amusing to hear of a kingdom no
bigger than Stirlingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect and
maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of Scotland, a little nucleus
of pugnacity, sixty miles by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the
lazy lubber, nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its arms; yet, as
the trick was done, we cease to find it ridiculous.

For the trick _was_ done: and that reminds us to give the history of
Ceylon in its two sections, which will not prove much longer than the
history of Tom Thumb. Precisely three centuries before Waterloo, viz.
_Anno Domini_ 1515, a Portuguese admiral hoisted his sovereign's flag, and
formed a durable settlement at Columbo, which was, and is, considered the
maritime capital of the island. Very nearly halfway on the interval of
time between this event and Waterloo, viz. in 1656 (ante-penultimate year
of Cromwell,) the Portuguese nation made over, by treaty, this settlement
to the Dutch; which, of itself, seems to mark that the sun of the former
people was now declining to the west. In 1796, now forty-seven years ago,
it arose out of the French revolutionary war--so disastrous for
Holland--that the Dutch surrendered it per force to the British, who are
not very likely to surrender it in _their_ turn on any terms, or at any
gentleman's request. Up to this time, when Ceylon passed under our flag,
it is to be observed that no progress whatever, not the least, had been
made in mastering the peach-stone, that old central nuisance of the island.
The little monster still crowed, and flapped his wings on his dunghill, as
had been his custom always in the afternoon for certain centuries. But
nothing on earth is immortal: even mighty bantams must have their decline
and fall; and omens began to show out that soon there would be a dust with
the new master at Columbo. Seven years after our _debut_ on that stage,
the dust began. By the way, it is perhaps an impertinence to remark it,
but there certainly _is_ a sympathy between the motions of the Kandyan
potentate and our European enemy Napoleon. Both pitched into _us_ in 1803,
and we pitched into both in 1815. That we call a coincidence. How the row
began was thus: some incomprehensible intrigues had been proceeding for a
time between the British governor or commandant, or whatever he might be,
and the Kandyan prime minister. This minister, who was a noticeable man,
with large grey eyes, was called _Pilame Tilawe