part of the degradation; for, once defiled, none but himself would touch the turban or the clothes. They became from that moment his own property; and, when dried, doubtless ornamented on galadays afterwards himself and his wife.

"Next came the sword. It was broken into a hundred pieces, by a sturdy blacksmith introduced for the purpose. The pistols came next. The son of Vulcan was about to smash them with his weighty hammer, when he thought of looking to see if they were loaded. They were loaded. He paused. The king observed the action, and suspected the cause.

"Are they loaded?' he asked vehemently.

"May the refuge of the world' look benevolently on his slave -the pistols are loaded,' was the blacksmith's reply.

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Yah, Hyder! but said I not well the man was a traitor of the worst stamp; how say you, gentlemen, now,' exclaimed his majesty, turning to us, was this an unpremeditated matter? You hear, the scoundrel's pistols are loaded?'

"It was but his duty as a general to have his pistols loaded to defend your majesty,' said the tutor firmly.

"Ha! say you so? then, by Allah, I shall see if others think that a part of his duty. Let the captain of the body-guard be called. I want him instantly.'

"The life of the unfortunate man hung again in the balance, to be decided by the slightest breath of air. We were cautioned not to intimate by look or sound any thing to the captain as he entered. We knew that he wished well to Buktar, as we did; and yet a word from him might now be the means of bringing down destruction on the accused! The captain entered, advancing towards the king with the usual salaam.

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'Captain,' said the king, 'was it the duty of Rajah Buktar Singh, that was-but rajah and singh no longer-to wear his pistols loaded or unloaded ?"

"A life hung most probably on the answer. We awaited it in breathless expectation. But the scene had been sufficient to inform the captain of the circumstances of the case;-the waiting blacksmith-the king's earnest manner-the pistols deposited on the table-our anxious countenances ;- and he gave his reply without hesitation.

"It is unquestionably the duty of the commander-in-chief and general of your majesty's forces to be prepared for any sudden danger that might assail your majesty. Their pistols would be useless unloaded.'

"Let them be fired off and broken up, and then scattered to the winds,' said the king, seeing that he was foiled again."

The same day Buktar Singh was put into a wild-beast cage, and sent off with his family. All his property that could be got at was confiscated, and he was speedily forgotten. The conclusion is too Oriental to be omitted. A year passed

by an independent sovereign, called, not "king," but " nawab." This, we suppose, about answered to the title of grand-duke, rejoiced in by sundry of the petty and nominally independent rulers of Germany. Having escaped from its fealty to the Great Mogul, Oude came under the manipulation of the English; and Warren Hastings exercised his ingenuity upon the women and dependents of the ruling family in such a manner as to supply some very telling items in the attacks of Burke and Sheridan.

By and by came Lord Wellesley, following in the steps of Sir John Shore, who, by talking, had prepared the way for his lordship to act; and quietly annexed one-half of the territory of Oude to the British presidency of Bengal. We don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of this characteristic proceeding. It certainly looks very like most of our other doings in India, and probably had about as much to be said for and against it as the rest of them. Then came another governor-general, Lord Hastings. He took the nawab's

money instead of any more land, and paid him with a strip of worthless territory and the title of "king." This certainly was amusing; but how on earth we had a right to make the man a "king" instead of a "nawab," nobody but those versed in the morals of our Eastern government can presume to decide. The end of it has been and is, that there is still a king in Oude, called the King of Oude; but that the kings of Oude hold their council in the City of London, and themselves profess allegiance to Queen Victoria. In short, Oude is a decaying specimen of Oriental semi-barbarism, where still linger the elements of that state of society which once made the rulers of India the mighty potentates they were; but which is going to the dogs as fast as it can, and where it is lucky for the miserable people that there exists close at hand so very respectable a body of robbers as ourselves to take them under our protection, and gradually make them entirely

our own.

The Private Life of an Eastern King is the record of what was seen at Lucknow, the capital of Oude, by an Englishman who held a post in the household of the late king, Nussir-u-Deen. What that post was, he does not exactly tell us, though he hints at it in the following paragraph, which enumerates the European members of the household:

"His tutor, then was one of the king's friends; his librarian was another; his portrait-painter was a third; the captain of his body-guard was a fourth; and last, but by no means least, his barber-his European barber-was a fifth. Of these five I was one."

Now, as he elsewhere gives us to understand that he was not the tutor and not the barber, he must either have been the librarian, the portrait-painter, or the captain of the bodyguard. He says in his preface that the principal European members of the king's household are still alive, and in England; and that if the truth of his statements is denied, he will give the names considered necessary to substantiate his narrative. We suppose, therefore, that we may accept the book as authentic; indeed, there is nothing in it which appears inconsistent with what is known from other sources of the strange, picturesque, magnificent, and detestable interior of Oriental despotic life.

Our author went first to Lucknow on his own personal affairs; not, he tells us, as an "adventurer," but in the routine of ordinary mercantile life. He found it a singular and unique city, especially in the universal practice of wearing arms at all times, even by the beggars, and in the general military tastes of the whole population. The ordinary beasts of burden were elephants; and altogether it was like the realisation of a dream after reading the Arabian Nights. His first sight of the king was quite in keeping with the true Oriental idea. The sovereign was sitting-not indeed crosslegged-but on a gilt or golden chair, splendidly dressed, and with his crown on his head. The next interview, a private one, showed the advance of Europeanism at Oude. The king was walking in his garden, talking English, and wearing a coat, waistcoat, and trowsers, and a London-made hat. The new-comer was graciously received, and afterwards proceeded to inspect the palace, which, amongst the usual splendours of Eastern mansions, contained a private dining-room, hardly differing from an English dining-room.

Of the European members of the household, the tutor's business was to teach the king English, for which he got 1500l. a-year. The lessons were theoretically once a day, and lasting half-an-hour. Practically they lasted ten minutes, and wound up by the monarch's protesting it was dry work, stretching himself, calling for wine, and pushing the books

away.

The history of the barber was truly Oriental. Originally he was a London hair-dresser's assistant; knowing, doubtless, about as much of Oude and its sovereign as of the biography of the wonderful long-haired savage whose form attests the virtues of the marvellous " Balm of Columbia." Having a soul above pomatum-pots, he went out to Calcutta as cabinboy; there he set up in his old line of business; got on, and took to trading up the river, to dispose of his goods. At

away, and the kingdom was in trouble through bad crops and endless disasters in the administration. The king suddenly determined to imitate the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, and went out incognito into the bazaars, to observe for himself. The talk of the dealers told him that every body attributed the present distress to the maladministration of Buktar's successor. Two months afterwards Buktar was in his old place at court, and fulfilling his old duties, as if nothing had happened. Such was the caprice of the king in the bloody way. The history of the London barber shows him in his character of a lover of degraded favourites.

"The barber was an extraordinary instance, of course, of a man obtaining and retaining the king's affection; although he could scarcely speak the language of the country, and the king could express himself in English but imperfectly.

"Of the title of nobility, the extensive authority in the palace, the monopoly of European supplies, showered upon the head of the favoured little man, I have already spoken. He was also head of the menagerie, a sort of park-ranger in fact. I was once witness, and only once, to the length of the monthly bills which he presented to his majesty.

"It was after tiffin, or lunch, when we usually retired from the palace until dinner-time at nine o'clock, that the favourite entered with a roll of paper in his hand. In India, long documents, legal and commercial, are usually written, not in books or on successive sheets, but on a long roll, strip being joined to strip for that purpose, and the whole rolled up like a map.

"Ha, khan!' said the king, observing him; the monthly bill, is it?'

"It is, your majesty,' was the smiling reply. "Come, out with it; let us see the extent. Unrol it, khan.' "The king was in a playful humour; and the barber was always in the same mood as the king. He held the end of the roll in his hand, and threw the rest along the floor, allowing it to unrol itself as it retreated. It reached to the other side of the long apartment,

a goodly array of items and figures, closely written too. The king wanted it measured. A measure was brought, and the bill was found to be four yards and a half long. I glanced at its amount; it was upwards of ninety thousand rupees, upwards of nine thousand pounds!

"The king looked also at the total.

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Larger than usual, khan,' said he, as he did so.

"Yes, your majesty, the plate, and the new elephants, &c. &c.' "Oh, it's all right, I know,' said the king, interrupting him;

' take it to the nawab, and tell him to pay it.'

"The signature was affixed, and the bill was paid.

"The khan is robbing your majesty,' said an influential courtier to the king some months afterwards; his bills are exorbitant.'

"If I choose to make the khan a rich man, is that any thing to you-to any of you? I know his bills are exorbitant; let them be it is my pleasure. He shall be rich.'”

so;

This man's end was neither the bowstring nor the scimitar, thanks to his being a European. He ruled the king more and more powerfully every year, by the usual means of flattering his foibles and fostering his vices, especially his drunkenness and his fondness for insulting his old uncles. At last his conduct became so outrageous, that the writer of this book, and one other of the Europeans of the household, much and disgracefully-in our opinion-as they had endured for the sake of their pay, could stand it no longer. The narratives of some of these freaks are positively disgusting, and the writer assures us-and we can well believe him-that many things that he witnessed could not possibly be put in print. However, at last he left the court. The barber went on flourishing for a time; but at length the English resident so energetically backed up the remonstrances of the disgusted natives, that the king sent away his favourite, who departed with, it was said, only 240,000l. The king himself was soon poisoned, and was succeeded by one of the uncles whom the barber and he had delighted to insult.

Here, then, we have a picture of the effects of that Mahometanism which our newspaper scribes, our M.Ps., and our politicians in general, are endeavouring to uphold upon the throne of Turkey. Can we wonder that almost every man of sense who knows any thing of Orientalism,―to say nothing of one's feelings as a Christian,-avows his hopes that the present war may end in the utter annihilation of the Turkish rule, and the speedy partition of Turkey among the European powers? And when men will not look at the question with this aim distinctly before them, can we wonder that they are lukewarm in upholding the present war; and, like Mr. Gladstone and his school, long for peace almost at any price? For ourselves, we have from the first considered that the real object of the war is the appropriation of Turkey by France, England, and Austria; and our chief fear is lest Russia should come in for a share of the spoils. But to those who have got up a fantastical enthusiasm for "Turkish independence," and who believe that Mahometanism can be what they offensively term "regenerated," we recommend the perusal of the amusing book before us, as an illustration of what may be looked for from a Mahometan sovereignty "protected and controlled by English influence."