are printed it is not unlikely that the news of the
fall of Delhi will have reached us. The troops of the besiegers
amounted in the middle of August to about five thousand five hundred
men. Other troops near them, and reinforcements on the way, may by the
end of the month have increased their force to ten thousand. At the
last accounts a siege train was expected to arrive on the 3d of
September, and an assault might be made very shortly afterwards. But
September is an unhealthy month, and there may be delays. _Dehli
door ust_,--"Delhi is far off,"--is a favorite Indian proverb. But
the chances are in favor of its being now in British hands.[1]
With its fall the war will be virtually ended,--for the reconquest of
the disturbed territories will be a matter of little difficulty, when
undertaken with the aid of the twenty thousand English troops who will
arrive in India before the end of the year.

The settlement of the country, after these long disturbances, cannot
be expected to take place at once; civil government has been too much
interrupted to resume immediately its ordinary operation. But as this
great revolt has had in very small degree the character of a popular
rising, and as the vast mass of natives are in general not
discontented with the English rule, order will be reestablished with
comparative rapidity, and the course of life will before many months
resume much of its accustomed aspect.

The struggle of the trained and ambitious classes against the English
power will but have served to confirm it. The revolt overcome, the
last great danger menacing English security in India will have
disappeared. England will have learnt much from the trials she has had
to pass through, and that essential changes will take place within a
few years in the constitution of the Indian government there can be no
doubt. But it is to be remembered that for the past thirty years,
English rule in India has been, with all its defects, an enlightened
and beneficent rule. The crimes with which it has been charged, the
crimes of which it has been guilty, are small in amount, compared with
the good it has effected. Moreover, they are not the result of
inherent vices in the system of government, so much as of the
character of exceptional individuals employed to carry out that
system, and of the native character itself.--But on these points we do
not propose now to enter.

If the close of this revolt be not stained with retaliating cruelt