He murmured a few more incoherent words, then turned on his pillow, and fell asleep. That was an awful night for Major Willersley and Mrs. St. Aubyn. They spoke not, they did not even look their feelings; but they sat down one on each side of the sick man's bed, and listened to the breathings of that slumber which they believed was fast merging into the deeper sleep of death. A load of agony seemed removed from the mind of Agnes. There could scarcely be guilt, she thought, in an attachment thus sanctioned. Visions of happiness, vague and shapeless as the clouds of sunset, floated through her imagination; but all yet seemed unsettled and tottering. The Colonel still lived, but the time that should emancipate his spirit would unfetter their's also, and leave them free to love and be loved. Hour after hour did they keep their silent vigil, every nerve wound up to a pitch of excitement that amounted to torture, while the delicate frame of Agnes seemed almost turned to stone. Mor ning dawned on these pale watchers, yet still no convulsive sob, no rattle in the throat announced the rapid approach of death. On the contrary, the sufferer's breathing seemed softer and calmer, and, as the daylight gradually filled the chamber, it was evident that, though his lip and cheek were still pallid, they were less livid, and still more natural in their appearance than on the preceding night. The cup of hope was dashed from the lips of Charles and Agnes, and though it might have seemed miraculous under the circumstances, the Colonel recovered. Suspense, hidden suffering, and bodily fatigue had made deep inroads on the tender constitution of Agnes, and it was now her turn to be confined to a sick bed. She was very ill, and her restoration to health was lingering, and never entire. But alas! her mind had received a deeper injury than her bodily frame. In spite of her efforts to subdue it, a feeling akin to despair took possession of her mind. Her temper, naturally sweet and gentle, became irritable and impatient, and her interest in the persons and things about her seemed entirely destroved. She would shut herself up for days, on the plea of indisposition, while, in fact, her seclusion was courted as affording a morbid indulgence of regrets and memories. He The Colonel-(but I forgot,--he was now the General,)-was deeply grieved at the change in her demeanour, especially as it included less kindness of manner towards himself. laid it all to the account of nerves, and the weakness resulting from illness, and, finally, resolved on a journey to London; trusting that change of scene and society might be beneficial to Mrs. St. Aubyn. Major Willersley was not in town when the General and his lady first took up their abode there, but he arrivied shortly after; and, though seldom a visitor at their house, Mrs. St. Aubyn and he frequently met in general society. Before he came, Agnes had declined almost every invitation, but now she eagerly caught at every one that offered the smallest hope of a meeting with Willersley. It was this sudden change in Agnes's mode of life which first awakened in General St. Aubyn's mind a suspicion of the truth, and far more than the truth. It was a case in which to suspect was to be convinced, -there were so many circumstances, trifling in themselves, which, taken altogether, formed an overwhelming mass of evidence. The remembrance of the wish he had expressed respecting the future union of his widow with Willersley, when he believed himself dying, now caused him bitter self-upbraiding. He felt as if scales had suddenly fallen from his eyes, and the whole dreadful truth glared upon him at once. Agnes was certainly innocent, in the common acceptation of the term; but can any woman be reckoned entirely innocent, who, knowing the weakness of her own heart, does not use every means in her power to avoid the presence of the object whose influence is most to be dreaded? Mrs. St. Aubyn took an entirely false view of her po sition. She considered himself as the victim of her elder sister's tyranny and artifice, and conceived that there was a sort of virtue in adhering firmly to her early attachment, through all the suffering it might bring upon her. She did not see that it was her duty to strive for resignation and cheerfulness in the path which Providence had assigned her. She was much, very much to be pitied, but she was not utterly free from blame. The wrongs she had received from her sister were irreparable; and, perhaps, the greatest was in that early training to entire subjection, which had left her so little independence of character, or strength of purpose,-most dangerous circumstances for one placed as she was. Cloud after cloud gathered over the General's mind; surmises assumed the air of facts; Mrs. St. Aubyn's motions were strictly watched; servants were examined;-and what so likely to inflame the mind of a jealous man as the evidence of servants? When did they ever tell less than the truth? Finally General St. Aubyn commenced proceedings against his onceloved friend, and sued for a divorce from his "beloved" Agnes. He was unsuccessful in both instances. Even the testimony of malicious domestics was unable to establish any charge against poor Mrs. St. Aubyn, but there were suspicious circumstances in her conduct, and the world looked on her as a guilty woman. A separation from her husband was, of course, inevitable; and she retired to hide her broken heart in some remote corner of her native land. Was Where, during these agonizing events, was Margaret Vernon? she playing the part of an affectionate sister, soothing the grief of Agnes, shielding her from the malice of her enemies, vindicating her at every opportunity? No such thing! She was goaded almost to madness by the stain thus cast upon the family honour, and secretly by her still unextinguished love for Willersley. He was now in a station where no disgrace or degradation could have resulted from a union with him. She had refused offers that would have placed her amidst the noblest of the land, for the sake of him, between whom and herself an impassable gulf was now placed. VOL. XV. She had plotted and schemed to remove Agnes from his reach, to win him for herself, and the end of all this was disappointment and dishonor. In a lonely village on the southern coast, the unhappy Mrs. St. Aubyn took up her abode. She refused to assume any name but her own, or to maintain any incognito. This was the first manifestation of strength of resolution she had, perhaps, ever displayed in her life. Left to herself, and obliged to exert herself, the hidden energies of her mind, so long subdued, and unsuspected, even by herself, began to bud forth. She felt that she had been more sinned against than sinning; but she allowed that she had acted, at least, unwisely. She had not long entered on her new residence, when she received a letter which almost overthrew her newly-acquired strength. It was from Willersley, the pouring forth of a mind full of love and agony. He declared that General St. Aubyn had most unjustly divorced and disowned her; that he had no longer any claim upon her, either by the laws of God or man; and he entreated her, in the most passionate terms, to place herself under his care, and fly with him to some far land, where happiness might yet be their portion. 66 Shall it be owned that there was a struggle, a deep, agonizing struggle, in the bosom of Mrs. St. Aubyn, ere she could bring herself to answer that letter, as she felt it must be answered? Peculiarly placed as we are," it said, "I cannot bear to blame you for making the proposal you do. I know there is much kindness intended to me in the step you have taken, but, in your calmer moments you will see the impossibility of my acceding to it, and the sophistry of your own arguments. Since the fatal day on which we, unfortunately, owned our mutual attachment, we have never met, and in this world we must never meet more. If I cannot entirely remove the cloud that has darkened my fair fame, I will never allow an act of mine to add to its blackness." Years passed by, and Mrs. St. Aubyn was a widow. The news of the General's death caused no throb of gladness, no feeling of release at her heart; for she had grown calm, and even cheerful; and perhaps her E lonely cottage, in the village where she was dearly beloved by all ranks, who knew her sad story, but were firmly convinced of her innocence, was the scene of the most unbroken peace she had ever known. She was somewhat startled from her usual placid frame of mind, by the sudden appearance of Major, now Major Sir Charles Willersley, in her humble home, but she bade her heart be still, and it obeyed. Her affliction had, indeed, "been good for her; she had gained self-command, courage, and firmness since her seclusion; and, best of all, they were the fruits of true Christian principle. Her employment, of late years, had been less self-reproach than self-conquest, and it was this that enabled her, after a few moments, to sit down and converse so calmly with the lover of her youth. Can any one doubt why Sir Charles Willersley sought the cottage of the recluse? He came to offer her his hand, as a companion to the heart that was her's already. "It cannot be," said Mrs. St. Aubyn; while the faint flush deepened on her delicate cheek. "I will not say that I have never thought it would come to this, I have often imagined that it might, and, therefore, I am prepared for it. Charles Willersley, I shall never deny,-for denial would now be useless, that you were the object of the first, the only love my heart ever knew. But, it is not or dained that we should marry. Evil not be. A Vernon and the widow of They parted, never, as it proved, to meet again. Sir Charles went abroad, and, in a few years, fell in a foreign land. Mrs. St. Aubyn survived him about a year, and then died, as it seemed, from a gentle and gradual decline. Margaret Vernon still lives, prouder and sterner than ever; but her life is one of utter loneliness. It is to be hoped that repentance is at work in her heart, and that she mourns over the woful abuse of the power committed to her charge. Over Mrs. St. Aubyn's grave is placed a tablet, bearing simply her name, and the dates of her birth and death, together with two quotations from Scripture, which may have puzzled many of those, unacquainted with the details of her history. The first is merely a portion of a text,—a few words: "OUT OF MUCH TRIBULATION." The second is the apostle's precept. "ABSTAIN FROM ALL APPEARANCE OF EVIL." THUGGEE IN INDIA, AND RIBANDISM IN IRELAND, COMPARED. THE work to which we are about to call the attention of our readers, constitutes, certainly, the most appalling page in the history of humanity. It is a saddening and humiliating picture of the moral depravity of unregenerate man and well calculated to enhance and to magnify, even in the eyes of the most inconsiderate and unreflecting, the life and the immortality which has been brought to light by the gospel. We who live, habitually, in the sunshine of revelation, little know fron what, even here upon earth, it has redeemed us. We can form but a feeble estimate of what mankind would be without it. It requires that a man * should live for sometime in a coal-pit, in order to his appreciating the advantages of the light of the sun; and we must go, with Captain Taylor into the society of that religious sect in India, whose horrid practices have but lately been revealed, in order duly to understand the advantages which we possess in the system of religion under which we have the happiness to live, and by which alone we have been rescued from the most deplorable depravity and degradation. Indeed, if we mistake not, before this paper has been brought to a close, it will very clearly appear, to the impartial reader, that, where the light of the gospel does • Confessions of a Thug, by Captain Taylor. In three vols.-Bentley, London, 1839. not shine upon our unhappy country. men, errors and wickedness, altogether as gross, and altogether as abominable, as those which the pages before us detail will be found to prevail, to an alarming extent, amongst our own misguided population. The system which the pages of Captain Taylor are intended to elucidate, claims an antiquity anterior to the age of Mahomet, although Colonel Sleeman conjectures that it owed its existence "to the vagrant tribes of Mahommedans which continued to plunder the country long after the invasion of India by the Moghuls and Tartars." Its vo taries consist, indiscriminately, of Mahommedans and Hindoos; and as both believe in the power of the goddess Bhowanee, from whom it is said to have derived its origin, and observe Hindoo ceremonies, it is much more reasonable to suppose that the former fell in with the ancient superstition of the latter, than that the latter adopted, with religious reverence, a mere modern innovation. Thuggee is, at once, a religion and a profession. Its votaries are conscientious murderers, who are, upon principles of divine benevolence, at war with the whole human race, beyond the circle which circumscribes themselves, and who feel it a sacred duty to put every man they meet to death, when that can be done without compromising their own safety, and consider themselves entitled, by a divine right, to the effects of their victims, as a reward for their fidelity to the goddess to whom they acknowledge a spiritual allegiance. Their motto, literally is, "kill and take possession;" and so effectual were their means of concealment, that although their dreadful practices were carried on, without intermission, for probably not less than a thousand years, and although their numbers, in all probality, were not less than ten thousand, the British Government never became acquainted with the existence of the system until 1810, when the disappearance of many men of the army, proceeding to and from their homes, induced the commander-in-chief to issue an order warning the soldiers against it.' "In 1812, after the murder by Thugs of Lieut. Monsell, Mr. Halhead, accompanied by a strong-detachment, proceeded to the villages where the murderers were known to reside, and was resisted. The Thugs were discovered to be occupying many villages in the pergunnahs of Sindousé, and to have paid, for generations, large sums annually to Sindia's Government for protection. At this time it was computed that upwards of nine hundred were in those villages alone. The resistance offered by the Thugs to Mr. Halhead's detachment caused their ultimate dispersion, and no doubt they carried the practice of their profession into distant parts of the country, where perhaps it had been unknown before. It appears strange, that as early as 1816 no measures for the suppression of Thuggee were adopted; for that the practices of the Thugs were well known, we have the sirongest evidence in a paper written by Doctor Sherwood, which appeared in the Literary Journal of Madras, and which is admirably correct in the description of the ceremonies and practice of the Thugs of Southern India. One would suppose that they were then considered too monstrous for belief, and were discredited or unnoticed; but it is certain that from that time up to 1830, in almost every part of India, but particularly in Bundelkhund and Western Malwa, large gangs of Thugs were apprehended by Major Borthwick, and Captains Wardlaw and Henley. Many were tried and executed for the murder of travellers, but without exciting more than a passing share of public attention. No blow was ever aimed at the system, if indeed its complete and extensive organization was ever suspected, or, if suspected, believed. "In that year, however, and for some years previously, Thuggee seemed to have reached a rearful height of audacity, and the government could no longer remain indifferent to an evil of such enormous and increasing magnitude. The attention of several distinguished civil officersMessrs. Stockwell, Smith, Wilkinson, Borthwick, and others,--had become attracted with great interest to the subject. Some of the Thugs who had been seized were allowed life on the condition of denouncing their associates, and among others Feringhea, a leader of great notoriety. "The appalling disclosures of this man, so utterly unexpected by Captain (now Colonel) Sleeman, the political agent in the provinces bordering upon the Nerbudda river were almost discredited by that able officer; but by the exhumation in the very grove where he happened to be encamped of no less than thirteen bodies in various states of decay,--and the offer being made to him of opening other graves in and near the spot,--the approver's tale was too surely confirmed; his information was acted upon, and large gangs, which had assembled in Rajpootana for the purpose or going out on Thuggee, were apprehended and brought to trial." Forthwith, the most active measures were taken for the suppression of their dreadful system. Approvers were found, from almost every gang, by whom disclosures were made, which rendered it certain that Thuggee was in active operation over the whole of India; and this information was uniformly corroborated by the disinterment of bodies in places pointed out, where the Thugs had immolated their victims. Our author here observes : "Few who were in India at that period (1831-32,) will ever forget the excitement which the discovery occasioned in every part of the country: it was utterly discredited by the magistrates of many districts, who could not be brought to believe that this silently destructive system could have worked without their knowledge. I quote the following passage from Colonel Sleeman's introduction to his own most curious and able work. "While I was in civil charge of the district of Nursingpoor, in the valley of the Nerbudda, in the years 1822, 1623, and 1824, no ordinary robbery or theft could be committed without my becoming acquainted with it, nor was there a robber or thief of the ordinary kind in the district, with whose character I had not become acquainted in the discharge of my duty as a magistrate; and if any man had then told me that a gang of assassins by profession resided in the village of Kundélee, not four hundred yards from my court, and that the extensive groves of the village of Mundésur, only one stage from me on the road to Saugor and Bophal, was one of the greatest bhils, or places of murder, in all India; that large gangs from Hindoostan and the Dukhun used to rendezvous in these groves, remain in them for days together every year, and carry on their dreadful trade all along the lines of road that pass by and branch off from them, with the knowledge and connivance of the two landholders by whose ancestors these groves had been planted, I should have thought him a fool or a madman, and yet nothing could have been more true; the bodies of a hundred travellers lie buried in and among the groves of Mundésur, and a gang of assassins lived in and about the village of Kundélee, while I was magistrate of the district, and extended their depredations to the cities of Poona and Hyderabad,' "Similar to the preceding, as showing the daring character of the Thuggee operations, was the fact, that at the cantonment of Hingolee, the leader of the Thugs of that district, Hurree Singh, was a respectable merchant of the place one with whom I myself, in common with many others, have had dealings. On one occasion he applied to the officer in civil charge of the district, Captain Reynolds, for a pass to bring some cloths from Bombay, which he knew were on their way accompanied by their owner, a merchant of a town not far from Hingolee he murdered this person, his attendants, and cattle drivers, brought the merchandise up to Hingolee under the pass he had obtained, and sold it openly in the cantonment; nor would this have ever been discovered, had he not confessed it after his apprehension, and gloried in it as a good joke. By this man too and his gang many persons were murdered in the very bazaar of the cantonment, within one hundred yards of the mainguard, and were buried hardly five hundred yards from the line of sentries! I was myself present at the opening of several of these unblessed graves, (each containing several bodies,) which were pointed out by the approvers, one by one, in the coolest manner, to those who were assembled, till we were sickened and gave up further search in disgust. The place was the dry channel of a small water-course, communicating with the river, not broader or deeper than a ditch; it was close to the road to a neighbouring village, one of the main outlets from the cantonment to the country." |