Ranee, completety outwitted-" there is, certainly, some sense in that; remain then."

Golab obeyed. He returned to his government at Jummoo once more, and sent off messengers at the same time to the British, to inform them, that, for his part, he totally disapproved of the invasion, and had risked his head by opposing it; that the army was enraged at his remonstrances, and the Sirdars furious; that, in fine, no power on earth should compel him to march his troops against the British.

"Golab is an honest man," said the British authorities amongst themselves, "Golab is evidently an honest man; he must be remembered when we come to divide the spoil, for he is our good friend."

Such was the posture of affairs in the Punjab, when a Seikh army of nearly a hundred thousand men, with two hundred pieces of artillery, crossed the Sutlej-to be driven back again at the point of the bayonet in total rout and with frightful slaughter a few months after.

It is an ill-wind that blows nobody good, says the old proverb; and truly, this Seikh invasion was a great blessing to the news

papers of India, for the times were dreadfully dull, and people were beginning to be tired of incessant editorial squabbles. The newspapereditors and Golab were those most immediately benefited by the rash measures of the fanatical army.

We were expected, of course, by thousands of readers, to know all about the Seikhs and their religion forthwith. One correspondent wrote to ask why so many of them were called Sirdars and Singhs? another, who the Punches were, and whether they had anything to do with the individual whose treatment of his spouse Julia had often excited their indignation at home? A third asked the breadth of the Sutlej, and its depth at the place where the Seikhs had crossed? and whether there was any chance of their making their way to Calcutta? whilst a fourth informed us, in a mysterious manner, that the Seikhs in the Burra Bazar were thinking of rising and murdering all the English, requesting that we should take the first opportunity of acquainting Sir Henry Hardinge with the fact.

To answer all these questions, it was neces

sary we should read up all about the Seikhs immediately. We read about them all day, studying Malcolm, Murray, Prinsep, Osborne, Lawrence, Thornton and the Calcutta Review, wrote about them all the evening, dreamed about them all night. Surely, the newspapereditors, as a body, ought to have come forward unanimously for once, by way of curiosity, to thank them for affording new topics for discussion, just as all the old ones were becoming flat, stale, and unprofitable.

Like the rest, I read much about the Seikhs, and talked a great deal to one of them employed in the office-a peaceful-looking man enough-hence my gossip about them now.

CHAPTER V.

THE "EDUCATED" AND THE UNEDUCATED HINDU.

THE religions professed by the various inhabitants of the City of Palaces are as numerous and motley as the languages spoken and the garments worn. Of the various religious structures which arrest the eye in wandering through the town, the Christian churches are, certainly, the most imposing, the Mohammedan mosques are the most picturesque, from their innumerable minarets and Oriental domes, whilst the Hindu temples are massive, ugly, and extraordinary.

Hinduism, or Brahmanism, as it is variously styled, is, of course, the prevailing religious system in Calcutta, as in most other Indian towns. With all its absurd multitude

of deities, decent and obscene; with all its contradictory dogmas and ceremonies; with all its fine sentiment and fiendish practice, Brahmanism retains its hold, nominally at least, over some hundred millions of our race. A hundred millions of our race! a hundred millions of human beings! we talk glibly of such numbers when we come to speak of the swarming hives of Asiatic life, of the densely populated plains of China or of India, but it is no easy matter to conceive such multitudes, to form anything like an adequate conception of what a hundred millions of mankind really are. An aggregated mass of a hundred thousand is perhaps as great a multitude of mankind as we can form a distinct and definite idea of at once-an aggregated mass of a hundred thousand, such as thronged the aisles and galleries of the great Crystal Palace, in 1851, when every part of the building was full to overflowing-a thousand such masses, a thousand such congregations of a hundred thousand each, may serve to extend our ideas to the limits of a hundred millions; faintly, however, and dimly at best.