proceeding even more absurd still, was this:
the case was appealed to the Privy Council
in England, and there the decree of the
Sudder Court was reversed, with costs; and
the judgment of Mr. Swivel, the judge of
Mozutterpore, who was complimented for his
admirable reasoning, upheld! Lord Brougham
said it was a luminous judgment, and I
have not the least doubt of it; not that I
ever read it, but because my nazir at
Mozutterpore was one of the ablest natives I ever
encountered. This was the only piece of ill-
luck that ever happened to me during my
stay in India.

If I could have gone up to the Governor-
General with that volume of Moore's Reports
(Moore, I think, was the name of the barrister
who reported to the world what the Privy
Council thought of our Indian decrees), and
if I could have said, "Look at that, my lord:
this was a case to which I devoted my best
energies," I should have got the Residency
at Katmandoo in Nepaul, which was then
vacant, and where I should have had the
best sporting in all India (the Terai is full of
tigers), a noble climate, nothing to do, and
something like six thousand pounds a year,
no house-rent to pay, table allowance. Ah,
well! it could not helped; it was in my
destiny to lose this glorious prize; and Lord
Chalkland gave it to somebody else. The
newspapers paid me a somewhat oblique but
prettily-turned compliment on this occasion.
They said, "We hope that in future Mr.
Swivel will adhere to his first impressions,
the offspring of a sagacious mind schooled by
experience and hard study of the regulations
of government and of native character. Mr.
Swivel's original interpretation of Act seventeen,
of eighteen hundred and nine, was all
that the great Lord Brougham has described;
while his summing-up, as to the credibility
or otherwise of the various witnesses, was as
masterly as that of any judge who ever
adorned the Bench in great Britain. Deference
to the opinion of a senior judge in the
Sudder Court may be all very well; but a
functionary of Mr. Swivel's well-merited
reputation should always bear in mind, Est
modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines."
What these Latin words mean I really don't
know. I have simply copied them, as I
have done the entire paragraph, from my
common-place book, in which I always pasted
every paragraph that had allusion to myself.

When I was ripe for my pension, I retired
on my one thousand pounds a year and the
interest of my savings. My account with
the East India Company stands thus: I
served them for twenty-one years, received
in pay thirty-two thousand one hundred and
fifty pounds, and a pension of one thousand
pounds per annum. What I did for them
the reader knows. It might have been
worse. But if it had not been for that
unfortunate little mistake in the Sudder, it would
have been decidedly better. However, I
ought not to complain, and I do not complain.
I am now enjoying myself at home on my
pension, &c., and am never so happy as when
I am looking into the shop-windows in
London or Paris. I am only fifty-four, and
look much younger I fancy; and whenever
any one, either seriously or in jest, asks me,
"How's your liver?" I can reply, with all
truthfulness, " Quite well, thank you." I
fully expected to be appointed one of the
Council for India; but I regret extremely to
say, the minister for our Eastern dominions
takes no pains to seek out and reward
unsoliciting merit; and I am too proud
and too comfortable to think of putting
myself forward, notwithstanding my great
qualification for the office; namely, that as I
never gave myself any trouble about India,
her finance, the language, habits, customs,
and religions of her people, I should be the
last man in the world to trouble his lordship
with any opinions there anent; and that is
more than some who have seats, and who are
as ignorant and as listless as myself, can
conscientiously declare.

What a lucky dog I was to have got my
appointment to the Bengal Civil Service
before these competitive examinations were
brought into fashion. In the forcible but not
very classical phraseology of the late Baron
Alderson, when he alluded to the probable
amount of damages a plaintiff would receive,
I should have got as many marks as I could
have put in my eye and not see any the
worse out of it.

MISS SAINT FELIX.

SHE was not handsome; but she was very
very pretty—- the prettiest little Irish girl
that I ever beheld! (said the old lady.)* She
had golden hair and dark blue eyes, a compact
and elastic figure, and the tiniest feet and
hands. She was not more than eighteen
when she landed in Sydney as a convict,
under sentence of transportation for life. She
did not arrive till eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven or eighteen hundred and twenty-
eight; and during the administration of Sir
Ralph Darling. The Special System was
now utterly defunct, and all convicts were to
be treated alike, without the least reference
to what had been their former condition.
* See page 596 of the last volume.

In point of strictness this was, no doubt,
very proper and very just; but to those who
remembered the lenient administration of
General Macquarie and Sir Thomas Brisbane,
it appeared harsh in the extreme.

The Major and myself left Sydney shortly
after the departure of General Macquarie
from the colony, and went to live on an
estate, which had been granted to us, in the
vicinity of Campbell Town. The Major sold
his commission, and had now nothing further
to do with public life. He was still in the
Commission of the Peace; but that was all.