state of society seems to have been somewhat singular.  Among its most conspicuous members is “Gopal, the celebrated robber, murderer, and smuggler, a tall athletic man about forty-two years of age, with a most hideous muddy eye, having the glare of hell itself.  It is said that he has always fifteen servants in stated pay, and can in a few hours command the services of three hundred armed and desperate men; and the strength and vigour of the Calpee police may be estimated by the fact, that he has been known to walk into the house of a rich merchant in the centre of the town, when he was surrounded by his servants and family; he has very coolly selected the gold bangles of his children, and silenced the trembling remonstrances of the Mahajun by threats of vengeance; nor is this a solitary instance.  When he murders, he is equally above all concealment; as in the recent case of a sepahee returning home with his savings, who was waylaid and murdered by our hero in open day.  He very coolly gave himself up, acknowledging that he had killed the sepahee, who had first assaulted him.  It was proved on the trial, that the sepahee was wholly unarmed, and he was condemned to be hung by the court of Hameerpore on his own confession, but released, from want of evidence, by the Sudder Court at Calcutta.  Their objection was excellent, though curious; that if his confession was taken, it must be taken altogether, and not that part only which could lead to his conviction.  He was released, and now walks about in his Sunday clothes, a living evidence of British tenderness.”

Gopal was not the only amiable character with whom the colonel became acquainted at Calpee, as he sought and obtained an interview with a famous Thug approver, who had retired from the active exercise of his profession, and was travelling the country in company with a party of police, denouncing his former associates to justice.  We cannot help suspecting, both from the traits recorded of him, and from the vicinity of Calpee to his former residence at Jalone, that this personage was no other than the celebrated Ameer Ali, whose adventures formed the ground of Captain Meadows Taylor’s well-known “Confessions of a Thug;” and as a pendant to the already published descriptions of him, we here quote the impression he made upon the colonel.  “I expected to see a great man, but at the first glance I saw that I was in the presence of a master.  The Thug was tall, active, and slenderly formed; his head was nearly oval; his eye most strongly resembled that of a cobra di capello; its dart was perfectly wild and maniacal, restless, brilliant, metallic, and concentrated.”  The colonel had a narrow escape from irretrievably affronting this eminent professor of murder, by unguardedly enquiring whether he was in any way cognizant of a trifling robbery by which the colonel himself had been a sufferer.  “No, sir!” he exclaimed with a look which might have frozen a less innocent querist; “murder,