Persian languages, of a low and scurrilous
character. Unheeded by the authorities, they
have lately indulged in the dainty article of
treason: one of them going so far as to put
forth a proclamation emanating from the
rebel king of Delhi, offering premiums to
deserters from our army, &c.

Our government could find no other
remedy for this evil than a general gagging of
the press, British and native: we English
editors are accordingly Canningised. The
equality of the subject is nobly vindicated
by dealing out the self-same treatment to the
loyal British editor and the Mohammedan
traitor. From the Punjab to Cape Comorin,
from Scinde to Singapore, there is one huge
gag placed on the thoughts and expressions
of the press of British India. Henceforth,
we must hold no opinions on matters
political, or military, but such as are directly
favourable to the government of India. It is
not alone the acts of the local executive that
must be protected by this extreme measure.
The Governor-General has a mind to shield
from editorial comments the conduct of the
Imperial Government. We are prohibited
by this very Black Act from impugning the
motives or designs of the British Government,
either in England or India; and this
prohibition extends equally to original
matter and to matter copied from other
publications.

From this time, then, I dare not copy a
leading article from the Times or Daily News
in any way impugning the acts of the British
Government. I dare not report a speech of
any opposition member. I must publish at
my peril the thoughts and language of our
most eminent statesmen not Her Majesty's
advisers.

Fortunately for myself, I am not tied to
my editorial chair. I have other occupations
quite as profitable, if not so dignified. To
them I shall now devote all my energies,
will not take out my licence, like any retailer
of beer and spirits. I shall sell my press, my
types, and my office furniture, resign my post
in the volunteer corps and the escort service,
and, reversing the step taken by Cincinnatus
of old, leave the camp for the field—resign
my pen and pistol for the ploughshare.

FOREBODINGS OF THOMAS RAIKES,
ESQUIRE.

DIARISTS may be the most slovenly—but
they are also at the same time, without
doubt—the most candid of autobiographers.
We may picture them as sitting down to the
entry of their daily jottings with that
excrutiatingly starched cravat, called Conventional
Reserve, thrown aside (with what a sigh of
relief!), and the old abominable straight-
waistcoat of Social Formality, just for once
in the twenty-four hours, luxuriously
unbuckled.

One fancies the mere journal-scribbler
writing invariably as Oliver Goldsmith loved
to write—in his dressing-gown and slippers.
Certainly never preparing himself for his task
after the fastidious fashion of the musician
Haydn, who is related to have occasionally
arrayed himself in full Court costume—his
peruke sprinkled with a fresh bloom of powder,
his wrists clouded with delicate ruffles of
cobweb-lace, his fingers radiant with diamond,
amethyst, and carbuncle—simply for the
purpose of composing choruses and sonatas
in the privacy of his own apartment; creaking
on his red-heeled shoes alternately, to
and fro between his desk and his harpsichord.
The Muse of the Diarist, if he have
one, ought always assuredly to be pourtrayed
in déshabille. As assuredly as the
manuscript volumes, penned by him in such
careless and straggling characters, lay bare at a
glance to the inspection of every one who
lists, not merely the writer's individual
temperament, but with it also that intimate
inner-self, which we have all of us learned
to call respectively each one's own peculiar
idiosyncrasy.

The journal of the Diarist is in reality,
of his own especial idiosyncrasy, the most
vivid and uncompromising revelation. It is
the very window-in-a-man's breast, which was
longed for so many ages ago by the old
Greek philosopher. It is that window, moreover,
with the shutters flung wide open, and
the blind drawn up. We can see through it
all instantaneously—the medium being very
thin, and transparent. We are privileged, each
one amongst us, to pry at our own free will
and pleasure into the every crevice and
involution of the complicated human hearts of
these poor dead and buried Diarists. While
they, in turn—the spirits of these dear
brothers departed—seem to reveal most
clearly and distinctly through that same
mysterious loophole, their own natural
features, stamped with their own real and
genuine expression. Some looking out upon
us laughingly—like Holbein's jocund portrait
of Will Somers, the King's jester, peeping,
with a merry twinkle in his eyes, through the
lattice in the picture-gallery at Hampton
Court. Others appearing before us
dolefully—like the beautifully shrouded face ot
St. Amelia, the nun, wistfully gazing between
the conventual bars in the famous French
lithograph. The former category implying,
what may be termed, the purely anecdotal
Diarists: such as might be instanced through
the journals of Thomas Moore—journals
kept apparently, somewhat as the squirrel
keeps his teeth for cracking nuts, chiefly for
the pleasure of cracking jokes flavoured
with the wine of wit, and the salt of good-
fellowship. The second category referring,
on the other hand, to such outpourings of
effervescent lamentation as those in the midst
of which Madame D'Arblay has unwittingly
sprinkled, not as she fancied, the rose-water
of compliment, but the nitric acid of satire,