certainly is a sympathy between the motions of the Kandyan potentate and our European enemy Napoleon.  Both pitched into us in 1803, and we pitched into both in 1815.  That we call a coincidence.  How the row began was thus:  some incomprehensible intrigues had been proceeding for a time between the British governor or commandant, or whatever he might be, and the Kandyan prime minister.  This minister, who was a noticeable man, with large grey eyes, was called Pilame Tilawe.  We write his name after Mr Bennett:  but it is quite useless to study the pronunciation of it, seeing that he was hanged in 1812 (the year of Moscow)—­a fact for which we are thankful as often as we think of it. Pil. (surely Tilawe cannot be pronounced Garlic?) managed to get the king’s head into Chancery, and then fibbed him.  Why Major-General M’Dowall (then commanding our forces) should collude with Pil Garlic, is past our understanding.  But so it was. Pil. said that a certain prince, collaterally connected with the royal house, by name Mootto Sawme, who had fled to our protection, was, or might be thought to be, the lawful king.  Upon which the British general proclaimed him.  What followed is too shocking to dwell upon.  Scarcely had Mootto, apparently a good creature, been inaugurated, when Pil. proposed his deposition, to which General M’Dowall consented, and his own (Pil.’s) elevation to the throne.  It is like a dream to say, that this also was agreed to.  King Pil. the First, and, God be thanked! the last, was raised to the—­musnud, we suppose, or whatsoever they call it in Pil.’s jargon.  So far there was little but farce; now comes the tragedy.  A certain Major Davie was placed with a very inconsiderable garrison in the capital of the Kandyan empire, called by name Kandy.  This officer, whom Mr Bennett somewhere calls the “gallant,” capitulated upon terms, and had the inconceivable folly to imagine that a base Kandyan chief would think himself bound by these terms.  One of them was—­that he (Major Davie) and his troops should be allowed to retreat unmolested upon Columbo.  Accordingly, fully armed and accoutred, the British troops began their march.  At Wattepolowa a proposal was made to Major Davie, that Mootto Sawme (our protege and instrument) should be delivered up to the Kandyan tiger.  Oh! sorrow for the British name! he was delivered.  Soon after a second proposal came, that the British soldiers should deliver up their arms, and should march back to Kandy.  It makes an Englishman shiver with indignation to hear that even this demand was complied with.  Let us pause for one moment.  Wherefore is it, that in all similar cases, in this Ceylonese case, in Major Baillie’s Mysore case, in the Cabool case, uniformly the privates are wiser than their officers?  In a case of delicacy or doubtful policy, certainly the officers would have been the party best able to solve the difficulties; but in a case of elementary danger, where manners disappear, and great passions come upon the stage, strange it is that poor men, labouring men, men without education, always judge more truly of the crisis than men of high refinement.  But this was seen by Wordsworth—­thus spoke he, thirty-six years ago, of Germany, contrasted with the Tyrol:—­