and shirking care in the mountains; and Lord Canning and his advisers at Calcutta seem to have preferred to allow to take the initiative in their own way.  Generally throughout Northern India the common routine of affairs went on at the different stations, and the ill-feeling and insubordination among the Sepoys scarcely disturbed the established quiet and monotony of Anglo-Indian life.  But the storm was rising,—­and the following extracts from a letter, hitherto unpublished, written on the 30th of May, by an officer of great distinction, and now in high command before Delhi, will show the manner of its breaking.

“A fortnight ago no community in the world could have been living in greater security of life and property than ours.  Clouds there were that indicated to thoughtful minds a coming storm, and in the most dangerous quarter; but the actual outbreak was a matter of an hour, and has fallen on us like a judgment from Heaven,—­sudden, irresistible as yet, terrible in its effects, and still spreading from place to place.  I dare say you may have observed among the Indian news of late months, that here and there throughout the country mutinies of native regiments had been taking place.  They had, however, been isolated cases, and the government thought it did enough to check the spirit of disaffection by disbanding the corps involved.  The failure of the remedy was, however, complete, and, instead of having to deal now with mutinies of separate regiments, we stand face to face with a general mutiny of the Sepoy army of Bengal.  To those who have thought most deeply of the perils of the English empire in India this has always seemed the monster one.  It was thought to have been guarded against by the strong ties of mercenary interest that bound the army to the state, and there was, probably, but one class of feelings that would have been strong enough to have broken these ties,—­those, namely, of religious sympathy or prejudice.  The overt ground of the general mutiny was offence to caste feelings, given by the introduction into the army of certain cartridges said to have been prepared with hog’s lard and cow’s fat.  The men must bite off the ends of these cartridges; so the Mahometans are defiled by the unclean animal, and the Hindoos by the contact of the dead cow.  Of course the cartridges are not prepared as stated, and they form the mere handle for designing men to work with.  They are, I believe, equally innocent of lard and fat; but that a general dread of being Christianized has by some means or other been created is without doubt, though there is still much that is mysterious in the process by which it has been instilled into the Sepoy mind, and I question if the government itself has any accurate information on the subject.