The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1844-09-10 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

AMAZON.—The most remarkable circumstance that perhaps ever occurred under a native government, was the arrival of a European lady, desiring and gaining military service under the Poonah government, by whom she was long known as " Jamal Khan," and highly reverenced. This lady was the wife of a respectable barrister in Madras. From some extraordinary combination of circumstances, or a peculiar character of mind, somewhat similar, perhaps, to that which led Lady Hester Stanhope to desire the title of Queen of Palmyra, Mrs. Hail took the command of a battalion in the .Nizana's service at Hyderabad, and, finding reason to dislike her position, came to Poonah, intending to take military service under the Peishwa ; but a brahmin whom she implicitly trusted, proving unworthy of her confidence, Mrs. Hall caused him to be seized and beaten, under which punishment he died ; and although her life was spared, in consideration of her being a woman and a stranger, she was incarcerated in one of the hill forts, near Poonah, until shortly before her death. She was handsome and courageous, and was dressed in the Moslem fashion,' with full trowsers, a flowing vest, having a Damascus sword, and a plumed helmet, and was well spoken of, and liked. I have never heard of her having taken the field, but she was, no doubt, fully capable of doing so, and would have perhaps been as useful in exciting the troops as Joan of Arc ; her sex and courage being well calculated to excite the superstitious reverence of the native soldiery.—Mrs. Poston*. ECCENTRICITY OF SELWY$.—Like all wits, he had some strange peculiarities, and one of the oddest fancies was a taste for witnessing executimis! He would go miles to see a man hanged, but to see him beheaded he would cross the seas, and submit to the greatest inconveniences and privations. His friends often made merry with this eccentric foible, and whenever a trial, or execution, or suicide of more than ordinary interest took place, never failed to give him the earliest information of it. When the first Lord Holland was on his death-bed, being told that Selwyn had come to inquire afer his health, he said—" The next time that gentleman callseshow him up. If Ii am alive, I shall be delighted to see him e and if I am dead, he will be delighted to see me !" The execution of the rebel lords in 1745 afforded him a rare treat, and he witnessed their decapitation en Tower-hill with feelings of the most philanthropic satisfaction. Some ladies taunting him with his inhumanity in attending to see Lord Lovatra head cut off, he replied—" Why, I made amends by going to the undertaker's to. see it sewn on again." When Damien was broken on the wheel, for attempting to assassinate Louis XV., Selwyn, who had journeyed to Paris for the express purpose of witnessing the entertainment, mingled, with the crowd in a plain undress and bob wig, when a French nobleman, imagining, from the deep interest which• he took in the scene, that he must be a hangman, addressed him as such. " No, no," replied Selwyn, " / have not the honour to be an executioner;: I' am merely an amateur !" Horace- Walpole, who knew him well, observes, in reference to the practice of site criminals dropping a handkerchief on the scaffold, as a, signal for the executioner to strike—" George Selwyn came to town the other day to have ae tooth drawn, and, true to his ruling. penchant, he told the man that he would' drop his handkerehief for the signal."—llentley's Miseeke