in September of the same year, on the charge of having participated in a conspiracy against the English power.  The justice, as well as policy of this measure, was, however, strongly canvassed, and gave rise to repeated and violent debates in the Court of Proprietors.

    [2] The native servants of the Governor-General at Calcutta, on
    state occasions, wear splendid scarlet and gold caftans.—­See
    Bishop Heber’s Journal.

[3] The Khan nowhere exactly explains the surprise which he expresses, here and at other times, at the shouts of hurra!—­perhaps his ear was wounded by the resemblance of the sound to certain Hindustani epithets, by no means refined or complimentary.

This fancied metamorphosis of the sturdy beef-eaters with their partisans, whose costume has never been altered since the days of Henry VII., into Hindustani peons and chuprassees, seems to show that the enthusiasm of the Khan must have been considerably excited—­and after this cruel disappointment he dismisses the remainder of the procession in a few words.  To a native of India, indeed, accustomed to see every petty rajah or nawab holding a few square miles of territory as the tenant of the Company, surrounded on state occasions by a crowd of the picturesque irregular cavalry of the East, and with a Suwarree or cavalcade of led horses, gayly caparisoned elephants, flaunting banners, and martial music, the amount of military display in attendance on the Queen of Great Britain must naturally have appeared inconsiderable—­“The escort consisted of only some two hundred horsemen, but these were cased in steel and leather from head to foot, and their black horses were by far the finest I have yet seen in this country.  But though the multitudes of people were immense, yet the procession tell much short of what I had expected from the monarch of so great and powerful a nation!  I returned home, however, much gratified by the sights I had seen to-day.”

The sight of this ceremony naturally leads to a digression on the origin and constitution of the English parliament, and its division into the two houses of Lords and Commons.  The events leading to these institutions, and the antecedent civil wars between the king and the barons, in the reign of Henry III. and Edward I., are given by the Khan, on the whole, with great accuracy—­probably from the information of his English friends since the knowledge of the ancient history and institutions of the country, which he displays both here and in other parts of his narrative, can scarcely have been acquired through the medium of a native education in Hindustan.  The deductions which he draws, however, from this historical summary, are somewhat curious; since he assumes that the power of the crown, though limited in appearance by the concessions then made, and the legislative functions vested in parliament, was in truth only strengthened,