And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an extract out of that great diary, the newspaper?  I read it but yesterday, and it has mingled with all my thoughts since then.  Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared following each other:—­

“Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been appointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Council of the Governor-General.”

“Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for Central India, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis.”

These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, were sisters’ sons.  In one of the stories by the present writer, a man is described tottering “up the steps of the ghaut,” having just parted with his child, whom he is despatching to England from India.  I wrote this, remembering in long, long distant days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta; and a day when, down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came two children, whose mothers remained on the shore.  One of those ladies was never to see her boy more; and he, too, is just dead in India, “of bronchitis, on the 29th October.”  We were first-cousins; had been little playmates and friends from the time of our birth; and the first house in London to which I was taken, was that of our aunt, the mother of his Honor the Member of Council.  His Honor was even then a gentleman of the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms.  We Indian children were consigned to a school of which our deluded parents had heard a favorable report, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so miserable that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night, and saying, “Pray God, I may dream of my mother!” Thence we went to a public school; and my cousin to Addiscombe and to India.

“For thirty-two years,” the paper says, “Sir Richmond Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the Government of India, and during that period but once visited England, for a few months and on public duty.  In his military capacity he saw much service, was present in eight general engagements, and was badly wounded in the last.  In 1840, when a young lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of rescuing from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of the Emperor of Russia; and, but two years later, greatly contributed to the happy recovery of our own prisoners from a similar fate in Cabul.  Throughout his career this officer was ever ready and zealous for the public service, and freely risked life and liberty in the discharge of his duties.  Lord Canning, to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear’s public services, had lately offered him the Chief Commissionership of Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to undertake, when death terminated his career.”