The inference to be drawn from these sentiments of the people at large, is now known in Europe; and some persons of Bengal, to the number of eight or ten, may have at that time suspected the disaffection of the natives; but I had opportunities of knowing it several years before; when about the year 1778, I made application to Mr. B. for his interest, as I intended to obtain the office of Provincial Fodjdar of Moorshoodabad. In enumerating some of the qualifications necessary for a man in that station, I chanced to mention an open table; and I added, that as the emoluments of such an office could not afford the expense, I would endeavour to find it in my own private purse, as a political engine of great use. I was going on with my harangue, whilst we were walking towards the tea-table, through a dark hall, when at the word political engine, I observed the gentleman turn his head to the right, and endeavour, but in vain, to stifle a burst of laughter; the Ladies in the room pre­vented my descanting any more upon that new political engine. Surely a man of so much genius and knowledge, was not to be informed, that in a populous capital, the ambassador, who, being abstemious himself, can give entertainments oftenest, is always the best informed. By the same rule, an open table for a dozen of persons, and an exhibition of fine dancers once a week, ought to be two important parts of the politics of a Fodjdar of such a city in time of war: these will attract successively all the company good or bad in the city: men naturally unbend their minds and fall off their guard in such assemblies of pleasure; and if he be an intelligent man himself, and by all means an abstemious one, and also heartily mixes in conversation, he will learn more in one week’s time with an open table, than fifty harcaras or spies could tell him in six months. Mr. B. seated at the top of a towering lofty tree, could descry from afar the elephants and rhinoceroses that came to tear off some branches of the tree, and the tigers and bears that wanted to climb up to it: In the humble station in which I moved, close to the trunk, I was too low to discover any thing of those argument; and a recollection partly pleasing, and partly painful, never fails to inform me internally, that after an intercourse of five-and-twenty years, those strangers are become my only country­men; that yourself, honorable Sir, are my oldest acquaintance amongst those countrymen, and, moreover, my partial and mumi­ficent patron; and that, if instead of shining in the world as the Chatham of the East, it had been your fate to have moved only in an humble station, you would have been my bosom-friend.

It has been a standing rule hitherto with me, honorable Sir, never to take a personal leave of my friends. But many are the alterations occasioned in me by your departure; and it is not without a sense of jealousy, I see Colonel Martine* hurrying down to bid you his last farewell. Twice have I attempted to return to Europe, and twice have I been obliged to come back after having lost every thing; so that ten years ago, I had sat myself down with a resolution to listen to the voice of Providence, and to end my days in India. But India is become a dreary waste for me now; and I am now preparing to quit it for the third time, were it but to get rid of that emptyness which everywhere sur­rounds me.

I have known your person, honorable Sir, these five-and-twenty years. The life of dispute and contention to which you have been doomed this longwhile, cannot have altered the original sensibility of your heart. Receive then, honorable Sir, an offering worthy of it. This letter, this artless, disorderly letter has been in many a spot bedewed by the tear of affection, and more than once interrupted by the sob of regret, and the scream of deep-felt woe.

man that tells his friend, “get upon my Horse, and fly; I will stand alone at the door of your tent and fight myself out against these armed men that are coming for you: I will be cut down at last undoubtedly; but you shall gain half an hour’s distance; and this will save you, farewell”...the man does as he says, and is cut down; but his friend distances his pursuers and escapes unhurt. What shall we say of a woman, a delicate Princess of the imperial blood, who possibly had never heard the report of a musquet? her quarters, somewhat asunder from the main army, are attacked by a superior force: the troops placed for her guard are going to be overpowered: in that critical, trying moment, this delicate Princess turns out an heroine at once; she flings away her mask and veil, gets upon a war-elephant, pushes on to the enemies, kills and wounds people to the right and left with her arrows, and repeatedly cries aloud: “If you behave like women, I declare to you that women shall behave like men.”

Look yonder at that inactive, incapable, effeminate Coran-Writer; he is at this moment mightily taken up with admiring flights of pigeons; and he has been admiring them these twenty years past some thousands of times. Would you suspect him to-day to be the self-identical man, who contrived and executed that heroical retreat of his, through the middle of ten thousand men that had broken into his house, and were actually firing at him from the top of the walls? he contrives and executes that retreat through a whole army, himself the sixteenth: he executes it, like a rough determined Grenadier, killing and wounding five or six men to the right and left: fifty times turning about upon his pursuers, and fifty times pushing forward only to gain some respite, in order to turn about again fifty times more: his numbers at last are reduced to six men; spent with the exertions of the retreat and the fatigue of the way, he is going to be overpowered: “Prince, cries a young man of twenty-two, your life is destined to procure a subsistence to thousands and ten thousands; but mine is only that of an individual: Run for­wards and gain a couple of hundred yards: I undertake mean­while to bring our pursuers to a stand.”...This young man does as he says, and is overpowered and cut down; but mean­while the Prince distances his pursuers, and escapes himself the fifth. This Prince is no other than Shah-Alum himself, the reigning Emperor of Hindostan.

But all this, however, seems to be greatly inferior to Aly-Verdy-Khan’s retreat from Midnapore to Catwa, for the space of seven days, through a miry country, under incessant showers of rain, with no bed for any man in the army but the bare ground, no covering but the Canopy of heaven, and no food but field-grass and tree-leaves. History records but two retreats to my remembrance: that of the ten thousand, which implies contradic­tions and improbabilities without number, and bears evident marks of being a romance, like the life of Cyrus; and the other, that of Marechal de Bellisle from Prague. Both the one and the other were conducted over a mountainous tract of Land; and both armies were never overtaken, but partially. Bellisle in particular had stolen a march on the enemy, and was never attacked, but by his light Cavalry. But Aly-Verdi-Khan’s retreat was over a flat ground, and over boundless plains, under a perpetual series of engagements, and under all the disadvantages which we have just mentioned, and which may be seen at length in our author.

The Indians then have been a more dangerous nation than they seem to be now: They may be in a slumber; but they may awake, and they deserve a more watchful eye than the English Government seems to think; our author says, a more winning deportment, and a more caressing hand, than seems to be the genius and turn of mind of their conquerors.

After having taken so much liberty with the public, as to differ from it on the opinion that ought to be entertained of the Indians; and presumed so far upon the patience of my readers, as to have talked so much of myself, it may be expected I should say something of my author; his matter is certainly novel, there being no other history extant on that subject in any language; and as such, it cannot fail to please, at a time when all Britain is intent upon the transactions in the East: he will, however, be found to speak for himself abundantly: he speaks of himself, of his family, of his connections, of his own private concerns, in so many places of his history, that he has, without designing it, delineated the features of his own mind; he appears almost everywhere, a sensible, well informed, grave, sincere man; his style is free enough from those blemishes which would give offence in Europe, and which characterise all Eastern productions: I mean metaphors and allegories with­out end, and antitheses without number, with a greater atten­tion to the jingling of a cadenced prose, than to the clearness of the sense, or the accuracy of the diction. He performs exactly enough the promise made in his preface, of his intending to recount in a plain unornamented style; and he appears, in general to be an honest man, and a zealous patriot; but should any rigorous reader take offence at some defects which are to be seen in his history, and which ought to be attributed rather to the writer’s education, country, and age, his severity would be infallibly disarmed on perusing the following passage, which I shall transcribe whole.

After having recounted the unjust death of two illustrious brothers, inhumanly hacked to pieces by Seradj-ed-döwlah’s orders, and in his presence, he goes on in these words: “The innocent blood spilled on that occasion, proved to be as fertile as that of Siävosh of old: It produced a series of events that proved fatal to that power and dominion, which Aly-Verdi-Khan had been rearing with so much toil: It lighted up a blind fire, which commenced emitting smoke soon after these two murders had been perpetrated; and, which breaking out in flames at last, destroyed, in its progress, all that numerous family; and extending its ravages far and wide, consumed every thing in those once happy regions of Bengal, and prostrated and overwhelmed totally those rich provinces, which it has reduced to heap of ashes and yet smoaking coals: It verified that tremendous sentence, once revealed to the Prince of Messengers: So shalt thou have done, and so shalt thou receive.”