and the beer out of an American tumbler of the very worst quality." The Maharaja had a large and excellent stable of horses, elephants, and camels; a well-appointed kennel; and a menagerie of pigeons, falcons, peacocks, and apes, which would have done credit to any Oriental monarch, from the days of Solomon downwards. His armoury was stocked with weapons of every age and country, from a masterpiece of Purdey, to the bow and arrows used by the Hillmen of Orissa. His reception-rooms sparkled with mirrors and chandeliers that had come direct from Birmingham; and his equipages had stood within the twelvemonth in the warehouses of Longacre. He possessed a vast store of gold and silver plate; and his wardrobe overflowed with shawls and jewellery, which on gala days were regarded with longing eyes by the Cawnpore ladies. Nor did they lack frequent opportunities of contemplating the Maharaja in his panoply of kincob and Cashmere scarfs, crowned with a tiara of pearls and diamonds, and girt with old Bajee Rao's sword of state, which report valued at three lacs of rupees. For the Nana seldom missed an occasion for giving a ball or a banquet in European style to the society of the station; although he would never accept an entertainment in return, because our Government, which refused to regard him as a royal personage, would not allow him the compliment of a salute. Nor did he treat his guests with the semi-barbarous discourtesy evinced by some native hosts, who pass the evening seated among a group of courtiers, scrutinizing the dancers through a lorgnette, and apparently regarding the whole proceeding as a ballet arranged for their individual amusement. The Maharaja mixed freely with the company; inquired after the health of the Major's lady; congratulated the judge on his rumoured promotion to the Sudder Court; joked the assistant magistrate about his last mishap in the hunting-field; and complimented the belle of the evening on the colour she had brought down from Simla. His wealth was abundant enough to allow of any vagaries of hospitality and personal extravagance, and does not seem to have been seriously impaired even by the expense entailed by a crowd of lazy myrmidons whom he kept about his person; a folly common to all high-born and opulent Hindoos. Every native landlord, who can induce his neighbours to dignify him with the title of Rajah, delights in flourishing about the country under the escort of a host of blackguards;--the horsemen armed with lances and old cavalry swords, and mounted on raw-boned, long-tailed horses, smeared with coarse paint;--the infantry straggling along under the weight of clubs, partizans, brass blunderbusses, and long matchlocks, of which the stock is studded with glass beads, and the muzzle shaped into the semblance of a dragon's mouth. The Nana kept several hundreds of these scamps in idleness and insolence. He provided them with four rupees a month, and a suit of clothes once a year; an