majority which supported it in the Chambers was weakened and broken up; in the interior dissentions arose between two men equally eminent. Guizot retired, and only entered into hostility with the administration, when Molé became minister. The politics he disapproves of are severely judged; he describes them thus:"A political system without a principle or insignia, all expedients and appearances, which wavering, always leans towards all sides, but never advances towards any real object; which foments and aggravates this uncertainty of minds, this effeminacy of hearts, this want of faith, consis tency, perseverance, energy; which are the disease of the nation and the weakness of power!"-and to strengthen power, Guizot threw himself into the coalition. Many thought that he failed in his object; it is certain that for a moment his cause was put in danger. Since the 12th May, Guizot has been neither in the ministry nor in the opposition. He has been himself, that is to say, receiving favourably all that agrees with his politics, and repelling all that is not in harmony with them. Guizot may be considered under four aspects as a private individual, as a writer, as an historian, as an orator and politician. His virtue as a private person has never been questioned. One of his most violent political enemies says:-"From the high morality of his sentiments and his life, M. Guizot is worthy of the esteem of all good men." Guizot's style may be known among a thousand. The pen in his hand, he takes a firm and decided tone, goes straight to his object, and is not exempt from a sort of stiffness and affectation of abstract terminology; the form in which he clothes his thought is sometimes obscure; but the thought itself is always clear and brilliant. As an historian, Guizot has rendered eminent service; every one knows that he, together with Thierry, Sismondi, and De Barante, is a chief of the modern historical school, which has taught us not to measure the men and actions of past times by the standards and ideas of to-day. In oratory Guizot uses a quiet but noble gesticulation. Small and slight in stature, his appearance is dignified and proud; his voice is imposing and clear; his language, calm or vehement, is always pure and correct, it has more energy than grace, it moves less than it persuades; in fine, when he mounts the tribune among friends and enemies, not a sound is heard to distract attention, or break the universal silence. The political versatility of Guizot has often been spoken of; his abrupt changes, his former opposition, his present servility; but from his words, his actions, his writings in all epochs, there remains the conviction that, except in some few trifling instances, his general distinguishing character, as a statesman, is tenacity and perseverance. In a word, as Guizot showed himself in the ministry under Decazes, or in the opposition during the Villèle administration, such he appears to-day. There has been, and always shall be, a struggle between two opposed principles, power and liberty. In presence of these two hostile elements, which the highest intellects of all ages have tried to conciliate, no man remains perfectly cold-perfectly impartial; political truths act on the heart as well as the head, and no one can avoid an involuntary movement towards either, according to his nature or disposition; some are ardent for liberty, others attracted by power; the tribune is for one, the place of minister for the other; the sentiment of independence belongs to the first, the instinct of authority to the latter. Now Guizot is essentially one of the last; inclined towards reform, but authoritative by nature, and governmental by conviction, he looks at France of to-day, founded on two great victories of the principle of liberty, as drawn on to abuse its triumph; and of the two elements equally necessary to social life, the weaker is power. Taking this for granted, Guizot seeks to reestablish equilibrium between the two points of support of the edifice, giving to one what the other has in too large proportion, and combining this partition of forces in certain limits with his own political measures. If we read attentively the political pamphlets of Guizot, under the restoration, we discover readily, through his attacks against the agents of power, a real sympathy for power itself. The revolution of July perplexed him for a moment, but did not discourage him. After the 29th, when that principle, the object of his solicitude, was thrown down by the popular weight, you see him anxious to raise it little by little, to put it on its feet, to reanimate it by degrees, and then to push it boldly in the direction he wished to give it before its fall. In fine, what is Guizot? He is, above all, a partizan of power and government; but at the same time the most independent of men, bearing the yoke of the principles THE BOY ENTHUSIAST. Strange were his childhood's hours, for they had To contemplation's home, and lose the soul Heedless of boyhood's sports, its laughs or smiles; lends. Spirit of Nature! beautiful and wild! In that strange state-so still, and yet so rife I saw him kneeling by an old oak tree, His hands were clasped, and from his noble brow, The last, and loveliest of day, had thrown "Alas, I cried! And shall a flower like this, so sweet, so wild, And burd'ning usage, and the chilling sneer? I ceased-just then I heard a rustling sound Such was the burst that from that young one came Proceeding from the spot where he had knelt, And turning then my gaze, he passed me by, INDIA-HER OWN-AND ANOTHER'S. CHAPTER XII. THE FIRST MAHRATTA WAR. "THE CONFUSION NOW PREVAILING AMONG THE MAHRATTA POWERS CANNOT TERMINATE UNFAVOURABLY TO THE COMPANY; THE CONJUNCTURE APPEARS TO PRESENT THE MOST ADVANTAGEOUS OPPORTUNITY THAT HAS EVER OCCURRED, OF IMPROVING THE BRITISH INTERESTS IN THAT QUARTER OF INDIA."*-MARQUIS WELLESley. Before the middle of the 17th century | possession of its power for themselves; and the Mahrattas were unknown as a military a new system of domestic rule, not altogepower in India. They had previously ex- ther destitute of points of resemblance to isted as predatory tribes, destitute, like the that of Germany in the middle ages, graduArabs, of any settled place of abode. But ally arose out of the ruins of Mahometan the intolerance of Aurungzebe had spread dominion. disaffection among all classes of his Hindu subjects; and the Mahrattas, who were followers of Brahma, were but feebly resisted, when they first ventured to disturb the peace of the empire. Each malcontent rajah was glad to purchase their ready aid, in his quarrels with neighbouring chieftains, or in resisting the oppressions of the court of Delhi. The religious sympathy of the people pardoned their excesses, and garrulously spread their fame. Having been driven into arms by oppression, they were tempted to continue in the exercise of their new avocation by the weakness of their oppressors. They attacked the government, not the people; they appropriated the revenues of each province they overran, but they did not lay waste the country that had yielded it. + Sevajee, their principal leader, declared himself independent in 1646, and their progress to ascendancy was thenceforth uninterrupted, for more than a hundred and twenty years. Long before the English intruders had gained a territorial footing in the south, the Mahrattas had established themselves in the north and centre of Hindustan. The lineal heirs of Tamerlane were still permitted to wear the crest and robe of empire; but, politically, they had ceased to be. Their residence at Delhi, where men had during so many ages been accustomed to believe that sovereignty had its fountain head, was insisted upon; for the policy of the Mahrattas was directed not to the destruction of the empire, but to the obtaining Despatches, vol. 3. The great offices of state were made hereditary, and to each of the chieftain families to whom they were given, was conceded the peculiar possession of a section of the once undivided heritage of Delhi. To Scindiah, as one of the greatest of these functionaries, the most extensive portion fell; and by degrees his successors came to be regarded as the head of the federate state. The fruitful plains of Malwa were assigned to Holkar ; Berar was occupied by the family of Bhoonslah; the chief, whose title was that of Guickwar, had an equally independent though less extensive appanage; and the Paishwah ruled over a number of provinces only inferior in extent and opulence to those of Scindiah. But the habits and ideas of the Mahrattas were essentially inadequate to the sustaining of a settled form of government. Personal daring is of infinite value in times of revolution; but it is rather a dangerous quality, when prevalent among the military aristocracy of a permanent state. Restlessness, and the want of attachment to the arts of peace, are similar in their consequences; and the Mahratta chieftains, when they had no longer a common enemy to contend with, soon began to discover hereditary causes of quarrel among themselves. The desolating conflicts which ensued, gave exercise and vent to the passions which they inherited from the founders of their empire; but they were dignified by no popular merit, and accomplished no further purpose than the temporary aggrandizement of one province at the cost of another. Madhajee Scindiah, the ablest of his race, saw with Malcolm's Political History of Central India, grief the internal causes of national decay; vol. 1, chap. iii. VOL. III. NO. XVI, and though not perhaps without selfish aims, G he was capable of looking beyond the personal | and there is a royalty which is against nainterests of the day, and of scanning the ture; there is a homage which is worthy of wants and dangers of the time to come. He being paid by man unto his fellow man; strove to wean his troops from their Cossack and there is a homage which is a degradamode of warfare; and he was one of the first tion-infamy to both the giver and receiver. princes of the East, who, perceiving the im- And this is the difference, that the true is mense superiority of European discipline, yielded of its own free will, and cannot be attempted the organization of a force on si- extorted by any force or power; the false milar principles, as the best means of secu- is given from sordid fear, or yet more sordid rity against foreign invasion. He employed hope; and, without the power to enforce its a French officer, De Boigne, to command a concession, it cannot be had at all. The regular corps of infantry and artillery. His rule of the spirit of man over men of unequal efforts were equally directed to protect the spirit, comes not by observation, and can no cultivators of the soil, against the violence more be transferred to another, than the and exactions of their rajpoot superiors. identity wherein it deeply mirrors the whole He endeavoured to restore notions of the might and mystery of things around it and sanctity of property among the many, and above it, can be changed. The usurpation to lessen the power and importance of the of mere authority to bid and to compel, by turbulent chieftains. With the foresight of one clod over its fellow-clods, may be transa statesman, he perceived, what to others ferred through ages lineally from clod to seemed an idle dream of fear, the danger clod, until the last is broken. The one is of with which all Indian governments were the earth, fragile, temporary, sensual, unreal menaced by the encroaching spirit of the in its claim of rule; the other is an unexEnglish; and he knew that nothing but an tinguished ray of that immortal nature, man improved system of internal government, to- had, and forfeited, but shall have again. gether with the revival of a strong national Seldom falleth such a ray on one who ocfeeling throughout the Mahratta league, cupies, by inheritance, a throne; much more could stem the tide of aggression. Ideas of frequently it falls upon the lowly places of a common origin still lurked in the minds of this misruled world, as if to remind us how all classes of the community, and it required far have we strayed from the path of right but the cultivation of these emotions in time, and real rule. But sometimes too the born to raise up an impregnable barrier to con- monarch will rise superior to the ill fate that quest and denationalization. did its best to stifle him, with all that flattery and false worship that rocks the cradle of legitimacy; and, despite of all, the dwarf majesty of accident will shoot up to the stature of manhood, of genius, and of soulrule. But Madhajee was cut off ere his noble schemes for the regeneration of his country were matured, probably before their value or necessity were comprehended by those around him. Such is too frequently the fate of a truly great man. He cannot make others see with his eyes, even while they are glancing with the living light of intuitive and divining genius; much less when that light is quenched in the faithless and unreal grave. Fortunate is the spirit-ruler, if, while time and sense are left him, he can by any means win such confidence in the force, and wisdom, and selflessness of his nature, that ordinary men will take counsel from him, and work with him for their own good -walking by faith, and not by sight; for faith is the substance of things hoped for-the evidence of the things that are unseen. And this is true empire-the just and the heavenintended right divine; in everything the veriest opposite, and the keenest satire upon all the various counterfeits thereof, which are but clay kneaded with blood and tears, and burned into outer hardness in the oven of oppression, wherein there is no life nor lifegiving power, There is a royalty in nature, Such a man was Madhajee Scindiah; he was the man to save his country from the spoiler, for he saw its peril, and knew what men and nations are. But when he was called untimely from the helm, none saw or knew anything but what was palpably before them-nothing but what could be clutched or sold. Dowlut Rao Scindiah succeeded in due course to his father's sceptre; but his divining-rod was missing, and from his death never could be found. A few of his precepts were indeed remembered, and the French corps were still kept up at Gualior,† and the other states of the confederacy were prevailed upon to resort to similar precautions. But mutual jealousies, and the mean hopes of present gain, resumed their * Malcolm, vol. 1, chap. v. Gurwood's Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, vol. 1, p. 86, 87, |