Whatever may have been the real reason for the premature termination of his official career at the age of forty, ill-health was put forward as the ostensible cause of his retirement. He had served for about twenty-four years in the Indian plains without any leave; he had long suffered from malaria; and, though he hardly suspected it at the time, an attempt had been made by one of his servants to poison him with Datura; he had met with a serious accident when, by chance or design, his elephant-driver dashed his howdah against the gate of Begūn fort in eastern Mewār. In spite of all this, he retained sufficient health to make, on the eve of his departure from India, the extensive tour recorded in his _Travels in Western India_. Neither on his retirement, nor at any subsequent period, were his services, official and literary, rewarded by any distinction. During his seventeen years’ service in Central India and Rājputāna he showed indefatigable industry in the collection of the materials which were partially used in his great work. His taste for the study of history and antiquities, ethnology, popular religion, and superstitions was stimulated by the pioneer work of Sir W. Jones and other writers in the _Asiatic Researches_. He was not a trained philologist, and he gained much of his information from his Guru, the Jain Yati Gyānchandra, and the Brāhman Pandits whom he employed to make inquiries on his behalf. They, too, were not trained scholars in the modern sense of the term, and many of his mistakes are due to his rashness in following their guidance. His life was prolonged for thirteen years after he left India. In 1824 he attained the rank of Major, and in 1826 that of Lieutenant-Colonel. Much of his time in England was spent in arranging his materials and compiling the works upon which his reputation depends: _The Annals_, published between 1829 and 1832; and his _Travels in Western India_, published after his death, in 1839. He was in close relations with the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he acted for a time as Librarian. In this fine collection of books and manuscripts he gained much of that discursive learning which appears in _The Annals_. He presented to the Society numerous manuscripts, inscriptions, and coins. The fine series of drawings made to illustrate his works by Captain P. T. Waugh and a native artist named Ghāsi, have recently been rearranged and catalogued in the Library of the Society. They well deserve inspection by any one interested in Indian art. He also made frequent tours on the Continent, and on one occasion visited the great soldier, Count Benoit de Boigne, who died in 1830, leaving a fortune of twenty millions of francs.