a single family, we are reminded of the
Stuart dynasty in England, and the Bonaparte dynasty in France. We cannot,
however, agree with Mr Bennett's view of this parallelism--either in so
far as it points our pity towards Napoleon, or in so far as it points the
regrets of disappointed vengeance to the similar transportation of Sree.

Pity is misplaced upon Napoleon, and anger is wasted upon Sree. He ought
to have been hanged, says Mr Bennett; and so said many of Napoleon. But it
was not our mission to punish either. The Malabar prince had broken no
faith with _us_: he acted under the cursed usages of a cruel people and a
bloody religion. These influences had trained a bad heart to corresponding
atrocities. Courtesy we did right to pay him, for our own sakes as a high
and noble nation. What we could not punish judicially, it did not become
us to revile. And finally, we much doubt whether hanging upon a tree,
either in Napoleon's case or Sree's, would not practically have been found
by both a happy liberation from that bitter cup of mortification which
both drank off in their latter years.

At length, then, the entire island of Ceylon, about a hundred days before
Waterloo, had become ours for ever. Hereafter Ceylon must inseparably
attend the fortunes of India. Whosoever in the East commands the sea, must
command the southern empires of Asia; and he who commands those empires,
must for ever command the Oriental islands. One thing only remains to be
explained; and the explanation, we fear, will be harder to understand than
the problem: it is--how the Portuguese and Dutch failed, through nearly
three centuries, to master this little obstinate _nucleus_ of the peach.
It seems like a fairy tale to hear the answer: Sinbad has nothing wilder.
"They were," says Mr Bennett, "repeatedly masters of the capital." What
was it, then, that stopped them from going on? "At one period, the former
(_i.e._ the Portuguese) had conquered all but the impregnable position
called _Kandi Udda_." And what was it then that lived at Kandi Udda? The
dragon of Wantley? or the dun cow of Warwick? or the classical Hydra? No;
it was thus:--_Kandi_ was "in the centre of the mountainous region,
surrounded by impervious jungles, with secret approaches for only one man
at a time." Such tricks might have answered in the time of Ali Baba and
the forty thieves; but we suspect that, even then, an "_open sesame_"
would have been found for this pestilent defile. Sm