Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/113

 amid a rich country famed as the garden of India. With its straggling suburbs, it covered a space six miles long and about half as broad, including groups of stately temples, palaces and pleasure-gardens. The central part of the city was densely populated, and the chief streets offered a lively scene, thronged as they were with natives in the picturesque costumes of all parts of India, with rich palanquins, with stately elephants, and camels in gay caparisons, with gorgeously-attired cavaliers and their swaggering attendants. Every man in those days went armed, frays and outrages being too common under the weak tyranny of the lately deposed sovereign; even beggars demanded charity almost at the point of the sword, and it was a point of prudence as well as of honour for every dignitary to surround himself with a retinue of formidable warriors.

Over this swarm of dangerous elements Sir Henry Lawrence now held rule, worthy brother of the Punjaub administrator. There were four Lawrence brothers, who all manfully played parts in the Mutiny. Among them Henry seems to have been the most lovable, distinguished as a philanthropist not less than as a statesman and a soldier. The institutions which he founded for the education of soldiers' children