had elapsed since he bade them farewell, their sorrow was as fresh as if he had just breathed his last under that roof which, in doubt, in difficulty, and in distress, had so frequently been their refuge. These are arguments of his worth the most genuine that can be offered, and which it would now be injurious to suppress; others may speak of the richness of his conversation, the play fulness of his fancy, the delicacy of his taste, of the almost unequalled vigour and retentiveness of his memory, which, had it not been overshadowed by higher intellectual qualities, would alone have constituted him an extraordinary man-of that memory which always supplied him with the apposite quotation, the suitable illustration, the decisive authority-but it has been the main object of these pages (however imperfectly attained) to discover something of the hidden man of the heart,' and to hold out to those who cannot hope to rival the high endowments of Bishop Heber, or to follow him in the public and splendid parts of his career, the imitation of those virtues which the under-current, as well as the palpable course, of his life presented-of his charity, his humility, his abandonment of every selfish feeling, his piety, at once enthusiastic and practical, exhibited in the unobtrusive and heartfelt purity of his own life, and in the tempered fervour and happy fruits of his labours as a minister of the gospel.

IT

6

ART. VII.-Narrative of the Burmese War, detailing the Operations of Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell's Army, from its landing at Rangoon in May, 1824, to the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace at Yandaboo, in February, 1826. By Major Snodgrass, Military Secretary to the Commander of the Expedition, and Assistant Political Agent in Ava. London. 1827. T requires time to get at the real state of what is going on at the distance of twelve thousand miles; but the truth will come out at last. When the Burmese war was first announced in England, we, in common with the general opinion then prevailing, in which the Directors of the East India Company were supposed to participate, were inclined to consider the Bengal government as having acted with too great precipitancy, and as appearing too anxious to strike a blow before they had tried the milder course of negotiation. We are now satisfied that a rupture had for some time been unavoidable; that sound policy, we may almost say the salvation of India, demanded the utmost promptitude of action; and that any attempt at negotiation would not only have failed, but tended to hasten and enforce the blow that was meditated against our power. Beset, as we were,

with

with Runjeet Singh on the north-west, the Burmans on the east, the usurper of Burtpore in the centre, all ready to join in a confederacy against our dominion, had we quietly waited for that invasion of the capital by the Burmese, which was on the eve of being undertaken, or had we made the attempt on Burtpore in the spring of 1824, and failed, as we probably should, and as we once before had done, for want of adequate preparation and the necessary means,-a flame might have burst forth over all India, which it would have been no easy matter to extinguish. Thanks to the decision of Lord Amherst and his council, we are now in a state of safety and tranquillity for many years to come.

Of the intrigues of the Burmese with the princes of India, Lord Hastings, Lord Minto, and even Sir John Shore, had ample proofs, and the two former were decidedly of opinion that a war would in the end be inevitable; both, however, deemed it expedient to temporise, and such forbearance produced no other effect than an aggravated degree of insolence, and an extension of encroachment. Their restless character, their arrogant conduct and unfounded pretensions had, on various occasions, endangered the relations of peace subsisting between the two countries, and had, in fact, long kept the frontier provinces of Bengal in constant dread of invasion. That the court of Ava,' says Major Snodgrass, had been for many months preparing for a rupture with the government of India, the tone and conduct of the governors of Arracan and the provinces lying contiguous to our frontier, and the assemblage of troops in that quarter, afford the strongest evidence; offensive warfare was obviously intended.' In fact, considerable bodies of troops crossed the Arracan mountains; and made no scruple of boasting that an army of thirty thousand men was about to invade Bengal. Major Snodgrass says, that

'Ample evidence was also furnished, that so far from being ignorant of the conduct and aggressions of the Arracan chiefs, which had caused the war, they were fully sanctioned by his Burmhan Majesty, who, twelve months before hostilities commenced, was devising plans and making arrangements for the conquest of Bengal. Maha Bandoola, then high in favour, was the grand projector of the scheme, and, with a hundred thousand men, which he said his majesty could with ease assemble, pledged himself for its execution. The king went even the length of consulting a foreign residenter at Ava; and who will longer doubt, that war had been resolved on, and success anticipated, when it is stated, on the authority of those who were present on the spot, that Maha Bandoola marched into Arracan, provided with golden fetters, in which the Governor-General of India was to be led captive to Ava ?'-p. 277. * See the extract from one of Bishop Heber's letters in the preceding article, p. 474.

This Bandoola had, in fact, some time before the expedition reached Rangoon, proceeded to take command of the Arracan army destined for the invasion of Bengal; and lost no time in commencing offensive operations: with a superior force he surrounded a small British post, who made an honourable but useless resistance. Some of the officers and sepoys effected their escape, but great numbers fell into the hands of the enemy, by whom the European officers and many of the native soldiers were most barbarously put to death. Exaggerated reports of the strength and ferocity of the Burmese troops,' says Major Snodgrass, 'were soon in circulation, carrying alarm even to Calcutta, the very name of Burman spreading dread and terror among the native population. The peasants on the frontier fled in dismay from their villages; and every idle rumour was magnified so industriously, by timid or designing people, that the native merchants of Calcutta were with difficulty persuaded to refrain from removing their families and property from under the very guns of Fort William.' In the mean time, the British lion was rousing from his repose, and his voice was heard at Rangoon almost before he of the 'golden foot' had uttered the boast, that he would prevent the English from disturbing even the women of Rangoon in cooking their rice.' We should almost, indeed, have said, that the rapidity with which the armament destined for this service was sent forth to its destination was unexampled, had not a recent occasion nearer home shown, even more strongly, what the energies of Englishmen, in cases of necessity, are capable of accomplishing. We allude, of course, to the bringing forward. of those ships of the line which transported our little army to Portugal, the other day, with a rapidity that was felt and spoken of in every court of Europe, from Petersburg to Madridmore particularly in Germany, where the tone of conversation had for some time past been, the depressed, enfeebled, humiliated England. We may guess their surprise when informed, almost as soon as the several ambassadors could announce to their respective courts the king's message to the two houses of parliament, that a British army of five thousand men, fully equipped in all its departments, had landed in Portugal, and that eight sail of the line were floating on the waters of the Tagus.*

The

The rapidity with which this armament was sent forth, without any previous preparation, is worthy of being recorded. On Friday evening, the 8th December, England was first called upon for assistance; on Saturday the cabinet decided to give it ; on Sunday, the king gave his assent; on Monday, the message was carried down to parliament; on the 16th, the first detachment, consisting of the 4th regiment, sailed; on Wednesday the 20th, the remainder of the troops were all embarked on board the guard-ships and sailed; and before the end of the month the whole were in the Tagus.

1

The government of India, with no such naval means, but with equal energy, put forth her little army to punish the iniquitous and insolent conduct of the Burmese; not, however, to oppose them on the barren mountains of Arracan, or in the impenetrable fastnesses and pestilential jungles of Chittagong; but, where they least expected it, in the river that leads through the heart of their empire; and to take possession of that very city, whose women were not to be disturbed in cooking their rice,' at the very moment, too, when the mighty Bandoola was preparing to march to Calcutta. This armament consisted of from five to six thousand men, under the command of Major-General Campbell. It left the Andamans, where it had rendezvoused from Calcutta and Madras, on the morning of the 5th of May, under the protection of His Majesty's ships Liffey and Larne; the former commanded by Commodore Grant, and the latter by Captain Marryat; the ships anchored within the bar of the Rangoon river on the 10th; and on the 11th the Liffey stood up close to the principal battery at the king's wharf in Rangoon-the transports anchoring in her No one can have forgotten how Lord Exmouth on the poop of the Queen Charlotte, to spare the unnecessary effusion of blood, waved his hat to disperse the assembled multitude, before he would suffer the first broadside to be discharged against the fort and town of Algiers. A similar course was followed at Rangoon.

rear.

Having furled sails and beat to quarters, a pause of some minutes ensued, during which not a shot was fired; on our side humanity forbade that we should be the first aggressors upon an almost defenceless town, containing, as we supposed, a large population of unarmed and inoffensive people; besides, the proclamations and assurances of protection which had been sent on shore the preceding day, led us to hope that an offer of capitulation would still be made. The Burmese, on their part, stood for some time inactive at their guns, apparently unwilling to begin the unequal contest; until, urged by the threats and orders of their chiefs, they at length opened their feeble battery on the shipSo true and so apposite to this occasion was that brilliant passage of a speech, addressed to the people of Plymouth by the most eloquent statesman of the day, in allusion to ships of war in ordinary,' that our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which,' says Mr. Canning-and how apposite to the point in question—I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted for action. You well know,' he continues, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion-how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage -how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such,' says he, as is one of those magnificent machines, when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself while, apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion.'

ping. The frigate's fire soon silenced every gun on shore; the enemy, unable to withstand her powerful broadside, fled in confusion from their works, and the troops being landed, took possession of a deserted town.'-p. 6.

It appears that, on the preceding day, the governor, hearing of the arrival of the expedition, and feeling himself to be wholly unprepared for resistance, had given orders for driving the whole of the inhabitants to the inmost recesses of the jungle; there the men were to be organized into corps, and the unfortunate women and children to be strictly guarded, as pledges for the good conduct of their fathers, husbands, and brothers, whose desertion or misconduct in the field was, according to the threats of the barbarian, to be punished by the inhuman sacrifice of their nearest female relatives: Rangoon was therefore found to be a bootless prize. The careful policy of the Burmese rulers had, together with the population, removed everything that was likely to be of use to an invading army; nor was anything left in the neighbourhood of the town, beyond a little paddy, or rice in the husk. The situation of the victors was such as could not be viewed without uneasiness. Cut off from all supplies, except what they had brought with them; unprovided with the means of moving, either by land or water; and the rainy monsoon just setting in,-no prospect remained but that of a long residence in the miserable and dirty hovels of Rangoon, situated in the midst of swamps and rice-grounds, which are covered for several months with an interminable inundation.

Under a confident hope that the invasion of the enemy's maritime possessions and the capture of Rangoon could not fail to produce overtures for peace, our army had come unprovided with proper equipment for advancing, either by land or water; it had never been doubted that the country would afford sufficient water-transport to enable them to proceed up the Irrawaddy, if necessary, towards the capital; but, from the first day of landing, it was perceived how erroneously we had estimated the character of the people, and the available resources of the country: not only no supplies were left behind, but every boat and canoe had been removed; and it was evident that the removal of the inhabitants was only the prelude to a concerted plan of laying waste the whole country in our front, in the hope that starvation would speedily force us to leave their shores.

Even the few British merchants, and the American missionaries, who were known to be residing at Rangoon, had disappeared, and their probable fate, for some time, excited general commiseration, till it was ascertained, from the few stragglers left behind, that, on the approach of the expedition, all foreigners

had