Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/64

Rh 50 L U C L U C of disaffection occurred as early as April 1857, and Sir Henry Lawrence immediately took steps to meet the danger by fortifying the residency and accumulating stores. On the night of the 30th May the expected insurrection broke out ; the men of the 7lst regiment of native infantry, with a few from the other regiments, began to burn the bungalows of their officers, and to murder the inmates, but were dispersed by the European force and fled towards Sitapur. Though the city thus remained in the hands of the British, the symptoms of disaffection amongst the remaining native troops were unmistakable, and on June 11 the military police and native cavalry broke into open revolt, followed on the succeeding morning by the native infantry. On the 20th news of the fall of Cawnpur arrived ; and on the 29th occurred the failure of Lawrence s attack upon the advancing enemy, in consequence of which the British troops fell back on Lucknow, abandoned the Machi Bhawan, and concentrated all their strength upon the resi dency. The siege of the enclosure began upon July 1. Three un successful assaults were made by the mutineers on July 20, August 10, and August 18 ; but meanwhile the British within were dwind ling away. On September 5 news of the relieving force under Outram and Havelock reached the garrison, and on the 22d the relief arrived at the Alambagh, a walled garden on the Cawnpur road held by the enemy in force. Havelock stormed the Alambagh, and on the 25th fought his way with continuous opposition through the narrow lanes of the city. On the 26th he arrived at the gate of the residency enclosure, and was welcomed by the gallant defenders within. The sufferings of the besieged had been very great ; but even after the first relief it became clear that Lucknow could only be temporarily defended till the arrival of further reinforcements should allow the garrison to cut its way out. Night and day the enemy kept up a continual firing against the British position, while Outram, who had reassumed the command which he yielded to Have lock during the relief, retaliated by frequent sorties. Throughout October the garrison continued its gallant defence, and a small party, shut up in the Alambagh, and cut off unexpectedly from the main body, also contrived to hold good its dangerous post. Mean while Sir Colin Campbell s force had advanced from Cawnpur, and arrived at the Alambagh on the 10th of November. The Alambagh, the Dilkusha palace, south-east of the town, the Martiniere, and the Sikandra Bagh, the chief rebel stronghold, were successively carried in the course of the six following days, and the second relief was suc cessfully accomplished. Even now, however, it remained impos sible to hold Lucknow, and Sir Colin Campbell determined, before undertaking any further offensive operations, to return to Cawnpur with his army, escorting the civilians, ladies, and children rescued from their long imprisonment in the residency, with the view of forwarding them to Calcutta. On the morning of the 20th Nov ember the troops received orders to march for the Alambagh ; and the residency, the scene of so long and stirring a defence, was aban doned for a while to the rebel army. Outram with 3500 men held the Alambaghuntil the commander-in-chief could return to recaptuie the capital. The rebels in great strength again surrounded the greater part of the city, for a circuit of 20 miles, with an external line of defence. On the 2d of March 1858 Sir Colin Campbell found himself free enough in the rear to march once more upon Lucknow. He first occupied the Dilkusha, and posted guns to commanJ the Martiniere. On the 5th Brigadier Franks arrived with 600C men; Outram s force then crossed the Gumti, and advanced from the direction of Faizabad, while the main body attacked from the south east. After a week s hard fighting, March 9-15, the rebels* were completely defeated, and their posts captured one by one. LUCRETIUS (T. LUCRETIUS CABUS), more than any of the great Roman writers, has acquired a new interest in the present day. This result is due, not so much to a truer perception of the force and -purity of his style, of the majesty and pathos of his poetry, or of the great sincerity of his nature, as to the recognition of the relation of his subject to many of the questions on which speculative curiosity is now engaged. It would be misleading to speak of him, or of the Greek philosophers whose tenets he expounds, as anticipating the more advanced scientific hypotheses of modern times. But it is in his poem that we find the most complete account of the chief effort of the ancient mind to explain the beginning of things, and to understand the course of nature and man s relation to it. Physical philosophy in the present day is occupied with the same problems as those which are discussed in the first two books of the De Rerum Natura. The renewed curiosity as to the origin of life, the primitive condition of man, q nd his progressive advance to civiliza tion finds an attraction in the treatment of the same subjects in the fifth book, The old war between science and theology, which has been revived in the present generation, is fought, though with different weapons, yet in the same ardent and uncompromising spirit throughout the whole poem, as it is in the writings of living thinkers. In comparing the controversies of the present day with those of which we find the record in Lucretius, we are reminded of the poet s own description of the war of&quot; elements in the world, &quot; Denique, tantopere inter se cum maxima mundi Pugnent membra, pio nequaquam concita bello, Nonne vides aliquam longi certaminis ollis Posse dari finem ?&quot; 1 But this concurrence with the stream of speculation in the present day is really the least of his permanent claims on the attention of the world. His position both among ancient and modern writers is unique. No one else com bines in the same degree the contemplative enthusiasm of a philosopher, the earnest purpose of a reformer and moral teacher, and the profound pathos and sense of beauty of a great poet. He stands alone among his countrymen as much in the ardour with which he observes and reasons on the processes of nature as in the elevation of feeling with which he recognizes the majesty of her laws, and the vivid sympathy with which he interprets the manifold variety of her life. It would have been an instructive study to have traced some connexion between his personal circumstances and the intellectual and moral position which he holds. We naturally ask what influence of teachers in Rome or Athens first attracted him to this study and observation of natural phenomena, what early impressions or experience gave so sombre a colouring to his view of life, how far the delight, so strange in an ancient Roman, which he seems to find in a kind of recluse communion with nature, and the spirit of pathetic or indignant satire in which he treats the more violent phases of passion and the more extravagant modes of luxury, was a recoil from the fascination of pleasures in which his con temporaries and equals freely indulged. We should like also to know how far the serene heights which he professed to have attained procured him exemption from or allevia tion of the actual sorrows of life. But such questions, suggested by the strong interest which the impress of personal feeling and character stamped on the poem awakens in the reader, can only be raised ; there are no ascertained facts by which they can be settled. There is no ancient poet, with the exception of Homer, of whose history so little is positively known. Unlike Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus, and nearly all the great Roman writers, he is absolutely silent on the subject of his own position and fortunes. Nor is this silence com pensated by any personal reference to him in the works of his two eminent contemporaries by whom the social life of their age is so amply illustrated, Cicero and Catullus, although it is certain that each of them read his poem almost immediately after it was given to the world. The great poets of the following ages were influenced by his genius, but they tell us nothing as to his career. So con sistently does he seem to have followed the maxim of his master, &quot; Pass through life unnoticed,&quot; and to have realized, in the midst of the excited political, intellectual, and social life of the last years of the republic, the ideal of those &quot; who do not wish to be known even while living.&quot; 2 Our sole information concerning his life is found in the brief summary of Jerome, written more than four centuries after the poet s death. Scholars are now agreed that in these summaries, added to his translation of the Eusebian 1 &quot; In fine, as the mightiest members of the world are battling fiercely together in an unhallowed feud, seest thou not that some end of the long warfare may be reached by them ? &quot; &quot; Quoted from Pliny by M. Martha iu Le Poeme de Lucrece.