alcutta when the first appalling news
of the Mutiny broke upon it. He disdained the cruel counsels of fear,
and steadily refused to confound the innocent with the guilty among
the natives; but he knew where to strike, and when, and how. On his
own responsibility he stayed the British troops on their way to the
scene of war in China, and made them serve the graver, more immediate
need of India, doing it with the concurrence of Lord Elgin, the envoy
responsible for the Chinese business; and he poured his forces on
Delhi, the heart of the insurrection, resolving to make an end of it
there before ever reinforcement direct from England could come. After
a difficult and terrible siege, the place was carried by storm on
September 20th, 1857--an achievement that cost many noble lives, and
chief among them that of the gallant Nicholson, a soldier whose mind
and character seem to have made on all who knew him an impression as
of supernatural grandeur.

Five days later General Havelock and his little band of heroes--some
one thousand Englishmen who had marched with him from Allahabad,
recaptured by Neill for England, and on to ghastly Cawnpore--arrived
at Lucknow, and relieved the slender British force which since May
had been holding the Residency against the fierce and ever-renewed
assaults of the thousands of rebels who poured themselves upon it. He
came in time to save many a brave life that should yet do good
service; but the noblest Englishman of them all, the gentle,
dauntless, chivalrous Sir Henry Lawrence, Governor of Oude, had died
from wounds inflicted by a rebel shell many weeks before, and lay
buried in the stronghold for whose safe keeping he had continued to
provide in the hour and article of death. His spirit, however, seemed
yet to actuate the survivors. Havelock's march had been one
succession of victories won against enormous odds, and half
miraculous; but even he could work no miracle, and his troops might
merely have shared a tragic fate with the long-tried defenders of
Lucknow, but for the timely arrival of Sir Colin Campbell with five
thousand men more, to relieve in his turn the relieving force and
place all the Europeans in Lucknow in real safety. The news was
received in England with a delight that was mingled with mourning for
the heroic and saintly Havelock, who sank and died on November 24th.
A soldier whose military genius had passed unrecognised and almost
unemployed while men far his inferiors were