Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843

1

"Taille and the Gabelle." Sully thus describes these fertile sources of crime and misery:—"Taille, source principale d'abus et de vexations de toute espèce, sans sa repartition et sa perception. Il est bien à souhaiter, mais pas à espérer, qu'on change un jour en entier le fond de cette partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau avec la Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouvé de si bizarrement tyrannique que de faire acheter à un particulier, plus de sel qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de lui défendre encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop."

2

Ulysses.

3

Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes to the strife between Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has depicted, more strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for glory, and that mortal agony in defeat, which made the main secret of the prodigious energy of the Greek character? The poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him with the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.

4

Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

5

Cassandra.

6

Literally, "A judge (ein richter) was again upon the earth." The word substituted in the translation, is introduced in order to recall to the reader the sublime name given, not without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., "THE LIVING LAW."

7

This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the Son of Earth,—so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,—so the soul contends in vain with evil—the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy, (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring,) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.

8

Hermes.

9

War-horse.

10

Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own Academy, and our exhibitions in general, he would be startled at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of repose, succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the subject, history, landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds both in objects and colour. In established academies, the faults of genius are more readily adopted than their excellences; they are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples, works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and his "Hamlet"—they are greatly overloaded with the faults of superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate, and even in the multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by their grouping and management, he has preserved a seeming moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the wholeness, the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The story is told, and admirably—as Sir Joshua says, "at one blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the prince—there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the execution of the figure that considerably dignifies the story, and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it. The many groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way injure the simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast in not undue proportion, because that simplicity is preserved. Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,) and chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of repose, and a sunny repose, too, befitting the "Sleeping Beauty." Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty and danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and accessaries obtrude—there is too much lace and too little expression—and our painters of views follow the fashion most unaccountably—ornament is every where; we have not a town where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a turnpike road.

11

The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,

"Lie heavy on him, earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee."

12

A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton Bunny.

13

See Forster's Life of Cromwell.

14

Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has produced from its first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime; and several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.

15

Chapman's Homer, first book.

16

35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.

17

The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it appears to us that the native government was far too much interfered with—that the British envoy, the British officers employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army, stood too much between the Shah and his subjects—that we were forming a government which it would be impossible to work in our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which our interference could be dispensed with.

18

Affghan horse.

19

The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about seventy juzailchees or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers, who had been left in the town in charge of the wives and children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the cantonments by that gallant party, who fought their way from the heart of the town.

20

"I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me with the rest of the manuscript. I have not struck out the reference, because there is hope that it still exists, and may yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else from Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read his other communication, the account of the Envoy's murder.—EDITOR."

21

Affghan riflemen.

22

Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry; six companies 37th native infantry; 100 sappers; 2½ squadrons cavalry; one gun.

23

In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he enumerates six errors, which he says must present themselves to the most unpractised military eye. "The first, and perhaps the most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;" but he admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the Brigadier had waited for the second, he must have postponed the enterprise for a day. This would probably have been the more prudent course.

The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic in the village, to storm it at once in the dark; but it appears from his own account, that there were not more than forty men remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight, and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was Major Swayne's having missed the gate, a misfortune which was, certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in the dark.

The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a breastwork for the protection of the troops. This objection appears to be well founded.

The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to resist the distant fire of infantry, on ground over which no cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears to be so utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty of so manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to require further elucidation; but that the formation was unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.

Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was erroneous; and sixthly, that the retreat was too long deferred. Both these objections appear to be just.

24

Strait of Darkness.

25

See the articles "Persia, Affghanistan, and India," in Jan. 1839—"Khiva, Central Asia, and Cabul," in April 1840—"Results of our Affghan Conquests," in Aug. 1841—"Affghanistan and India," in July 1842.

26

It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of Dost Mohammed to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the gravamen of the charge against him, was ever really written, or at least with his concurrence.—Vide "Report of the Colonial Society on the Affghan War," p. 35.

27

The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown when we last referred to the subject, have been since ascertained. After the retreat of the English from Cabul, he remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders; but he was at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty and fidelity, (about the middle of April,) to quit the fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He had only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when his litter was fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in ambush by a Doorauni chief named Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate fate of a prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the fictions of romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in more tranquil times, to have given éclat to his reign. During his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a curious narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which appears in the 30th volume of the Asiatic Journal.

28

It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the fourth anniversary of Lord Auckland's "Declaration" of Oct. 1, 1838; and from the same place, Simla.

29

"The fieldworks believed to be described in the despatch as 'consisting of a succession of breastworks, improved by a ditch and abattis—the latter being filled with thorns,' turned out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and of corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most grossly misapplied.... A score or two of active men might have completed the work in a few days."—(Letter quoted in the Asiatic Journal, Sept., p. 107.) On whom the blame of these misrepresentations should be laid—whether on the officer who reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the despatch—does not very clearly appear: yet the political agent at Quettah was removed from his charge, for not having given notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which are now proved to have had no existence!

30

It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir William McNaghten is accused, on the authority of General Elphinstone's correspondence, of having meditated, on the occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the honour of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at Cabul may be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he certainly cannot be acquitted of having, by his wilful blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the tenor of his remarks on the letter addressed to him by Sir A. Burnes on the affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some time since in the Bombay Times, and afterwards in the Asiatic Journal for October and November last.

31

The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate detenus experienced from first to last at the hands of Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character of this chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as a monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct of the Affghan barbarians, it is worth while to refer to Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity in the dungeons of Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the Asiatic Journal, September, December, 1842.

32

The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics was shown on the conclusion of the treaty, in 1832, between Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous to the Shah's last unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their restoration, in case of his success, was an express stipulation.

33

The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of Candahar during the reign of his father, has accompanied General England to Hindostan, preferring, as he says, the life of a private gentleman under British protection to the perils of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second, Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose mother is said to be sister of Dost Mohammed,) we know nothing;—Futteh-Jung is the third, and was intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;—Seifdar-Jung, now at Candahar, is the youngest.

34

The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last, between the followers of the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the Chinese, is still in progress—and the latter are said to be on the point of following up their successes by an invasion of Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our mediation may be made available to terminate the contest.

35

Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was saved from the arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet Singh, which confined him to the other bank of the Sutlej; but it has never paid allegiance to the British Government. Its territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300 miles along the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great part of the surface consists of sandy desert.

36

So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes, when ascending the Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831, frequently heard it remarked, "Scinde is now gone, since the English have seen the river, which is the road to its conquest."

37

Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, "the citadel of Nussear Khan," by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,) is the principal city and fortress of the Brahooes or Eastern Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It had never been taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a successful resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;—but on November 13, 1839, it was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force under General Wiltshire, and the Khan Mihrab was slain sword in hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of his zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and recaptured by the son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who, though again expelled, continued to maintain himself with a few followers in the mountains, and at last effected an accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud. He has since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary fidelity; and as his fears of compulsory vassalage to the nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at an end, he appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian chief converted into a firm friend and ally.

38

By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all officers and soldiers, of whatever grade, who took part in the operations about Candahar, the defence of Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate inscriptions—a similar distinction having been previously conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. What is at present the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire, with its showy decorations of the first, second, and third classes, the last of which was so rightfully spurned by poor Dennie?

39

The following remarks of the Madras United Service Gazette, though intended to apply only to the Secunderabad disturbances, deserve general attention at present:—"We attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for their European officers to a diminished inclination for the service, the duties whereof have of late years increased in about the same proportion that its advantages have been reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than double the work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;... and the infantry sepoy's garrison guard-work has been for years most fatiguing at every station, from the numerical strength of the troops being quite inadequate to the duties.... These several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a distaste for the service, which has been augmented by the stagnant state of promotion, caused by the reductions in 1829, when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the cavalry, native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became supernumerary, thus effectually closing the door of promotion to the inferior grades for years to come. Hopeless of advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as careless of a service which no longer held out any prospect of promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline were not altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of corporal punishment; and from the promulgation of that ill-judged order may be dated the decided change for the worse which has taken place in the character of the native soldiery."

40

This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its misconduct in the battle of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost Mohammed, November 2, 1840.

41

The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose fidelity is now strongly suspected, assured the Resident, in his reply to the official communication of the capture of Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of his good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly increased that he was under the necessity of providing himself with a new wardrobe—his garments having become too strait for his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental bombast.