THE LATEST WORK ON THE SIEGE OF DELHI.
Delhi, 1S57: the Siege, Assault, and Capture, as given in the Diary and Correspondence of the Late Colonel Keith Young, C.B., Judge-Adrocate-General, Bengal. Edited by General Sir Henry Wylie Norman and Mrs. Keith Young. (W. and R. Chambers.
Is. net.)—We learn from the prefatory "Memoir and Introduc- tion," written by General Norman, that when the Mutiny began Colonel Keith Young was Judge-Advocate-General of the Army of Bengal and in his fiftieth year. He had abilities of a high order, which were recognised by such good judges as Sir Charles Napier and Sir Bartle Frere, and he earned the confidence of all who served with him, including the general officers commanding before Delhi, whom he often attended in the field ; and he was highly valued by his various colleagues in the Army Staff. Hence Colonel Young, though he held no independent command, and met with few personal adventures, was in a position to know all that passed, as well in the field as behind the scenes. His impressions and reflections were recorded in a series of letters to his wife and to friends, and he kept a diary in which he made notes of each day's events during the siege. These letters, together with others relating to the Mutiny which he received from divers correspondents, are reproduced in the book. Indeed, they are the book, for, except the short "Memoir," an "Explanatory Note," and a "Condensed Diary" of the siege, there is nothing else. Nevertheless it is a big book, containing probably a hundred and twenty thousand words, a considerable proportion of which might with advantage have been deleted. For there are many irrelevances and some trivialities, as, for instance, a letter from Sir Edward Campbell to Mrs. Keith Young set forth in full under a separate heading. "The inclosed is from Shute. The dal: left apparently very early in the morn- ing, which accounts for your getting no letters." And there are such extracts from the diary as this: "Dine last night at the Artillery—pleasant party and good dinner. Have my bed there and sleep ; but there was such a row I made little of it till after eleven. Reach Raie soon after daybreak—find the leading column there Several men hanged and shot." Moreover, the extracts from the diary are sandwiched between letters with which they have no connection, and as there is neither a running narrative nor an explanatory text, the reader, unless he be already well up in the history of the siege, is more likely to be confused than enlightened. On the other hand, Colonel Keith Young's letters are agreeably written, and often very interesting; and Mrs. Young's account of the outbreak, given in a letter to her sister, is as vivid a narrative as the Mutiny has produced. But as a whole Delhi is rather a ramoire pour servir or a work of reference than a popular history of a great event. Yet, though "caviare to the general," the letters, as Sir Henry Norman remarks in the introduction, "will be read with interest, not only by survivors of the period of the Mutiny, but by others who have been connected with India, either personally or through relatives, or who take an interest, through their large-hearted and patriotic sympathy with their countrymen and countrywomen, in the most critical period of our Indian history." It remains only to add that the illustrations and maps are all that could be desired, and that there is an excellent index.
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