But the recommendation of sages, and the advice of poets, "privatus ut altùm dormiret," have been alike disregarded; and although, from the reign of Commodus to the accession of Constantine, every Roman emperor, save Claudius, was assassinated, yet was there no dearth of candidates for the fatal purple. On informing the Ameers that we had recently arrived from England, they eagerly questioned me as to the probability of their reinstatement. They smiled incredulously, when I told them I was in no way connected with the India house, and unable to afford them any information. We then conversed upon Scinde, which I told them I had visited on a former occasion, when with Sir John Keane's force, and they politely declared that they remembered me well, an Asiatic _façon de parler_, for during my Scindian tour, I had not seen one of the Ameers of the present party. After an exchange of trifling presents, we took our leave of the Ameers, and the same night left Hazarebaugh in our palanquins. After a hot and tedious journey along the main trunk-road, resting for two or three hours during the heat of each day at the government bungalows, erected for that purpose, we reached Cawnpore. At this place, we found that a great improvement[11] had taken place in the mode of travelling, by placing the palanquin on a truck drawn by a horse, which is relieved every ninth or tenth mile, and the traveller is thus enabled to proceed at the rate of eight miles an hour in lieu of three. I accomplished the journey to Merut in about thirty hours, having had only one upset, and a few trifling bruises; for the horses seemed to have come to an understanding with each other that they were to take any direction, at first starting, but that of the main road. At almost every stage, this system of bolting was attempted; but when once impelled to a canter, they seemed generally to acknowledge the error of their former ways, and to atone for it by making the best and steadiest progress in their power. Though occasionally some headstrong novice would try the effect of a few rapid swerves, he generally got the worst of it in the end, receiving pretty smart chastisement from the native driver, accompanied by torrents of abuse bestowed on the delinquent and his whole generation, frequently intermingled with most opprobrious, and doubtless unmerited, epithets on his mother and sisters. This is, I am sorry to say, but too common a practice amongst the natives throughout India; whenever man or beast offends them, they are in the habit of retaliating immediately on his inoffensive female relatives. Thus, lovely woman is ever wont to become the meek and unsuspecting victim of him who should have been her protector; from Queen Pomare to Mrs. Caudle, in modern times, from Medea to Xantippe, in ancient, they are always right, and almost invariably suffer wrong. The main cause of this injustice may be attributed to their having neglected to