diately within the walls, until he reached the Lahore Gate, and effected a junction with the column under Colonel Reid: for as yet no intelligence of his failure had been received. The enemy were unprepared for this manœuvre, and the rampart road for some distance was undefended. At length, at the Cabul Gate, in a sudden turning, our troops came upon some guns drawn up behind a musket-proof breastwork. The houses on both sides were strongly held. The grape-shot and musketry swept through the advancing column. Taken by surprise, confused, crowded, and unable to return the fire with any effect, the men began to fall back rather hurriedly. At this moment Nicholson sprang forward, and, waving his sword in the air, called on his men to follow. A shot from an adjoining house pierced his chest, and he fell mortally wounded. That night we held the city from the Cabul Gate to the College Gardens, and the great news was carried by the telegraph to all the stations in the Punjab, removing a heavy burden of suspense and anxiety from every heart. But together with that news came the mournful intelligence that Nicholson was not expected to live. Brilliant as was the part he had played in the great drama which had been acting during the past few months on Indian soil, there were none but felt that these acts of his were but "earnest of the things that he would do." The stern, dauntless courage of the man, his skill, resolution, and marvellous promptitude, had turned all eyes upon him as a tower of strength. Every one knew, that, on his arrival in camp, Delhi would be taken by some means or other; every one knew that he would assume the post of danger; and there was a widespread presentiment that he would perish in the accomplishment of his mission,- a presentiment but too true. Day after day the telegraph flashed up the report of his condition. For nine days he lingered, and then died, on the 23d of September, at the early age of thirty-five. Early in that year Lord Canning had inquired of Sir Herbert Edwardes his opinion of Colonel Nicholson's character as a public servant. After eulogizing his many noble qualities, Sir Herbert concluded with these words, destined to be prophetic: "If ever there is a desperate deed to be done in India, John Nicholson is the man to do it." The deed had been done, the hero had fallen, but, as Sir John Lawrence truly said, "he had left behind him a name which could never be forgotten in the Punjab." No advance was made on the 15th. In fact, no advance was possible. The rebels had been associated with English soldiers for too long a time not to have discovered their special weakness. Wherever the troops turned, their eyes lighted upon innumerable bottles of beer, brandy, and wine. These the sagacious Sepoy had taken from the merchants' stores in the city, and scattered about in the most liberal and tempting profusion. Maddened with heat and thirst, and even in their calmest moments not indisposed to strong liquors, the English troops may be said to have thrown themselves en masse upon this attractive foe, and were very soon rendered as unable to fight, at least for a time, as the bullets of the rebels could have made them. There is little doubt, that, could the enemy have got up their courage sufficiently, and attacked us in force on the 15th, we should have been unable to hold the positions we had so hardly won. So complete, indeed, was the demoralization of the force, that the question of evacuating the city was seriously entertained, and only the energetic remonstrances of the wounded Nicholson preserved the army from this ruinous and disgraceful step. By the 16th the danger had passed. The enemy had been too severely punished on the day of the assault to venture an attack, fatigue parties had been told off to destroy the liquor, and order and discipline had been in a great measure restored. The resistance was no longer of the stern and relentless character which marked the first day's fighting. The streets, too, had been sufficiently cleared to admit of the passage of artillery, and every fortified building was in consequence subjected to a bombardment which rapidly emptied it of defenders. All through the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, steady progress was made, General Wilson being careful not to risk his men's lives unnecessarily, and rightly preferring a somewhat slow advance, which preserved his gallant little army from further losses. At length, on a Sunday morning, the 20th of September, the English flag once more floated over the king's palace, and "treason lay stabbed in her best guarded lair." Thus ended the memorable siege of Delhi. The garrison had never been less than 20,000 men; latter above 30,000. The besieging force had neve men; in August it numbered but 3,050, a were on daily duty. During the whole sie fallen, exclusive of those who succumbed to the 14th of September alone almost one thir force swelled the list of killed and wounded speak more eloquently than any language we is there needed any comment of ours. The ica, be they of the North or South, wh world such signal examples of courage a need no help to estimate aright the constan the little army that held the ridge before De ART. IX. The Spanish Gypsy. A Poem. Boston Ticknor and Fields. 1868. I KNOW not whether George Eliot has any she should have any; but if perchance s agine them to have hailed the announceme her pen as a piece of particularly good news I fancy them saying, "this sadly overrated all the weakness that is in her; now she will we have all along affirmed her to be, not ing genius of the first order, knowing her I ing them, and content to leave well enoug showy rhetorician, possessed and prompted spirit of truth, but by an insatiable longing f pose Mr. Tennyson were to come out with : George Sand were to produce a tragedy in F The reader will agree with me, that these tions; yet the world has seen stranger thin ciled to them. Nevertheless, with the best our illustrious novelist, it is easy to put ou of these hypothetical detractors. No one, as Eliot could mar George Eliot's reputation; but there was room for the fear that she might do it. This reputation was essentially prose-built, and in the attempt to insert a figment of verse of the magnitude of "The Spanish Gypsy," it was quite possible that she might injure its fair proportions. In consulting her past works, for approval of their hopes and their fears, I think both her friends and her foes would have found sufficient ground for their arguments. Of all our English prose-writers of the present day, I think I may say, that, as a writer simply, a mistress of style, I have been very near preferring the author of "Silas Marner" and of "Romola," -the author, too, of "Felix Holt." The motive of my great regard for her style I take to have been that I fancied it such perfect solid prose. Brilliant and lax as it was in tissue, it seemed to contain very few of the silken threads of poetry; it lay on the ground like a carpet, instead of floating in the air like a banner. If my impression was correct, "The Spanish Gypsy" is not a genuine poem. And yet, looking over the author's novels in memory, looking them over in the light of her unexpected assumption of the poetical function, I find it hard at times not to mistrust my impression. I like George Eliot well enough, in fact, to admit, for the time, that I might have been in the wrong. If I had liked her less, if I had rated lower the quality of her prose, I should have estimated coldly the possibilities of her verse. Of course, therefore, if, as I am told many persons do in England, who consider carpenters and weavers and millers' daughters no legitimate subject for reputable fiction, I had denied her novels any qualities at all, I should have made haste, on reading the announcement of her poem, to speak of her as the world speaks of a lady, who, having reached a comfortable middle age, with her shoulders decently covered," for reasons deep below the reach of thought," (to quote our author,) begins to go out to dinner in a lownecked dress" of the period," and say in fine, in three words, that she was going to make a fool of herself. But here, meanwhile, is the book before me, to arrest all this a priori argumentation. Time enough has elapsed since its appearance for most readers to have uttered their opinions, and for the general verdict of criticism to have been formed. ! In looking over several of the published reviews, I am struck with the fact that those immediately issued are full of the warmest delight and approval, and that, as the work ceases to be a novelty, objections, exceptions, and protests multiply. This is quite logical. Not only does it take a much longer time than the reviewer on a weekly journal has at his command to properly appreciate a work of the importance of "The Spanish Gypsy," but the poem was actually much more of a poem than was to be expected. The foremost feeling of many readers must have been - it was certainly my own- - that we had hitherto only half known George Eliot. Adding this dazzling new half to the old one, readers constructed for the moment a really splendid literary figure. But gradually the old half began to absorb the new, and to assimilate its virtues and failings, and critics finally remembered that the cleverest writer in the world is after all nothing and no one but himself. The most striking quality in "The Spanish Gypsy," on a first reading, I think, is its extraordinary rhetorical energy and elegance. The richness of the author's style in her novels gives but an inadequate idea of the splendid generosity of diction displayed in the poem. She is so much of a thinker and an observer that she draws very heavily on her powers of expression, and one may certainly say that they not only never fail her, but that verbal utterance almost always bestows upon her ideas a peculiar beauty and fulness, apart from their significance. The result produced in this manner, the reader will see, may come very near being poetry; it is assuredly eloquence. The faults in the present work are very seldom faults of weakness, except in so far as it is weak to lack an absolute mastery of one's powers; they arise rather from an excess of rhetorical energy, from a desire to attain to perfect fulness and roundness of utterance; they are faults of overstatement. It is by no means uncommon to find a really fine passage injured by the addition of a clause which dilutes the idea under pretence of completing it. The poem opens, for instance, with a description of "Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love (A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines) |