BOOKS ON INDIA.* IN Warren Hastings's letters to his wife

the great statesman is represented as the perfect lover, whose ardour neither time nor distance can quench. They contain, of course, many references to the politics of India. Hastings reposed too great a confidence in his wife to withhold from her his opinions con- cerning the government of our vast dependency. But politics are not the main purpose of the letters, which are one and all inspired by a constant and profound affection.

Macaulay in his famous essay describes Warren Hastings' love as " not impetuous " and "patient of delay." Had be been able to read these letters, he would certainly have changed his view. To Hastings his "beloved Marian" was peerless always; he saw no spots upon the sun of her perfection ; even the eccentricities of manner and costume which convention deplored were in his eyes but an added charm. When she was absent from him his misery was indescribable

"In the heavy Interval which I have passed," thus he wrote on the day after she sailed from India in 1784, "I have had but too much Leisure to contemplate the Wretchedness of my Situation, and to regret (forgive me, my dearest Marian ; I cannot help it) that I ever consented to your leaving me. It appears to me like a precipitate Act of the grossest Folly ; for, what have I to look for but an Age of Separation, and if ever we are to meet again to carry home a Burthen of Infirmities, and a Mind soured perhaps with long, long and unabated Vexation ?"

Nor did his sorrow fade with the passing days. Six months later he is still hopeless of consolation, and the cry of the complaining lover is wrung from his heart :—

" My Marian," he writes, "I am miserable. Though I know it has been impossible that you should have written to me, yet my Disappointment has tortured me with Sensations (for I cannot call them Reflexions of the Mind) similar to those which could arise from the worst Suggestions of Evil. It seems as if I had totally lost you, or (God forgive me) that you had totally for- gotten me. I see you nightly ; but such is the Sickness of my Imagination, that you constantly appear to turn from me with Indifference ; nor can my Reason overcome the Gloom which these

Phantoms leave on my Mind How hard ! My Dreams vex me with unreal Evils, and the real Happiness of my past Life appears as a Dream, as a Dream passed long since, and the Traces almost effaced."

But at the first news of her all his past doubts, and the gloom which so long overspread his imagination, are dissipated. " I am already happy," says he, " for as God is my witness I

prefer your happiness to my own, I feel the measure of my present joy full, with the information which I have recently received." It is not poetical, perhaps, but it is the essence of poetry, and it proves that even a statesman may think like a poet if only his emotion be sincere.

Nor did Warren Hastings's admiration of his wife ever decrease. " The dress of your mother surpassed in elegance and simplicity all that came within my observation," thus he wrote to Charles Imhoff, his stepson, in 1811, "and she was handsomer than many that were born thirty years ago, and have pretentious to beauty." It is pleasant to read these

letters of one whose public life was passed in storm and stress, and we are grateful to Mr. Grier for having reprinted them. His commentary is at once informing and enthusiastic. He has told us all there is to know about the friends and enemies of Hastings, and he has vindicated the good name of

his hero with knowledge and eloquence.

In the history of India Clive and Warren Hastings stand upon the highest pinnacle of glory. It is upon the lower slopes that the Hearseys wander. Yet if it was not their destiny to perform services so lofty, they also have set an im- perishable name upon the roll of fate. For a hundred and fifty years they have worked and fought for the Empire, and so loyal have they remained to the country of their adoption, that the family is still settled upon its Indian estates. Of them all, Hyder Young Hearsey is the most romantic. Born in India in 1782, he entered Saadat Ali Khan's service when he was a boy of sixteen, and a year later was appointed as a Cadet to one

* (1) The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife.. Introduced and Annotated by S. C. Grier. London ; W. Blackwood and Sons. 115e. net.]—(2) The Hearseys: Five Generations of an Anglo-Indian Fatudy. By Colonel Hugh Beane, D.S.O. Same publishers. (15s. net.]—(3) The High-Road of Empire: Water-Colour and Pen-and-Ink Sketches in India. By A. H. Hallam Murray. Lunch:in: Jahn Murray. Ras. neta

of General Perron's infantry regiments. In the Mahratta service he might have remained had not Perron, a French adventurer who had been a sailor before the mast, aimed at expelling the English from India. In alarm for his country- men, Hyder Hearsey changed masters, and gained little in the exchange, for, leaving Perron, he received a commission in the army of another aspirant to Empire, also a sailor before the mast, called Thomas. It was Thomas's ambition to conquer the Punjab, and had he not been a drunkard he might have had some chance of success. As it was, he fell an easy prey to the French, and Hearsey, after an attempt at founding a kingdom of his own, threw in his lot with the English. Even then be was but twenty years of age, and he had seen more fighting than falls to the lot of most soldiers. And the romance of his life was but just beginning. A few years later he married the Princess Zuhur-ul-Nissa, a daughter of one of the deposed Princes of Cambay, and the adopted daughter of the Emperor Akbar II. The marriage was, as Colonel Pearse says, "in all respects a most formal and binding ceremony," and both Hyder Hearsey and Colonel William Linnaeus Gardner, who married the sister of Zuhur-ul-Nissa, were recognised with honour in the Mohammedan world. We have not space to recount all Hyder Hearsey's adventures. It is enough to say that in 1812 he made a journey into Western Tibet with William Moorcroft, that three years later he was taken prisoner by the Gurkhas, that Bhurtpore was his last campaign, and that he retired from the Army at the age of forty-four, after almost thirty years of active service.

Hyder's kinsman, Sir John Hearsey, whose autobiography, here reprinted, covers some hundred and sixty pages, had a no less intrepid, if more conventional, career. We know not where a more direct and honest account of a Cadet's experiences in India can be found than in this fragment of autobiography. In those days they began early, and young Hearsey was no more than fourteen when he embarked in the Honourable East India Company's ship ' Sovereign,' bound for Calcutta. At twenty-one be was put in charge of Gardner's Horse, and his whole life was spent in arduous service. When the Mutiny broke out he was at Barrackpore, and no man in India could boast a longer or wider experience. He understood the Sepoys thoroughly; he knew how much the incident of the greased cartridges meant to them ; and he did his best, by holding a parade at Barrackpore and by addressing the Sepoys in their own language, to avert disaster. But in vain. Though he could not prevent the Mutiny, he took his part in the quelling of it, and, as Colonel Pearse says, " Calcutta should not forget her debt to his memory." It is such men as the Hearseys who founded and strengthened our Indian Empire, and Colonel Pearse has done very well indeed in raising this monument to their memory.

Warren Hastings and the Hearseys show us our Indian Empire in the making. Mr. Hallam Murray's entertaining volume shows us the Empire made. A pleasant mixture of guide-book and history, The High-Road of Empire gives both to eye and ear a vivid impression of the East. Mr. Murray, as he says, has not gone far afield. He has but described the familiar scenes. But be has described them with a sympathy and understanding which give his account a peculiar value. And if to turn from the adventures of the Hearseys to this placid itinerary is to pass from romance to reality, we cannot forget that it was due to the courage and devotion of such pioneers as they that the high-road of Empire lies open in peace and prosperity before us all.