot of the gigantic statue, that has passed into a proverb, to furnish a palpable hint of the colossal proportions, yet exquisite taste of the original work in its totality. The pen in regard to the interests of fame, has proved after all, a more enduring testimonial than marble and brass. The art of printing in all its varieties, whether it embrace letters, or pictorial impressions, is more likely to defy the ravages of time than iron or stone. It is an adage that the written character endures. The scratches of a pen may still convey ideas, when more material things have ceased to transmit them. The marble is liable to accidents that affect not its representations on paper, for when developed into exquisite forms that appeal to the taste and feelings of civilised man-they may still have no conservative claim upon the attention of the destroying Goth of the times of old, or the consideration of the iconoclastic Islamite of our own more recent days. Art every day is becoming much less perishable, in consequence of the wonderful resources of modern discovery. A picture may fade away in the dust of centuries, but grouping, drawing, and expression will continue to live in the impressions of the Engraver and Lithographer. Those who may come after us, will in this respect be more fortunate than our ancestors, since though time may destroy the thing itself, it will continue to live, in the faithful reflection that science enables its adepts to furnish of all things visible that have in them any element of the poetry of life. The modern in consequence travels in his chamber, and contemplates pictures and statues in his own studio, thanks to the contrivances of acute minds, and artistic eyes and hands. Indeed to the indolent, to the invalid, and to the poor, the travels that the printer and the lithographer enable them to take; are undergone with a zest, alacrity and economy both of exertion and money; and perhaps even with an amount of instruction and information, which could not have been accumulated had they roughed it through all the realities for themselves.

In looking at the graphic and beautiful picture, the title of which heads these remarks, it is not easy to withhold a sigh at the thoughts which it naturally suggests, of the vanity of human wishes and the

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