are exposed to the incursions of savage
enemies,--but it is as if on a night in one of the most peaceful of
long-settled towns, troops of men, with a sort of civilization that
renders their attack worse than that of savages, should be let loose
to work their worst will of lust and cruelty. The details are too
recent, too horrible, and as yet too broken and irregular, to be
recounted here.

Although, at the first sally of the mutineers from Delhi against the
force that had at length arrived, a considerable advantage was gained
by the Europeans, this advantage was followed up by no decisive
blow. The number of troops was too small to attempt an assault against
an army of thirty thousand men, each man of whom was a trained
soldier. The English force was unprovided with any sufficient siege
battery. It could do little more than encamp, throw up intrenchments
for its own defence, and wait for attacks to be made upon it,--attacks
which it usually repulsed with great loss to the attackers. The month
of June is the hottest month of the year at Delhi; the average height
of the thermometer being 92 deg.. There, in such weather, the force must
sit still, watch the pouring in of reinforcements and supplies to the
city which it was too small to invest, and hear from day to day fresh
tidings of disaster and revolt on every hand,--tidings of evil which
there could scarcely be any hope of checking, until this central point
of the mutiny had fallen before the British arms. A position more
dispiriting can scarcely be imagined; and to all these causes for
despondency were added the incompetency and fatuity of the Indian
government, and the procrastination of the home government in the
forwarding of the necessary reinforcements.

Delhi has been often besieged, but seldom has a siege been laid to it
that at first sight would have appeared more desperate than this. The
city is strong in its artificial defences, and Nature lends her force
to the native troops within the walls. If they could hold out through
the summer, September was likely to be as great a general for them as
the famous two upon whom the Czar relied in the Crimea. A wall of gray
stone, strengthened by the modern science of English engineers, and
nearly seven miles in circumference, surrounds the city upon three
sides, while the fourth is defended by a wide offset of the Jumna, and
by a portion of the high, embattled, red stone wall of the palace,
which almost equals the ci