Thirty-eight Years in India. By William Tayler. Vol. I. (W.
H. Allen and Co.)—Mr. Tayler our readers will probably remember as Commissioner in Patna in the time of the Indian Mutiny. The reasons for his treatment by the authorities, a treatment which has every appearance of harshness and injustice, remain at present a mystery. Possibly we may find in this volume, which records his earlier ex- periences as a Civil servant in India (it extends for about nineteen years, beginning with 1829), the suggestion of a partial explanation. Mr. Tayler seems to have fallen out with people in authority more than the average number of times, we do not in the least pretend to judge whether he or they were wrong, but the fact of the falling- out remains,—and then he seems to possess a gift for caricature, ,a very dangerous faculty indeed. We cannot say that his sketches, as they are presented to us in this volume, have a perilously power- ful appearance, but we can easily imagine that they may have given great offence. Apart from this consideration, his autobiography— a certain garrulity, tending to undue lengthiness, being allowed for-- makes very good reading. Mr. Tayler is not reticent; he tells 'm- ahout his courtship, his family affairs, his official duties, his friend- ships, and his quarrels. Altogether, he gives us a lively picture of Indian society as it vrat(some forty or fifty years ago, years that have made no slight change in it. Here and there, too, we find materials for history, especially in the glimpses we get of what goes on behind the scenes.
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