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the King's face, Captain Malcolm told me, with pleasure: it is the countenance of a man. And I admire his fine scymetar; steel is the lord of jewels." The King,' said the talkative Arab, though he was disappointed, could not help admiring such sentiments.' "All the Arab's stories are pretty near the truth. The dog's fine jewelled coat I recollect. It was made out of a dress of honor I had received, and put on to please my head huntsman, who used to lead this favorite greyhound himself; but God knows it was not meant to ridicule the magnificence of the Governor of Ispahan, from whom I received a thousand civilities."

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So Malcolm left Persia, and returned to India. At the mouth of the Gulf, he met a vessel from Bombay, and received a parcel of letters, bringing him intelligence of the birth of a daughter, and the perfect recovery of his wife. Gladdened by these good news he proceeded to Calcutta, and received a most cordial welcome from Lord Minto. After much earnest consultation it was agreed that Malcolm should return to Persia, at the head of a force sufficient to enable him, if it should seem desirable, to take possession of the island of Karrack, in the Persian Gulf. It seems to have been considered that the refusal of the Shah to receive our envoy, while the ambassador of France was actually at his Court, was tantamount to a declaration of war, and that our possession of that island would enable us to keep. Persia in check. Malcolm's own reasons for this step are plausible enough, as are generally the reasons for "most just and necessary wars." They were such as these; that we must have the means of preventing Persia from assisting any European Power in the invasion of India; that Persia, Eastern Turkey, and Arabia are to be regarded, not as national governments, but rather as tools which any European power might use. That it was for the manifest advantage of Persia to be on our side, since if she sided with our enemies, we should have no alternative but to blow her "into the middle of next week," whereas if she were on our side, it would not be the policy of any power wishing to invade India to attack her;-and so forth. These arguments, and such as these, convinced Lord Minto. Sir Harford Jones, who was now at Bombay, was ordered to remain there, and General Malcolm set off, as one of old to Baratraria, seeing in the distance, as he wrote playfully, a lordly castle, himself lord of the isle, and his lady-love looking out of a 'window and smiling approval of his acts."

Now Sir Harford Jones had come to Bombay after Malcolm had left that port for Bushire. When he heard of Malcolm's departure he was "in a fix." He did not well know what to do. He took advice of Sir James Mackintosh and of Colonel Close; and they were of course thorough "Malcolmites." SEPT., 1857.

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They recommended him to remain at Bombay, waiting for what might turn up; and he, like a sensible man, did wait. But when the tidings of Malcolm's having left Bushire arrived at Bombay, he considered that the embargo was taken off, and started for Persia, before Lord Minto's order directing him to remain, reached him. The intimation of his having started reached Calcutta while Malcolm was on his way down the river; and at Kedgeree he received a letter from the Governor-General requesting him to return. So Malcolm returned to Calcutta, not, we fear, in an amiable mood. But he found the GovernorGeneral and the Council unanimous in the opinion that they must not consent to be choused out of their island by the accident of Sir Harford's having sailed; and it was at once resolved that "Malcolm was to take ship for Bombay; to muster his force; to prepare his equipments, and to make all things ready for his descent on the island, from which he was to menace Persia, Arabia and the Porte, and baffle the designs of Napoleon and the Czar." With this prospect again before him, of course his amiability soon returned, and we find, in his correspondence with his wife, such stories as the following, which seems to us to be well worthy of preservation, as a specimen of the graceful and gentleman-like manners which made the Governor-General peculiarly fascinating in private life :

"Your acquaintance Mrs. W— happened not to have been introduced to Lord Minto when she dined here (Government House), and mistaking him for another, she said, "Do you know the cause of General Malcolm's return to Calcutta ?" "I believe I can guess," was the Lord's reply. "Pray, then, tell me," said the lady. Lord Minto hesitated till after we were seated at table, and then said, "We had better give the General plenty of wine, and we shall get this secret out of him." The lady, who had now discovered his rank, began to make apologies. "I assure you, my Lord," she said, "I did not know you." "I am delighted at that compliment," he replied. "Not to be known as Governor-General in private society is my ambition. I suppose," he added, laughing, "you thought I looked too young and too much of a puppy for that old grave fellow Lord Minto, whom you had heard people talking about.”

Once more General Malcolm turned his back on our Palatial city, on board the Chiffonne, and employed himself, as active men employ themselves on board ship, writing a discourse on "the

career of Nadir Shah, to be submitted by his friend Mr. Colebrooke to the Asiatic Society,"-telling stories to, and romping with, Johnny Wainwright, the Captain's son, a fine boy of ten years, "who soon discovered Malcolm's wonderful fund of anecdote;"-remembering all his pleasant intercourse with Lord Minto, in Calcutta-and anticipating the far more pleasant

intercourse which he hoped to enjoy with Charlotte and little Margaret at Bombay. "At last, on the 30th of November, the ' vessel entered Bombay harbour-and Malcolm was happy." The sculptor cast a veil over the face of a father about to be deprived by a ruthless superstition of his daughter, and this is imputed to his despair of being able to express such grief. This, we take upon us to say, is a mistake. It was not that he could not, but that he would not, that he felt that he ought not; he instinctively respected the sacredness of parental grief; and in like manner do we respect the sacredness of conjugal and parental joy.

In all the delights of genial intercourse with his Bombay friends, of that sacred intimacy to which we have alluded with his amiable and accomplished wife, of incessant wonderment at the discovery of the various beauties of his wonderful baby, and of exciting occupation in the organization of his little army, six weeks did not seem long; and on the 3rd of January, 1809, he wrote to Mr. Henry Wellesley that he expected to proceed to the Gulf in ten days, with an admirably well-appointed little force of about 2,000 men, to be followed, if necessary, with 3 or 4,000 more. Lord Minto had written to Sir Harford Jones directing him to return from Bushire; but as he had left Bombay before he was ordered to remain there, so he had left Bushire before he was ordered to return thence. Now if Malcolm had been merely bent on his own gratification, or if he had studied merely his own interests, he might have got great kudos by hastening his departure, and taking possession of Karrack before Jones could present himself in "the presence" at Teheran. But while this would have been congenial to the feelings of the "Boy-Malcolm," and would have been as good as what Sir Arthur Wellesley could only describe by a proverbial phrase as a proper Malcolm riot," he neither on this, nor on any other occasion, allowed his dashing spirit to gain the ascendancy over his duty as a man entrusted with weighty responsibilities; and he therefore halted till he could refer to Calcutta. Before this reference reached Calcutta, the Government there had received intelligence respecting the relations of the European powers, which had caused Lord Minto to write to Malcolm to await further orders, and to suspend the expedition, if it should not have sailed. Lord Minto also expressed his desire, if the Military expedition should not be found necessary, to place a resident minister at the Persian Court, and hinted that the minister should be General Malcolm. But this was not to Malcolm's taste. Six years before this he had written from General Wellesley's camp to General Stuart, a political agent is never so likely to succeed as when he nego'tiates at the head of an army ;" and he was of the same mind

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still. From his letters it would appear as if he had understood Lord Minto to contemplate the sending of him as "political," and a military force under another General; but it appears that what was really contemplated was not to send the military force at all. And this contemplation in due time ripened into a resolution. The whole scheme of the mission, political and military alike, was for the present abandoned. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of extracting the concluding paragraph of the private letter from Lord Minto, which accompanied the official intimation of this resolution. If a man do not himself particularly care for such graceful compliments, he is always sure that his wife will be gratified by them, and he is pleased if it were only that they give pleasure to her.

"For these reasons, and for others which it is not necessary to enumerate in this letter, I think we are at liberty, and it is therefore our duty to renounce the proposed expedition, and, so far as Persia is concerned, to resume our peace establishment. Knowing how your mind and all its powers have, for such a length of time, been devoted to the great interests involved in the affair of Persia, and generally in the Persian Gulf-knowing how instrumental I have myself been in disturbing the tranquillity, public and domestic, of your permanent station at Mysore, and in kindling the very ardour which this letter is to extinguish-I cannot but feel extreme regret and discomfort at a termination which, on one hand, withdraws such talents as yours, with all the energy which belongs to your character, from the great field on which they were to be displayed, and, on the other, may seem to blight the rich fruits of honor and distinction which you were on the point of gathering. These are sentiments, in which I hope and am convinced you firmly believe, while I rely on the rectitude as well as strength of mind which distinguish you for feeling that they are sentiments which may be permitted to follow, but which could not be allowed any share in forming, our resolution on this great public question."

On receipt of this letter, Malcolm would of course have turned his face at once towards Mysore; but there was no steam in those days, and the monsoon was against him; and so he remained a few weeks longer in Bombay, collecting materials for his contemplated Political History of India and his History of Persia. In the month of May, "he embarked with his family for Madras; but he arrived there only to find the Government in alarm, the Presidency in commotion, and the army in rebellion."

We need not inform our readers that the rebellion of the army was the cause of the alarm of the Government, and of the commotion of the Presidency. Upon the history of this rebellion, we cannot enter now; but shall probably, ere long, make it

the subject of a separate article. We shall only state in general that almost all the regimental officers of the Madras army assumed an attitude of determined defiance to the Government, and many of them declared themselves ready to fight in defence of their rights to the last drop of their blood. This was a state of things which has no parallel in the history of a British army. That English gentlemen and soldiers, with or without cause of complaint, should have comported themselves as these men did, we believe that few in these days would deem possible. We all know, alas! too well, what is the misery of a sepoy mutiny; but the mutiny, or rather rebellion, of the English portion of our army, is a misery of a still darker character. The chief foci of the rebellion were Hyderabad and Masulipatam. To the former station, Colonel Close was despatched, and to the latter, General Malcolm. It is with the latter that we have to do. He started from Madras after long conferences with Sir George Barlow, with the distinct understanding that the plan of proceeding, which he had sketched out, of firmness tempered with conciliation, had the full sanction of the Governor. If he were right in this understanding, we think it impossible to doubt that he acted his difficult part in an admirable manner. He made no promises to officers with arms in their hands, which they professed themselves ready to use against the Government whom they had sworn to serve. But he reasoned with them in public and in private, represented to them the atrocity and the madness of their conduct, and was in a fair way to bringing them to submission. He then recommended to Government the issue of a proclamation, offering a pardon to those who should, within one hour after its receipt, return to their duty, and threatening the utmost severity of military law to those who should hesitate to return. This course was rejected by Sir George, who trusted to the loyalty of the Royal troops, and considered that the time had come to turn British bayonets against British breasts. This awful alternative was adopted by Sir George, and a bloody conflict ensued at Seringapatam. Malcolm's advice having been rejected, he asked permission to proceed to Madras, in the hope of being able to convince the Governor of the propriety of adopting it; and when in this he failed, it was of course out of the question that he should return to Masulipatam. The mutiny was quelled by other means than those that Malcolm had recommended; but whether it would not have been better quelled by gentler means, and whether it were favorable to British prestige to exhibit the spectacle of a civil war before the newly conquered natives of Seringapatam, may well be questioned.

While Malcolm was yet at Madras, in the month of Septem

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