by the strain of his almost hopeless task that he could neither eat nor sleep. Early in July he died, like his predecessor, of cholera. General Reed took up the command, but at the end of a week, finding the burden too heavy for his feeble health, gave it over to Brigadier Wilson, who at one time had almost retired in despair, and would probably have done so if not cheered and strengthened by one who, at a distance, was all along the moving spirit of this marvellous siege.
Sir John Lawrence it is, with his lieutenants, Montgomery, Herbert Edwardes, Neville Chamberlain, John Nicholson, who are on all hands hailed as foremost among the saviours of our Indian empire. The Punjaub, where Lawrence bore rule at this crisis, home of the warlike Sikhs, might have been judged our weakest point, yet he turned it into a source of strength. Our latest and hardest conquest as it was, conquerors and conquered had learned to respect one another as worthy foemen, while its manly population bore a contemptuous ill-will towards the rebel Sepoys, and, themselves divided between Sikh and Moslem, did not readily find common cause to make against the English. From this mingled population, Lawrence quickly began to enlist excellent soldiers, weeding out also the Punjaub Sepoys from the ranks of their East-country comrades,
