7.’G------’ appears to have been Robert Gregory C.B.

8.  The fiercely contested battle of Laswari was fought on November 1, 1803, between the British force under Lord Lake and the flower of Sindhia’s army, known as the ‘Deccan Invincibles’.  Sindhia’s troops lost about seven thousand killed and two thousand prisoners.  The British loss in killed and wounded amounted to more than eight hundred.  A medal to commemorate the victory was struck in London in 1851, and presented to the survivors.  Laswari is a village in the Alwar State, 128 miles south of Delhi.

9.  Bharatpur (Bhurtpore), in the Jat State of the same name, is thirty-four miles west of Agra.  In January and February, 1805, Lord Lake four times attempted to take it by assault, and each time was repulsed with heavy loss.  On January 18, 1826, Lord Combermere stormed the fortress.  The fortifications were then dismantled.  A large portion of the walls is now standing, and presents an imposing appearance.  They seem to have been repaired.  See post, Chapter 62.

10.  ’I will answer you by quoting what I have read somewhere or other—­in Dionysius Halicarn., I think—­that history is philosophy teaching by example’ (Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, Letter II, p. 14 of vol. viii of edition printed by T. Cadell, London, 1770).  The Greek words are. . . . . . . .

CHAPTER 18

Birds’ Nests—­Sports of Boyhood.

On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz.  Cultivation partial, and very bad; and population extremely scanty.  We passed close to a village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the beautiful nests of the sagacious ‘baya’ bird, or Indian yellow-hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed along, and could hardly help shaking it.  It cannot fail to strike a European as singular to see so many birds’ nests, situated close to a village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of heart as the children themselves enjoy.

In any part of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England.  No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it.  With us it is different—­to discover birds’ nests is one of the first modes in which a boy exercises his powers, and displays