ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously inflamed among many of the native powers of India, by the secret diffusion of a project for a general and simultaneous insurrection. A double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The deposed Kurruck Singh suddenly expired--a victim, it was whispered, to the insidious efficacy of slow and deadly poison, intermingled, as his son knew, in small quantities every day with his food. The lightning-flash of retribution descended. On the return from the funeral of Kurruck, the elephant which bore the parricidal majesty of Noo Nehal Singh pushed against the brick-work of the palace-gates, when the whole fabric fell with a crash, and so dreadfully fractured the skull of the Maharajah that he never spoke afterwards, and died in a few hours. The power or the policy of Dhyan Singh then bestowed the perilous gift of this bloody sceptre upon Prince Shere, a reputed son of Runjeet, Singh. His legitimacy was immediately denounced, and his government opposed by the mother of his predecessor, who actively assumed, and for three or four months conducted, the regency of the state. The capricious attachment of the army, however, to the cause of Shere Singh turned the current of fortune; and the Queen-Mother might seem to have laid aside the incumbrance of her royal apparel, to be more easily strangled by her own slave girls. The accession of Shere Singh opened the floodgates of irretrievable disorder; for the troops, to whom he owed his success, and on whose venal steadiness the stability of his sway depended, conscious from their position, that, however insolently exorbitant in their demands, they were able to throw the weight of their swords into the scale, clamoured for an increase of their pay, and the dismissal of all the officers who were obnoxious to them. The refusal of their imperious request had a result we are fortunately not obliged to depict; nor, without a shudder, can we barely allude to it. The ruffian and remorseless violence of lawless banditti occupied and ravaged the city and the plain. The story of their plunder of Lahore is rendered hideous by every outrage that humanity can suffer, and by a promiscuous carnage, for which the ferocity of unreasoning animals might pant, but which the untiring fury of the wildest of brutes, the human savage, alone could protract beyond satiety. The finger of their murderous rage pointed to every assailable European officer, of whom some were assassinated, some very narrowly escaped. Months rolled on under the terrible dominion of these uncontrollable miscreants, while the length and the breadth of the land were scourged by their cruelty, polluted by their lust, and desolated by their rapine. The pestilence was partially arrested by a glut of gold.