not petted, pampered, and made a fuss of,
but made as sensibly comfortable as the
climate in which he serves will admit of
his being made. I hope, from the bottom
of my heart, never to see brave men put
into such a barrack as that at Loodianah,
which fell in upon and buried in its ruins,
the remnant of her Majesty's Fiftieth
Regiment of Foot: one of the most gallant
regiments in the army list. They went into
the field, during the first Sikh campaign,
nine hundred strong. Nine hundred bright
bayonets glittered in the sun as they marched
away to give the foe (in the words of Lord
Gough) "a taste of cold stale." They were at
Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon.
Out of that nine hundred, only three hundred
returned to quarters in March eighteen
hundred and forty-six. In three months, six
hundred had fallen in battle! The campaign
over, they were quartered at Loodianah, and
placed in barracks which had been frequently
reported rotten, unsound, and dangerous.
But, of this report— though forwarded by
the commander-in-chief— the military board
took no notice. The consequence was, that in
a dust-storm on the night of the twenty-first
of May, ten years ago, the barracks came
down! Beneath that mass of dust and smoke,
and unburnt bricks, lay all the men, women,
and children left to represent the glorious
Fiftieth Regiment of Foot! Beneath that
mass, were the heroes who had escaped the
carnage of the battle-fields in which three to
one of the Regiment had died! Fifty-one
men, eighteen women, and twenty-nine children,
were killed by the fall of those barracks;
one hundred and twenty-six men, thirty-
nine women, and thirty-four children, were
badly wounded— many maimed and
disfigured for life! Well might the Colonel
ot that regiment cry aloud: "My God! there
is no Fiftieth left! The enemy did its
worst; but it is the Company Bahadoor that
has given us the finishing blow!"

The English reader may possibly doubt
the accuracy of these details; but there
is a huge grave at Loodianah containing
the bones of those men, women, and
children of the Fiftieth; and scores of
officers still live, to bear testimony to the truth
of my assertions in respect to this horrible
catastrophe.

The engineer at Loodianah was written to,
by the secretary of the military board, and
asked why he had not made a report of the
state of the barracks which had fallen in? He
replied that he had written three letters on
the subject, and that his predecessor in office
had written seven; and the foolish man was
stupid enough to ransack the records of
his office, and "had the honour to transmit
for information of the Board, copies of these
documents." For this absurd effort of memory,
and ridiculous attempt to clear himself of
blame, he was removed from his appointment,
and sent to do duty with the Sappers and
Miners, a sort of very severe punishment
in the East for any engineer officer guilty of
an indiscretion!

DOWN AMONG THE DUTCHMEN.
V.

TAKING those two cabinet pictures of
my little Dutchwoman, who looks out at me
so fresh, and fair, and dimpled,— and of my
Dutchman, so roseate and sanguineous in
visage;* setting them at convenient distance,
mentally, that is, and retreating admiringly
to have the better view; now decorating him
with a stiff frill, and fixing on bristly
moustaches, with a bunch of stubble on the
chin, imperialwise, and a grim smile upon
his lips, to the likeness of the late Hugo
Grotius, syndic of Rotterdam, delegate of
West Frisia, and most learned writer; now
setting a broad-brimmed hat and feather
well over his brows, dressing him in a jerkin
of yellow, and short wide boots, with broad
sash about his waist, like the fellow with the
halberd and crimson tassel in the great Night
Watch picture; now, trimming close his
hair and beard, and giving him a starched
collar and short cloak, and so turning him
into a preacher. From such reverie
entertainment, I fall at last a-thinking how it has
come about that these Dutchmen and Dutch
women should have found such ill favour
with all who have been to see them. Somehow
they have few men's good word. They
have no winning ways about them; and
inspire no great yearning to re-visit them.
The traveller's book has no flattering
testimonials written down concerning them. By
an unlucky chance they seem usually to come
in for the kicks rather than the small coppers
of writers. Their roughness and ungovernable
boldness seems to have stood in their way, and
hindered the favour of the roving world; to
such, your rude and ready innkeepers men of
surly independent ways; of take it or leave it
creed— do not come pleasantly. Mightily
diverting is it to hearken to one of their own old
writers, discoursing loftily on what he terms
Les Délices, The Sweets, that is, of his country.
"The Dutchmen of old times," he remarks,
"were despised by their neighbours, who
held them to be mere dolts, calling them, in
derision, cheese-eaters. What sort they are
at the present time everybody knows."
He may revel in such self-glorification,
unmolested until he lays down this thesis:
"They are content with what they have;
and if you were to offer them a five-
sous piece for what was worth only two and
a-half, they would take what they were
entitled to, and return you the rest. Should
you beg of them to keep it, they would
not understand what you would be at;
would, most likely, ask if you were
disordered in your head." Heavens! how unlike
the greedy spirits now on earth!

* See page 94.