he was getting into debt, and for the other half getting out of it, it will follow that he only exceeded his pay during the first three years, by as much as he was able to save out of that pay in the second three years; and it is scarcely supposable that that was so much as fifty rupees a month. But suppose he were only two years in getting into debt, and four years in getting out of it, at the rate of fifty rupees a month, he must have overspent his income to the extent of Rs. 100 a month.

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In 1790, Malcolm got a taste of soldiering in earnest. In that year, Lord Cornwallis went to war with Tippoo Sahib, and Malcolm's regiment was part of the force appointed to co-operate with the Nizam's troops, and was first employed in the siege of Copoulee. This fort stood out for six months, and at last capitulated, in consequence of the taking of Bangalore. Malcolm's corps was then "ordered to join the main body of the Nizam's army, which, accompanied by the Resident, Sir John Kennaway, was then assembling to march upon Seringapatam, and co-operate with the British forces under Lord Cornwallis." Here he was brought into acquaintance with "Sir John Kennaway, Mr. Græme Mercer, and others of the diplomatic corps, then representing British interests at the Court of Hyderabad." And this was the turning-point of his career. Through his intercourse with those gentlemen, hist ambition was fired. He resolved to distinguish himself in the diplomatic line; and from this time he is to be regarded as an aspirant to be numbered amongst those "politicals," whom it has become fashionable of late years to decry, but to whom. India owes a large debt of gratitude. His first step was to study Persian, and for this purpose, Mr. Mercer lent him his Moonshi. The defection of the "Boy Malcolm," from the ranks. of the all-day idlers, was a calamity which they strove, by all the enginery of banter and cajolery, to prevent; but like Mr. Longfellow's Excelsior, he turned a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer. At the same time he studied, with characteristic earnestness, the complicated questions of our relations with the native powers, and left no means unused to prepare himself for serving the state in the line that he had now marked out for himself. After a short leave of absence, on sick-certificate, he joined the camp of Lord Cornwallis before Seringapatam, and was appointed by His Lordship, probably on the recommendation of Sir John Kennaway, interpreter to the Nizam's troops. But his stay there was short. His health again broke down, and he was obliged to go again to the sea-coast on sick-certificate. He seems to have remained there till the end of 1793, when he was obliged to apply for leave to Europe; and in February, 1794, he sailed for old England, and reached it in such vigorous

health that it was difficult to persuade people that his sickcertificate was aught else than 66 a bonao."

Malcolm had been a dozen years absent from home when he re-visited it. And this is just the proper time for an Indian to be absent from home. If he return earlier, he has not felt enough of the longing which makes him fully estimate the blessing. If he be much later, the changes that have occurred during his absence, are so marked, as greatly to sadden his enjoyment. Malcolm seems to have found things at Burnfoot pretty much as he left them. All that he had left behind were a dozen years older; but the change on them was not nearly so great as on himself. We presume that there must have been also a considerable addition to the flock during his absence; for it is not likely that all the seventeen Malcolms were born, before the fourth son was thirteen years old. Be this as it may, we may be sure that there was joy in Eskdale on the day that young Malcolm put his foot over the threshold of Burnfoot. Father and mother, and brother and sisters, and cousins of all degrees, and neighbours and dependents, rejoiced with no faint jubilation. We know something of the joy of such a return from exile; but the more we know of it, the less do we feel disposed to speak or to write of it. The joy of his visit was enhanced by the circumstance that his brothers Pulteney and James arrived from the West Indies during the time of John's being at home. But there was a dash of bitterness in the cup of bliss,-as in what cup of earthly bliss is there not? Three sons had gone to the West Indies, and two had gone to the East. Robert was still

in the East, but he was well. Two had come from the West, but one, George, a fine young sailor, had fallen a victim to yellow fever in the beginning of the year. It was the first time that death had invaded the Burnfoot circle.

During his residence in England, Malcolm entered with characteristic zeal on the advocacy of the rights of the Company's officers, and did good service to a good cause; and by his letters in the newspapers on this subject, attracted the notice of men in power. But the months sped on as only months of furlough do speed. His health was quite re-established; indeed the home voyage had been sufficient for that; and his duty lay not at Burnfoot, but at Madras; and to Madras he must go. He had reached England in July, 1794, and he left it in May, 1795. He had the advantage of going out as Secretary to Sir Alured Clarke, who was proceeding as Commander-in-Chief to Madras. On their way they stopped at the Cape of Good Hope, and brought to a close the war that was then being waged between the Dutch and the English. It is so delightful to catch a historian of Mr. Kaye's almost finical accuracy "tripping," that

we cannot resist the temptation of "shewing him up." He states, truly enough, that the fight in which General Clarke defeated the Dutch, gave the Cape Colony to the English: but he adds, not truly enough, that by the English it has ever since been retained. Now of course, Mr. Kaye knows very well, though he seems for the moment to have forgotten, that the Cape was given up to the Dutch in 1802, that it was re-taken by an Indian hero, Sir David Baird in 1806, and even then was held rather as a province than a colony till 1814.

After a stay of some two months at the Cape, the voyage for India was resumed, and was brought to a close somewhere about the end of 1795. For a little more than a year, Malcolm seems to have remained with the Commander-in-Chief at the Presidency. His hands were of course full. "The employment," he says, writing to his mother, "is of that nature as to leave me hardly one idle moment; all the better, you will say; and all the better I say ;"-and all the better we say. He was now twenty-seven years old, he had got a fresh impulse, physically and mentally, during those ten months at home-and all the better, we repeat with all the circumstance of editorial oracle, that he had hardly an idle moment. In the beginning of 1797, Sir Robert Abercromby resigned the Command-in-Chief of the Bengal army; Sir Alured Clarke succeeded him; and General Harris succeeded Sir Alured Clarke in the command of the Madras army. Clarke was unable, for some reason which Mr. Kaye professes himself unable to explain, to take his secretary with him to Bengal; but Harris was happy to retain him, and although he would have liked to accompany his old master, he was happy to remain. "It may be gathered (says his biographer) from his letters, that John Malcolm was never more in a laughing' mood than at this period of his life. He had good health, good spirits, and good prospects. He was still Boy Malcolm;' and he wrote, both to his friends in India and to dear old Burnfoot, in a strain which must have imparted something of its own cheerfulness to the recipients of his laughing epistles." But while he was thus joyous and lighthearted, he was not idle. This was emphatically his period of study. He had marked out for himself the career of a political," and while people who only casually saw him, regarded him as only the light-hearted and gay "Boy-Malcolm," he was carrying on an extensive correspondence with the best-informed men of the country, getting from each his views on various points of policy, and digesting these views into elaborate "minutes." Some of these he submitted to Lord Hobart, who received them graciously, and encouraged him to proceed with his self-imposed task.

دو

In February 1798, Lord Hobart resigned the Government of Madras, and General Harris acted during the interregnum. The Town-Majorship of Fort St. George was in those days an office of greater honor and emolument than it is now, and it was regarded as a perquisite of some one of the Governor's suite. It was therefore given by General Harris to his secretary, and Malcolm held it till the arrival of Lord Clive in August. In this year also he attained his captaincy. And in this year, Lord Mornington landed at Madras on his way to Calcutta ; and Captain Malcolm took the liberty to forward to "the glorious little man, some of those papers that he had submitted to Lord Hobart, and to solicit that "when opportunity offered, he might be employed in the diplomatic line of his "profession." And opportunity offered soon: on the 10th of September, he received a letter from the governor-general, announcing his appointment to be assistant to the Resident at the Court of Hyderabad, and at the same time requesting to see him. as soon as he could possibly present himself at Calcutta. But it would seem that Malcolm must have received the official announcement of his appointment, and started at once for Hyderabad, before getting this letter from the governor-general; and once at Hyderabad, his hands were filled for some time.

The Nizam had for a long time had a difficult part to play. He was on terms of friendly alliance with the English. He was also on terms of friendship with the French. But the English and the French were at war with each other. He had no very

special preference for either of the parties. The only question with him was as to the probable advantage of maintaining the one or the other friendship. One of the first acts of the administration of Lord Mornington was to compel him to a choice. He had in his pay a body of 11,000 troops, under the command of French officers, and devoted to French interests. The governor-general insisted that these troops should be disbanded, and their officers given up as prisoners of war into the hands of the English. This order had just reached Captain Kirkpatrick, when Malcolm joined him as his assistant. The work was one of importance. It was one also of difficulty and danger. It was admirably executed, and Malcolm had a fair share in the credit of the execution:

"That the dispersion of the French troops was a very important stroke of policy, and that it tended materially to secure our subsequent successes, is not to be denied. Malcolm shared with Kirkpatrick the credit of the achievement. But the experience which he had gained was of more worth to him than the honor. In the course of the fortnight which he had spent, by accident as it were, at Hyderabad, he had seen more of busy, stirring public life—more

of the strife and turmoil of oriental politics-than many men see in the course of years. The lesson that he learnt was never forgotten. That little reliance is to be placed on the word of an Indian diplomatist, that no native court is willing to fulfil the conditions of a treaty except under strong compulsion, Malcolm may have known before. But the great practical truth which he carried with him from Hyderabad, to be much pondered by the way, was, that the most vigorous policy is, at the same time, the most humane-that there is nothing so merciful, when strong measures are to be carried out, as an over-awing display of force at the outset. Had Kirkpatrick wanted resolution-had he hesitated, and faltered, and shewn himself to be a man of weak-nerved humanity, slow to resort to extremities, in all probability before the end of October, the French lines would have been running crimson with blood. There is an ill odour about the word "dragooning," but there is more real kindness in the thing itself than is readily to be believed."

And so, deeply pondering this and other lessons, and bearing with him the colors of the disbanded French regiments, John Malcolm proceeded to Calcutta.

Any one reading Mr. Kaye's account of the reception that awaited him there, and of the place which he occupied in the vice-regal court and councils of Lord Mornington, without having much previous knowledge of the character, and tastes, and peculiarities of that nobleman, will be apt to think that Mr. Kaye unduly magnifies his hero, and represents his advent to Calcutta as a more important event than it really was. But, in point of fact, the governor-general, the "glorious little man," was one of those few men to whom, being in office, it was of no consequence whether a man were old or not, whether he were a cadet or a colonel, provided he had eyes that could see, a brain that could think, a soul that could feel what was right and what was noble, and a hand that could hold a sword or a pen. In fact, we think that, upon the whole, other things being equal, he would have preferred a young man to an old one; at all events he seems to have surrounded himself with men whom many would have despised as youngsters; but whose energies, and whose unsophisticated ways of looking at affairs, he knew how to turn to account. It was not because he despised the wisdom of the ancients; but because he had a peculiar liking for a set of men who combined, in a wonderful way, the wisdom of experience with the energy and the fearlessness of youth. There are men who are never young; calculating, planning, plotting, far-seeing in regard to the interests of self, from their boyhood. No man likes, or ought to like them. And there are men too, who never grow old; who retain the frivolity and the puppyism of boyhood, till, for their years, they ought to be old men. These are neither liked nor