The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-14 00:00:00

~~

thing in ancient history can rival it in interest, strangeness,
and picturesqueness, and there is, perhaps, nothing so
strange about it as that —with an origin so mean and aims
so immoral as its aims were during the first century of its
existence—it should have attracted to its service such a
large number of able and upright men. No service has
been able to boast a greater number of men who did great
things for love of their work, and without hope of fame or
even of any recognition of it in the world in which they
wore born and hoped to die; for most of the Indian offi-
cers' exploits, whether in civilising or educating or fighting
or ruling, were performed in a distant and barbarousregion,
in which few but their own connections felt any inte-
rest. Now and then a striking incident, like the
Afghan or Sikh wars, or the mutiny, brought the
actors into the view of the Western world ; but it Wa tl
only at these rare intervals that it learnt how man Y
great soldiers and administrators, and, what is better, how
many good and pure men, the East India Company had
enrolled under its flag. Mr. Kayo wrote brief but interest-
big memoirs of a dozen of them for "Good Words," 3
popular English religious magazine, and has since revised
and extended his sketches and collected them in the two
portly volumes before us. We do not well know on what
principle he has made his selection of his heroes, but they
represent nearly every kind of distinction which has boeu
achieved in the company's service : Lord Cornwallis, se
unfortunate in this country, but everywhere an honest
gentleman ; Sir John Malcolm, the prince of Indian
politicians—the "Boy Malcolm," as he was called, owing
to the flow of animal spirits and the love of athletic
sports, which ho preserved during his whole life ; Mount-
stuart Elphinstone, of the civil service, who rode in his
youth beside Wellington at Assaye, and was perhaps the
first of the great race of administrators of whom the
company has since had so many ; Henry Marlyn,
one of its chaplains, whose piety, devotion, and ter-
' rible sufferings in the discha:ge of his duty en-
title him to a place beside Brainerd and Xavier ; Alex-
ander Burnes and Conolly, the great explorers of Central
Asia; Sir Henry Lawrence, the hero of Lucknow, whose
death was one of the noblest and most affecting scenes of
the mutiny ; and Nicholson, by far the foremost soldier
of the Indian army, and in many ways one of the most
remarkable of modern times ; the only man of our day who
could boast of having been worshipped as a god, and who,
in an earlier age and a less settled society, might have
founded a dynasty and built up an empire. The whole
twelve, too, were men of the middle classes, one or two of
almost humble origin, and they are drawn from England,
Ireland, and Scotland. The leading civilian-explorers,
Malcolm, Elphinstone, Burnes, are Scotchmen ; only one
of the distinguished soldiers, Neill, coming from that part
of the kingdom. Henry Martyn, the missionary, was all
Englishman, and some time a fellow of St. John's College,
Cambridge. Pottinger, Lawrence, and Nicholson were
Irishmen—Nicholson's being, perhaps, the greatest name
of all ; his fall in the streets of Delhi while urging a
faltering column to advance extinguishing fairer hopes
than any other officer in the British service has 0-
cited during the last fifty years. Ha was the son of
a Dublin doctor, was brought up by a widowed mother,
and with but little help from fortune made his way to the
front rank of Indian soldiers and administrators, and was
at the time of his untimely death recognised by the whole
army as perhaps the greatest character and the only real
military genius the struggle had brought to light.
This is the Round Table's opinion of the Toma-
hawk :—" Much has been said in dispraise of the Tomahawk,
and the Savage Club—the somewhat jovial institution
which vouchsafed poor Artemus Ward such a good time
as hurried him into eternity—has considered it due to its
respectability to publicly disclaim its rumoured connection
with it. Nevertheless, in the first number of the Toma-
hawk which we have seen (that for October 5), we look
in vain for anything to justify its proscription. It car-
taiuly does not attempt to stifle social delinquencies with
rose-water,• and its satire is scathing and keen, handling
without gloves things which Punch and Fun discreetly
avoid. For instance, its cartoon—covering two pages and
printed in tint—represents the poetised Indian of Cooper
and Hiawatha drawing back a curtain and disclosing
tableaux, to which he points with a fine moral exultation,
of certain of the blackguardisms by which Englishmen
have been distinguishing themselves on the Continent:
the legend being, " Why we aro so respected in France'
The assemblage which has recently departed from Lam-
beth it rechristens the Pan-Anglicaunot Synod, and style!
it a "flash in the pan." As the most suitable testimonial
—" philsopher's stone"—to Mr. Tupper, it suggests!'
feeble-minded asylum, to be called Tupper Hall, and 'c
bear over its entrance the inscription, "Si momentum
quanis circumspice !"