It is probable that from this circumstance originated the rumour concerning European females who had been publicly maltreated in the bazaar. Two or three sentences must here be written upon those fables which it is our misfortune that we once believed, and our shame if we ever stoop to repeat. Delhi, Cawnpore, and Futtehgur were the three stations in which any considerable multitude of our countrywomen were placed under the disposal of the mutineers. With regard to the two latter places, if we except one single case of abduction, it is absolutely certain that our ladies died without mention, and we may confidently hope without apprehension, of dishonour. Those revolting stories which accompanied to Southampton the first tidings of the tumult at Delhi may all be traced to some gossip regarding the fate of Miss Jennings, the daughter of the chaplain, and her friend, Miss Clifford. It is now ascertained beyond all question that these girls were sitting in an upper room of the palace gateway, when they heard on the stairs a rush of footsteps and a clattering of scabbards, and were cut down dead as they rose from their chairs to learn the cause of this strange intrusion. Some, who love to attribute every event to the special interposition of Providence, have insisted that nothing short of fabricated indignities, and tales of mutilation equally untrue and more easily disproved, could have kindled the explosion of wrath and pity which sent forth by myriads the youth of England again to subdue Hindostan beneath a Christian yoke. Piety, unwilling to pronounce authoritatively on such a matter, will be loth to imagine that God provoked men to utter and to credit lies for the furtherance of any purpose which could conduce to His glory. As must ever be in the order of things by Him determined, the evil seed produced evil fruit. Grapes came not of those thorns, nor figs of those thistles. The murder of a hundred families, the ruin of a thousand homesteads, were incentives capable of exalting our national enthusiasm to the requisite pitch without the aid of exaggeration or invention. Those hateful falsehoods serve but to evoke from the depths of our nature the sombre and ferocious instincts which religion and civilization can never wholly eradicate. To their account unhappy India may charge most of the innocent blood that was spilt and the bad blood that remains.