incomparable in horror, and of Surajah Dowlah as among the worst of Oriental murderers. It is true that certain efforts have been made to reduce the {267} measure of Surajah Dowlah's guilt. Colonel Malleson, than whom there is no fairer or abler Indian historian, thinks there can be no doubt that Surajah Dowlah did not desire the death of his English prisoners. Mr. Holwell, one of the few survivors of that awful night, the man whose narrative thrilled and still thrills, horrified and still horrifies, the civilized world, does give testimony that goes towards clearing the character of Surajah Dowlah from direct complicity in that terrible crime. "I had in all three interviews with him," he wrote, "the last in Darbar before seven, when he repeated his assurances to me, on the word of a soldier, that no harm should come to us; and, indeed, I believe his orders were only general that we for that night should be secured, and that what followed was the result of revenge and resentment in the breasts of the lower jemidars to whose custody we were delivered for the number of their order killed during the siege." Yet these words do not go far to cleanse Surajah Dowlah's memory. What had occurred? The English prisoners were brought before the triumphant Nabob, bullied and insulted, and finally left in charge of the Nabob's soldiery, while the Nabob himself retired to slumber. The soldiery, whether prompted by revenge or mere merciless cruelty, forced the prisoners, one hundred and forty-six in number, into the garrison prison--a fearful place, only twenty feet square, known as the Blackhole. The senses sicken in reading what happened after this determination was carried out. The death-struggles of those unhappy English people crowded in that narrow space, without air, in the fearful summer heat, stir the profoundest pity, the profoundest anguish. The Nabob's soldiers all through that fearful night revelled in the sights and sounds that their victims' sufferings offered to them. When the night did end and the awakened despot did allow the door of the Blackhole to be opened, only twenty-three out of the hundred and forty-six victims were alive. The hundred and twenty-three dead bodies were hurriedly buried in a common pit. {268}