in the
corner of his tent. A braver soldier never lived than old G------;
and he distinguished himself greatly in the command of his regiment,
under Lord Lake, at the battle of Laswari[8] and siege of
Bharatpur.[9] It was impossible ever to persuade him that the
characters and incidents of these novels were the mere creations of
fancy--he felt them to be true--he wished them to be true, and he
would have them to be true. We were not very anxious to undeceive
him, as the illusion gave him pleasure and did him good. Bolingbroke
says, after an ancient author, 'History is philosophy teaching by
example.'[10] With equal truth may we say that fiction, like that of
Maria Edgeworth, is philosophy teaching by emotion. It certainly
taught old G------ to be a better man, to leave much of the little
evil he had been in the habit of doing, and to do much of the good he
had been accustomed to leave undone.

Notes:

1. December 5, 1835, The date is misprinted '3rd' in the original
edition. See note 2 to last preceding chapter, p. 110.

2. A good view of the precipices of the Kaimur range, the eastern
continuation of the Vindhyan chain, is given facing page 41 of vol. i
of Hooker's _Himalayan Journals_ (ed. 1855).

3. The author's theory is untenable. He failed, to realize the vast
effects of sub-aerial denudation. All the evidence shows that the
successive lava outflows which make up the Deccan trap series
ultimately converted the surface of the land over which they welled
out into an enormous, nearly uniform, plain of basalt, resting on the
Vindhyan sandstone and other rocks. This great sheet of lava,
extending, east and west, from Nagpur to Bombay, a distance of about
five hundred miles, was then, in succeeding millenniums, subjected to
the denuding forces of air and water, until gradually huge tracts of
it were worn away, forming beds of conglomerate, gravel, and clay.
The flat-topped hills have been carved out of the basaltic surface by
the agencies which wore away the massive sheet of lava. The basaltic
cappings of the hills certainly cannot have 'formed part of continued
flat beds of great lakes'. See the notes to Chapter 14, _ante_. Mr.
Scrope was quite right. Vast periods of time must be allowed for
geological history, and millions of years must have elapsed since the
flow of the Deccan lava.

4. In the Sagar district. The last Raja joined the rebels in 1857,
and so forfeited his rank and territory.

5. The name