expressly declined to sanction an offer made by the chargé d'affaires at Hyderabad, to procure from its Mohammedan ruler a prohibition of the rite. It was in the midst of this general despondency that Major (now LieutenantColonel) Ludlow, chargé d'affaires at Jypore, conceived the idea of assailing the superstition in its stronghold. His scheme was simple and not new-qualities which are the best evidence of the difficulties that had hitherto prevented its execution. Long ago, Oriental scholars, both native and European, had shown that the rite was not only unsanctioned, but inferentially forbidden, by the earliest and most authoritative Hindoo scriptures. Nay, Colonel Tod in his book on Rajpootána had actually indicated this anomaly in Hindoo doctrine as the best point of attack for abolitionists to select. Yet though that valuable work was published in 1829, and though the author, from the position he long held as chief diplomatic officer in the country he so well describes, had the amplest opportunities for carrying out his own suggestion, it was reserved for Major Ludlow, in 1844, to put it to the test of practice, and to vanquish the obstacles which had hitherto confined it to the dreamland of speculative benevolence. The explanation of this previous inaction is not difficult. Scholars, it is true, had proved Suttee to be an innovation and a heresy; but it was an innovation of 2000 years' standing, and a heresy abetted by the priesthood since the days of Alexander. Though unnoticed by Menu, the supplementary writings with which the Hindoos, like the Jews, have overlaid their primitive books, are profuse in its praise. Above all-let the force of the appeal from the more recent to the primitive code be what it might-it could not but be attended with suspicion when proceeding from religionists who equally repudiated both the one and the other. It is no matter for surprise that Englishmen should have hesitated long to assail with the delicate weapon of theological criticism a rite thus strong in remote antiquity, in venerated records, in a hierarchy at once ignorant and unscrupulous, and in the associations with which innumerable traditions of womanly courage and constancy had ennobled it in the eyes of the Hindoo people. His resolution once taken, however, there were circumstances in Major Ludlow's position not unfavorable to the enterprise. He enjoyed peculiar opportunities of intercourse with the nobles of the court to which VOL. XXV. NO. I. he was accredited. The prince of Jypore was a minor, and the government was carried on by a council of regency, over which the Major presided. Not only did he thus possess a more direct voice in the administration than his post of chargé d'affaires would have given him, but he had already so used this vantage-ground as to dissipate to an extraordinary degree the jealousies likely to be excited in his native colleagues by any interference with their domestic customs. He had even contrived to bring the other Rajpoot states to combine with Jypore for an object not wholly alien from that which he had at present in view. Then, as now, the abuse which he had undertaken to assail concerned their zenánas; and his bitterest opponents were likely to be found amongst the priests. Old maids, as some of our readers have probably heard, are sadly depreciated in the East. A Rajpoot girl who remains long unwedded is a disgrace to her house; but that was not the only danger which but a few years ago her father had to fear. Should he succeed in finding her a husband, the chances were that the family estates would be hopelessly encumbered in providing the gratuities claimed by the priests and minstrels who were certain to flock to the nuptials. No Rajpoot is above the dread of satire and imprecations; and those worthies notoriously dispensed their blessings and applauses, or their curses and lampoons, according to the price at which their services were retained. The result was that their favor was purchased at almost any cost. "The Dahima emptied his coffers on the marriage of his daughter," ran a favorite distich of these venal bards, "but he filled them with the praises of mankind." The Rajpoots at large were not disposed to be Dahimas, nor yet to brave the scandal of housing marriageable daughters. They found refuge from the dilemma in infanticide. Parents reared just so many girls as they could afford to marry off, and destroyed the rest. The criminality of the practice was, indeed, acknowledged. Rajpoot decorum demanded that it should be veiled in secrecy; but that was all. A trifling penance absolved the perpetrator. Nobody dreamed of dragging such affairs into publicity. If a son was born, the fact was announced to inquirers with exultation; if a daughter, the answer was-Nothing! and those who came to congratulate went silent away. It must not be supposed that this system had grown up to such monstrous maturity without some 4 degree of resistance on the part of the native rulers. It appears that here and there, and at various periods, a Rajpoot prince had sought to reach the evil by sumptuary enactments in restraint of nuptial gratuities; but that fear of the reproach of their kinsmen in neighboring communities had invariably deterred his subjects from taking advantage of the remedy. Major Ludlow conceived that he saw his way to improving on these precedents. He conjectured that if the various states throughout Rajpootána could be brought to agree to a common scale of such largesses, apportioned to the revenue of the bride's parents, with uniform penalties for all demands in excess, the problem might be solved. Nothing, however, is harder than to bring the tenacious principalities of Rajpootána to act together on any subject. What could seem more so than to bring them to work in concert on a question involving points so delicate as the largesses to be dispensed on their daughters' weddings, and the comparative claims of their minstrels and priests? It was certain, too, that, failing this agreement, no measure of the kind could be demanded of them by the British Government without a breach of the treaties that secured the freedom of their internal administrations. In spite of these obstacles Major Ludlow obtained permission to do his best, on the single condition of using no direct solicitation towards the chiefs. His first efforts were thus confined to his brother diplomatists, and such native deputies as resided at Jypore for the purpose of communicating on plunder-cases. The latter, gradually coming into the idea, promulgated it among their respective governments; and by this indirect process he at length succeeded in obtaining the enactment of an international sumptuary law which has rid Rajpootána of a most frightful scourge and stigma. Never probably before, since the origin of the Rajpoot states, had their jealousies and divisions been even temporarily suspended. But the advantage of this concert was rendered palpable to them by their delivery from a ruinous system of extortion, with all its frightful and unnatural results. They were aware that the merit of this social, rather than political, reform, was due to Ludlow's private exertions; and thus between him and themselves there sprung up a relation on such subjects, which the antipathies of race and religion very seldom allow of among Englishmen and Hindoos. What, then, if he could avail himself of these aids to accomplish an infinitely harder undertaking? He had rid the Rajpoots of a practice which their consciences condemned. Could he rid them of one to the full as terrible, which they revered? He had rescued her child for the mother. Could he rescue the mother for the child? It was doubtless much for an Englishman to hope to tear aside the prescriptive sanctions which for twenty centuries had elevated the Indian widow's cruel martyrdom into the holiest of mysteries; but if the shock was ever to be given, it was now, and at Jypore. The resident Vakeels would communicate it to all the Rajpoot states; and whenever Rajpootána should lead the way in breaking through "the traditions of the elders," Hindostan at large was tolerably certain to follow. The hour, the place, and the man, all favored the design. One lion, however, there was in the path. Major Ludlow could not hope that the permission given him to use his personal influence with the convention of Vakeels to promote measures against female infanticide, would be extended to any similar undertaking against Suttee. The acknowledged criminality of the one practice and the reputed sanctity of the other made here all the difference; and we have already alluded to the belief on the part of the British authorities, which so many facts had seemed to substantiate, that the efforts of our diplomatists in the independent states to check the rite had tended only to an opposite effect. As an essential condition therefore to success, and on pain of having his operations summarily suspended, Major Ludlow was compelled to work unseen. He determined, if possible, to induce two or three trustworthy and influential natives to undertake the cause; to ply them with the critical objection drawn from the older scriptures; and by declaring his own resolution to remain neutral till public opinion had declared itself, to excite in them the ambition of taking the lead. He found a person admirably adapted to his purpose in the Financial Minister of the court at which he was accredited. Seth Manick Chund belonged to a sect whose distaste for destruction in all its forms is singular even in the East. The Oswal tribe do not wilfully slay the meanest animal. Carrying out the doctrine of the transmigration of souls to its logical result-viewing in every insect a possible human intelligence, and as yet blissfully ignorant of the revelations of the oxy-hydrogen microscope-their priests carry besoms to sweep the ground on which they tread, and cover their mouths with gauze, to avoid the scandal of inhaling "the their ancestors, or of crushing them whole- | six months he was induced to put forth a sale under foot. One result of this tender- document, in which he adopted all the theoness for life in every form is, that they dis- logical arguments, and declared authoritaapprove of Suttees. To the Financial Ministively that the self-immolation of widows was ter, therefore, and to his own head Moon- less meritorious than their practising shee, Major Ludlow communicated all the living suttee of chastity and devotion!" This arguments he thought likely to be of use; was evidently half the battle. Major Ludand thus charged, they betook themselves to low now personally entered into the contest, the High Priest of Jypore. so far as to cause the manifesto to be shown at his residence to the various Vakeels who came there to transact business; and these in their turn communicated its contents to their masters. A religious agitation sprung and spread widely. At the same time there could be little doubt that, let the impression produced by the High Priest's decision be what it might, no man of rank-least of all a Rajpoot sovereign-would be anxious to proclaim himself the first convert. Warily, and as if on their own account, they pressed this important dignitary with the omission of all mention of Suttee in the Code of Menu; with the inferential prohibition of the rite in the denunciations contain-up ed in that work against suicide; and with its promise to widows living chastely of eternal felicity with their husbands-whereas even the writings which countenanced the sacrifice, limited the duration of its recompense to the comparative bagatelle of fortyfive millions of years. In addition to these objections, already familiar to Oriental scholars, Major Ludlow supplied his emissaries with two others at least as efficacious. Pope's Universal Prayer embodies, it appears, a favorite sentiment of Hindoo moralists: "What conscience dictates to be done, This teach me more than hell to shun, To iterate day by day the same arguments -to be ever on the stretch to discover methods of rendering them more efficient-to confirm the wavering-to encourage those who were already compromised as abolitionists-above all, to keep within the delicate line that severed his private advocacy of the High Priest's dictum from his official adhesion to it-here was an arduous combination of aims; and the Major knew that if he failed in any one of them, a quick and mischievous reaction of public opinion would render the object of all his toil more distant than ever, and expose him to the censure of his own Government. But what then? It was the old alternative of every man wiser and braver than his fellows; the criterion would be success. If he did not win the palm of a benefactor of his race, he must be content to be reproached as a meddler whose untimely zeal had but injured a noble cause. But the Hindoo divines assert, not only that the love of goodness for its own sake ought to prevail over the hopes of posthumous reward, but that the slightest intrusion of an interested motive is fatal. What more easy than to apply this dogma to the poor widow bent on earning by a cruel death her own and her husband's salvation? Her devotion was represented as a mercenary calculation Within a few months of the issue of the of profit and loss. She did but mock the High Priest's manifesto, that personage died. Deity with the unclean sacrifice of a selfish Never, not even during his last sickness, did bargain. Was the martyr's crown her aim? he receive the slightest message or civility She had forfeited it by that very aspiration! from Major Ludlow; so important was it Major Ludlow wound up these arguments deemed to give no ground for the imputation by a shrewd appeal to national pride. Sut of a secret understanding between them. tee (urged his emissaries), unwarranted by While, therefore, it was part of the good forMenu, was the evident invention of some tune attending this enterprise that the High degenerate race, whose women were worth-Priest should have left the scene in the odor less, and whose widows, if they survived, would bring reproach on the memory of their lords. To such it might be left. The honor of Rajpoot husbands was in safer keeping; and the fair fame of their daughters was aspersed by the mere retention of so disgraceful a security! The High Priest received these representations with surprising candor. In less than of sanctity before he had leisure to retract or modify his opinion, it was probably due to Major Ludlow's caution that the public faith in the honesty of the manifesto remained to the last unshaken. And now the fruit of all this untiring energy began to appear. One by one the members of the Council of Regency declared themselves in favor of the legal prohibition of Suttee, though they did not as yet think proper to pledge the infant sovereign to so critical a measure. Most of the nobles connected with the Court were avowed abolitionists, and three of the tributary provinces of Jypore actually issued enactments against the rite. Their example was followed by several petty neighboring states. Major Ludlow believed that the time was come for bolder measures. Everything depended on the utmost publicity being given to the adhesions he had already received. Great as was the general respect for the deceased High Priest's authority, the timid were not likely to be converted except in good company, and, as has been said, the timidest of all in a matter of Rajpoot orthodoxy would be the Rajpoot sovereigns. He was aware, indeed, that rumor had already befriended him in this respect. The resident Vakeels had, as a matter of course, kept their masters throughout Rajpootána well acquainted with the progress of the strange agitation at Jypore. But those functionaries had no access to the letters which, in his capacity of President of the Council of Regency, he had from time to time received from the leading abolitionists; and such documents, forming collectively a very imposing record of opinion in high places, had now accumulated in his hands. These he resolved to turn to account. He sent copies of the whole correspondence to two or three of his brother diplomatists in Rajpootána, in order that they might communicate it to the Courts to which they were attached. The result was his first and only check. His official superior, apprised by the circulation of these documents, took alarm and arrested the whole proceeding. The mortification to Ludlow must have been great; but there remained so much to be done, and by means so foreign to the routine of official experience, that we can scarcely be surprised that the first impression inspired by the promulgation of the plan was one of distrust. When, however, a year had passed without any evil resulting from the agitation of the subject, the able superior who had thus felt it his duty to interpose his authority, so far withdrew his opposition as to issue a eircular to the chiefs, urging, on the grounds already taken, not indeed the prohibition of Suttee, but the imposition of penalties on all persons abetting the widow in the rite. Happily the event surpassed these cautious advances, and proved how little Major Ludlow had overrated the strength of the movement. In eight months' time from the issuing of the circular (August 23d, 1846) the Council of Regency at Jypore led the way among the great independent Rajpoot states in declaring Suttee penal on all parties engaged in it, principals as well as accessories. Lord Hardinge, then at Simla, at once caused a notification of this event, coupled with an expression of thanks to Major Ludlow, to be published in the Government Gazette (Sept. 22, 1846); and so vast and so swift was the effect of this example, and of the prominence thus judiciously assigned to it, that before Christmas his Lordship was enabled to announce the prohibition of Suttee by eleven out of the eighteen Rajpoot principalities, and by five out of the remaining sixteen free states of India! Of the whole territory then exempt from internal control, more than twothirds were gained over to the cause of abolition within four months from the Jypore proclamation.* To persons unacquainted with the influence of Rajpootána on Hindostan, so sudden an interruption of the torpor of ages must have appeared too momentous to be ascribed to the seemingly simple measures at Jypore which it immediately followed. It was as if Major Ludlow had thrown a pebble from the shore, and the ice of an arctic sea had riven before him. Yet never did a train of events less deserve to be ranked as mere coincidences. If any further proof were necessary, we might point to the fact that the state of Gwalior, in proclaiming Suttee penal, expressly cited as its authority the edict from Jypore; while nearly every abolitionist sovereign assigned as the grounds of his adhesion the very arguments that had obtained the Jypore high-priest's sanction. The recognition of Major Ludlow's services by his own immediate superior was hearty. "The last Political Agent," wrote Colonel Sutherland to the Government, "was, I be lieve, as little prepared for the abolition of Suttee at Jypore as I was on my return to that capital in May, 1846; and it is almost exclusively to Major Ludlow's influence that we are indebted for the first promulgation of the law prohibiting Suttee in a Hindoo principality.' Major Ludlow's aids were, a superior utterly incapable of petty jealousies, and ready to abandon his own anti-abolitionist views directly abolition appeared possible; a variety of British officers residing at other native courts, eager to forward the good work when once begun; a Governor-General capable of appreciating the lustre which such an achievement would cast on an administration already bright with military glories; and last, not least, a Court of Directors ever prompt in the recognition of great services. From Bentley's Miscellany. UNSUCCESSFUL GREAT MEN. BY PROFESSOR CREASY. Kotah did not give in its adhesion until the following March; while Indore is now stated to have prohibited the rite so long ago as the reign of Hurree-Rao Holkar. That enactment had, it is allowed, remained unheard of elsewhere down to the date of the proclamation at Jypore; but this may be explained by the slight importance likely to be at tached by Hindoos in general to the religious proceedings of a community of Mahrattas. The Sikh empire, since (with the exception of Cashmere) annexed to our dominions, is included among the five abolitionist states out of Rajpootána, alluded to in our text. * Governor-General's Agent for Rajpootána, 11th September, 1847. "Where may the wearied eye repose, Yes, one, the first, the last, the best, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make man blush there was but one." But Had Byron, when he wrote this, remembered the Polish patriot, who in early life was the friend and comrade of Washington, and who in all but success was his equal, he would have blended the name of Kosciusko with that of the Deliverer of America. in other passages of his poems he has done ample justice to the great hero of Poland; and, indeed, there are few instances where unsuccessful valor has received such homage from poetie genius, as Byron, Campbell, and other poets of our age and nation have poured forth to Kosciusko, both in his lifetime and after his decease. Thaddeus Koseiusko was born in 1756, of a noble, but not wealthy, Lithuanian family. He was educated, like most of his countrymen, for a soldier's life, and studied his pro |