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this application he had offered himself for active service in the Panjáb, an offer that was declined, and the two proposals rapidly following each other, seemed to the authorities somewhat inconsistent. But the fact was, and Outram was conscious of it, that the excitement of a campaign, or at least a large share of out-door occupation, was indispensable to his vigorous and fiery temperament, which pined and languished when too long deprived of its proper aliment. Of late years he had devoted himself almost exclusively to literary work, either official or polemical, relating to the lamentable Scind controversy with the Napiers, and he suffered the consequences in a debilitated frame and a slightly jaundiced mind. The sanitarium chosen for him was Egypt. He had been in that pleasant climate only four months, not nearly long enough to effect his restoration to health, when tidings of ill-omen from the Panjáb disturbed his rest, and called him back to what he had looked upon as the post of duty" of every "of officer who had eaten of the Company's salt." The news, however, of Gough's victory at Guzerat met him at Aden, and he saw no reason for proceeding further on his voyage. In retracing his way back to Suez he passed the Firuz bearing Sir Charles Napier, who had been created Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India during the short panic that existed in London upon the first intelligence of Chilianwala. Though auguring little advancement to his own interests from this appointment, Outram candidly confessed it was unavoidable under the circumstances. The remaining eight months of his furlough were spent in trips to various ports in the Levant, during which his shattered strength was somewhat repaired. He also occupied his leisure in writing a memoir on Egypt from a military and political point of view, the merits of which were afterwards fully recognised by the Government.

In May 1850 we find Outram back again at Baroda, busy in his self-imposed labour of cleansing that Augean stable of its filthy Khutput, and in championing the cause of one of his subordinates, whom he believed to be honest, against another whose conduct he thought justified a contrary opinion. Lord Falkland, at that time Governor of Bombay, did not approve of the line taken by Outram, and characterised his representations on the subject as "intemperate and indiscreet." The outcome of this divergence of opinion was that Outram submitted to the Government a " Report on the Popular Belief in Khutput," in which he attributed the existing evil to the leniency with which Government had treated those servants whose guilt had been established. It was dated October 31,1851, and early in December came an angry letter in reply requesting him to disembar

rass the Government of his services as Resident of Baroda. His leave-taking of the Gaikawar, had the outward show of amity, though there is little doubt Outram's life had been three times attempted by poison during his sojourn at this dangerous court.

We have not space to accompany him on his second visit to England in 1853, when he was chiefly occupied in urging his appeal against the official treatment of which he had been a victim, a cause in which we are happy to relate he proved finally and exceptionally triumphant. He returned to India armed with a special recommendation from the Court of Directors to Lord Dalhousie to employ him in some post equal to his former rank and eminent services. The Governor-General at once seized the opportunity which then offered itself of re-nominating him as Resident at Baroda, thus proclaiming in the clearest and most public manner, his sense of the previous act of injustice. It was not until March 1854 that he was able to leave Calcutta for the scene of his former labours and peril, and though his stay was but brief, on this occasion he contrived by a policy of mingled sternness and consideration, to teach the Gaikawar that the Supreme Government must be obeyed in all things, especially in the dismissal of bad ministers.

In April 1854 Outram was called upon to proceed as Political Agent to Aden, which the war with Russia at that time rendered a most important military and political station. Though suffering from ill-health, not improbably the effects of another dose of poison administered during his late short residence at Baroda, the few months he remained at Aden were marked by the same zeal and ability in organizing the affairs of Government, and providing for the comfort of the garrison in that vile climate, as marked his presence wherever his masters thought fit to send him.

At last, Outram was destined to receive a fitting reward for his long and manifold services. We quote from the letter to his mother announcing the intelligence and his own first impulse upon receiving it :-"Lord Dalhousie has selected me for the highest political office in India. You can now, therefore, have no scruple to receive from me whatever may be necessary to your comfort. I formerly said £500 a year, but I can well afford much more than that, if you could but be prevailed upon to expend it. I must now assume the privilege of insisting on your keeping a maid and a carriage." The reader will not forget the letter written by him to the same person thirty years before. The battered and ill-used veteran's heart beat as warmly and as fondly as did that of the subaltern of twenty. Henceforth Outram's biography is best studied in the history of England's

greatest dependency. His every act is stamped in indelible letters in the narrative of the recovery of India, and ignorant indeed will be the person who does not make himself first acquainted with the brilliant public career of this wise, unselfish, fame-loving, dishonour-hating Paladin of the East.

We have hitherto given a summarised record of an interesting and faithful biography, but for the most important passages of Outram's life, viz., those which distinguished the years 1855-58, we take it that a skeleton memoir would only be repeating what every body knows, and for ampler details we can but advise the reader to consult Sir F. Goldsmid's second volume in which everything is said and well said, calculated to bring into relief the character and achievements of his hero in that gloomy but glorious period of our trial.

D

ART. II.-INDIAN PORTABLE ANTIQUITIES.

HRENOLOGISTS tell us that veneration is, like every other

Pinherent gift, capable of cultivation. In this country, the

whole of which is venerable by reason of its "hoar antiquity," we, as a rule, see little to command our esteem, much less to create in our minds a feeling bordering on veneration. The old places do not come in one's every-day work. Ruins are of no use, except to provide ballast for the railway or bricks for the bungalow. In far off, weird places, the haunts of tigers, hyenas, owls and snakes, we read there are old temples which were erected thousands of years ago and filled with worshippers who adored one God alone. The outcome of all this is not very encouraging Dirty fuqirs, besmeared bodies, brahmin worship, and the apotheosis of filth in general. As a consequence, there are but few of the foreign residents of India who "go in" for its antiquities. Few, however, as are the foreign antiquarians of India, they are an army as compared with the small company the teeming millions of India have produced. If, by chance, one should stumble, in a shooting excursion, on an old place, tradition, with its thousands of accumulations, gives us so many manifest improbabilities that the mind revolts from them and rejects them. In most cases inscriptions in an unknown character arrest the attention, but only add to the mystery. Inscriptions require time to decipher them, and learning to unravel them. The first few have to spare, and of the second, as a rule, fewer have the particular branch required. But not only are inscriptions hard, the whole surroundings of the object of interest are probably equally filled with difficulties. The building may be overgrown with briars and thorns; the tank filled with mud, the walls shaky, the ruins infested with suakes, scorpions and centipedes the foundations may not be visible. thousand and one repulsive objects may tend to stop all further desire to enquire into the matter, and the whole thing is left alone and forgotten. The Government archæologist may examine it and draw plans of it and report on it. But to the general run of Anglo-Indians and Natives the place will remain much the same, unknown and uncared-for and unvisited. Still, however, every Briton seems to have a vein of the Vandal spirit running in him. Should there be anything portable or breakable, he will have ita head, or arm, or leg, or ornament,-a leaf, or flower, or piece of tracery; a precious stone, a bit of mosaic work. No matter how

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much the whole may be damaged by the extraction of one part, his desire to possess "a piece of the antique" as he calls it, rivals his powers of destruction, and he quietly appropriates it. When he goes home to England, he will show it to all his admiring friends; and before he goes home, it will serve as an object of curiosity to amuse friends in India and casual visitors. The stolen goods will probably be put forward on all occasions. Now and then some" interpreter of India" will come across it and explain the meaning of every portion of it. Should there be an inscription on it, he will decipher it, and even afterwards the relic will possess an additional interest from the fact that it has undergone the scrutiny of the learned and been explained. Thus the Vandal in us may often supply pabulum to a MaxMuller or a General Cunningham. More than this, it may serve to create an interest in India and its antiquities in the minds of those who are in training for India's future governors. Certainly, an image in a drawing room or in one's study can be handled freely and examined carefully; and if we have its history and its explanation, or its interpretation, there is no doubt that it is of more use than if it were stuck in some dusty corner of a museum, where it would have a ticket on it, which would, probably, refer to a manuscript catalogue which had never been completed, and therefore never published. In England such relics are handed round at missionary meeetings, and they are all-powerful in the creation of funds. In India they are often regarded with contempt by the ignorant, and the well-informed are too much engrossed in the inscriptions in figures to be found opposite their own and their rivals' names in the Civil and Military Quarterly lists to take any notice of a voiceless stone.

Of course, the place for all the many things which antiquity has bequeathed to us is the museum,-the public museum of the country. But the museum must be worthy of the trust committed to its charge The museum must be something more than a store of curiosities, and a great deal more than a show room. In India museums are as yet unorganized, and form no part of the plan for the education of the people. It is almost impossible for every educational institution to have a full museum. But when our higher schools and universities begin to teach what are called at home the sciences, the students will cer tainly desire to see the things described. Thus in geology, entomology, icthyology, ornithology, botany, &c., no educational institution has store room even for the number of specimens required. But the provincial museum ought to have not only store room, but that room filled with arranged specimens. The museum buildings are all built on a wrong principle. There

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