that sable curtain what a spectacle rearranges
itself; what lurid fires are relit; what sounds
of direful import repossess our ears!

Such a scene, a vision of battle, with all
its attendant horrors, now haunts me; visits
me at midnight, with snarl of trumpet and
beat of drum, and bids me prepare once more
for the hideous strife; jars upon my ear as I
sit daily at my desk, engaged in peacefullest
avocation, with ping of rifle and clash of
bayonet; and causes the sweet voice of my
wife, and the innocent prattle of my children,
to mingle with the despairing cry of the
vanquished, and the hoarse response of the
conqueror.

My present home is in a tolerably-sized
town in the heart of merry England, where
the foot of foe has not trodden for nearly a
thousand years; where the most defensible
edifice is but the Town-hall, which happens
to have a Gothic battlement; and where a
sanguinary and licentious military exists only
in the mitigated form of county police.
There is, in short, nothing in the
circumstances of my position to revive the least
recollection of war and bloodshed, of
fortresses bristling with iron and steel, of hosts
inflamed with the animosity of rival creeds
and races.

Nevertheless, there is ever present to me,
a picture widely different indeed from this
real scene of peace and civilisation. The
vigorous climate, and the cool breezes of my
native land, the face of the country, and the
very beasts of the field and fowls of the
air, suffer transformation. I am snatched
away, in spirit, to another portion of the
globe. The heat is there intense, and, to the
European, almost unbearable; enormous
tracts of jungle, with here and there vast
ravines, and in the extreme distance, snow-
capped hills of gigantic altitude, take the
place of the green fields and gentle undulations
of England. The trumpeting of the
elephant breaks the silence of noonday,
instead of the low of oxen or the bleat of lambs;
the noise of wild and ferocious animals, of all
sorts, is uninterrupted. The hollow roar of
the lion, and the yawning rage-cry of the
Bengal tiger, rend the air; the jackal bays
discordantly; and the hyena laughs as he
bares his cruel teeth. The rhinoceros exalts
his horn occasionally (but without blowing
it), amidst the water-rushes, and the
hippopotamus wallows in the marsh; the stifled
but yet loud complaint of the brown bear is
mingled with the hinny of the zebra, and the
shriek of the peacock with the plover's pipe.
It seems as though the contents of the ark
itself are congregated under that Eastern
sun.

I behold an ancient city, lofty-walled,
magnificent with garden and temple,
defended by a native force of six times the
strength of the besiegers, but doomed (I know
most surely) to fall. It is cursed, by reason
of the terrible crimes which have been
committed in it. I seem to have seen it written
up somewhere, beforehand, in letters of blood,
that the place is to be stormed on a certain
night. The attacking force (to which I do
not belong except in spirit) is mustered
before the gates, the merest handful of men.
The walls of the town, on the other hand, the
windows and the embrasures, are crowded
with foes. The majority of these never move
throughout the scene. They await, with
Eastern indifference, the punishment that
will certainly overtake them, caught, as they
will be, with loaded muskets (for they never
fire off their weapons) in their hands. The
stillness which precedes the storming, is
terrible.

On a sudden the sharp swift whirr of a
rocket is heard from behind the town, and I
see it leap up above the highest towers,
curve, and then drop inward, as though it
beckoned on the host from which it came.
Another and another, until the dark heaven
is bedight with purple and green, and blue,
and the air is sulphurous with gunpowder!
A few cannon-shots succeed, and then the
tramping of many feet at the double (at the
charge), with rolls of musketry, but feebly
returned from the citadel. A rush of excited
faces, with white helmets over them, is seen
above the rampart; they make for the gate
and affix to it a something like a cornsack;
it is a petard; then, they draw back into an
angle of the fortification and await, sword in
hand, the explosion.

At this instant the whole city, as well as
the surrounding country, is illuminated with
ghastly light; red fire bursts from cranny
and chink; and a hundred rockets cleave
the overhanging darkness with glare and
shriek.

Strange to say, the wild beasts of whom
I have spoken, as if roused by this tumult
from their lairs, now break forth into a
chorus, such as might have terrified Van
Amburgh himself. It seems as though the
blood-thirsty creatures were revelling in the
carnage which is about to follow. The petard
refuses to explode: but, with a British cheer,
the impatient besiegers force open the gate
without its help, and pour in beneath the
archway. The sounds of conflict thicken
within the walls upon which the imperturbable
sepoys are still seen keeping watch
unmoved. A mine, flinging gold and silver
into the air, explodes with a terrible sound;
it is the enemy's treasury; immediately
afterwards I am stunned by a still more
frightful thunder; it is the enemy's magazine!
Darkness and silence succeed for
several moments, until a blue light is suddenly
lit, throwing a baleful gleam upon the
spectacle, and a voice (which I recognise as that
of the proprietor of our local zoological
gardens) is heard to proclaim:

"The representation of the Siege of Delhi,
gentlemen and ladies, is now concluded
for this evening, of which it is proposed