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62 sidered that the claimant, who inherited a large sum from his adoptive father's savings, was generously treated in being constituted owner of the Bithúr Estate. The Náná sent an envoy to move the English authorities in his behalf; but the Directors were as immoveable as Dalhousie. He nursed his grievance. Shortly before the outbreak of the Mutiny, he made a tour in Upper India, and paid a visit to Lucknow, which so unfavourably impressed Sir H. Lawrence that he wrote to communicate his suspicions to the General commanding at Cawnpur — a warning, which, unhappily, was not believed till tragic experience confirmed its truth.

There were other considerations, of wider range and stronger import even than nationality, which at this time influenced the public mind in India. One was religious disquietude. The pious conservative has generally ample grounds for deploring his lot as born in evil days and a revolutionary epoch. But the classes who, in the India of Lord Dalhousie, wished to stand in the old ways of custom and creed, may well have felt something like consternation at changes which threatened the whole structure of society and struck at the very heart of religion. Creed and custom and institution seemed to be tottering to their fall. Popular education, a prominent feature of Dalhousie's programme, had been inaugurated by a brilliant essay, in which Macaulay assumed as his standpoint the thesis that Hindu mythology was a mere tissue of absurdities.