dwelt at considerable length on their guest's distinguished career, referring to his unbroken record of brilliant services and the many stirring incidents with which his name had been connected. In concluding his speech he read a letter from Sir Henry Daly, Resident at Indore, regretting his inability to be present to sympathise in the testimony to the 'Bayard of the Punjab.' Reynell Taylor's reply was distinguished by his usual modesty; he said that his services had been of no great importance to the State, and that he was not worthy of the distinction which had been conferred upon him by the promoters of the entertainment. He looked back with pleasure to his intercourse with native gentlemen, for some of whom he had the deepest regard, and one of whom, Nawab Gholam Hussan Khan, he had learnt to trust as readily as any of his own relations. For such men who stood by us when we needed help, who made no sort of stipulation when danger was to the front, but joined us again and again in our time of need, he could not express too warm a regard. He considered that the maintenance of friendly relations with the native gentry depended upon the simple exercise of consideration and tact, combined with Christian taste and feeling, and he had always experienced that while on the one hand natives are very careful of not hurting our feelings, they never resented outspokenness on our part even in regard to religious matters. He spoke with affection of the Mooltani Pathans, with whom he had often served shoulder to shoulder, and confessed his liking for the Sikhs. He thought that consideration for native servants was especially incumbent upon all Englishmen in India. After referring to many of his former companions

and contemporaries and also to the leaders under whom he had served, he mentioned Lord Lawrence and Sir Robert Montgomery as Lieutenant-Governors, as well as dear Sir Donald,' with whom his personal relations had been always most affectionate, even when an official matter regarding his agency for the Puttiala State gave rise to a difference of opinion from which he had himself keenly suffered. He then noticed the extraordinary difficulty of frontier expeditions, the distressing way in which disciplined troops had to be frittered away in the occupation of numerous petty positions, the difficulty of dealing with swarms of hillmen, and the amount of detailed arrangements required. As regards our position in India, he said he was persuaded that a majority of the people had no objection to our rule, but there would always be the turbulent minority with whom firmness was necessary, and therefore we should always be strong enough to hold the country by ourselves, though the help of auxiliaries should not be undervalued, for they had often rendered us most effectual and devoted service. He concluded his speech by expressing the satisfaction it had been to him to join in doing honour, just before his departure, to our beloved Queen, by taking part in the proceedings for proclaiming her Empress of India, adding that the thought of her beneficent reign, and the purity of her Court, had throughout his service constituted a large share of his personal happiness.1

I could not close the story of Reynell Taylor's life in India more fittingly than by quoting the following official recognition of his services :

'From the abridged report in the Civil and Military Gazette, March 1877.

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE HONOURABLE THE LIEUT.GOVERNOR, PUNJAB, IN THE HOME DEPARTMENT, DATED MARCH 27, 1877.

Resolution.

The Honourable the Lieutenant-Governor would desire, before the departure of Major-General' Reynell Taylor, C.B., C.S.I., from the Punjab, to express, on the part of the Government under which this distinguished officer has been so long employed, his high sense of the value of his services, which have extended over the whole period since annexation, and which are associated with some of the most striking events in the history of the British occupation of the province.

General Taylor entered the service in 1840, and joined in the Gwalior campaign of 1843. In 1845 he was present at the battle of Moodkee, in which he was severely wounded, and after the campaign was appointed Assistant to the Resident at Lahore and was stationed at Peshawur, from which place he took a Sikh Brigade to Bunnoo through the Kohat pass to join Lieutenant Edwardes, and for some months of 1848 held the newly reduced Bunnoo Valley with a Sikh force of 5,000 men. During September and October of that year General Taylor was present with the Army before Mooltan. The following month, the Bunnoo force having mutinied and marched to Jhelum, he again went across the Indus, capturing the fort of Lukkee and checking the progress of Sirdar Mahomed Azim Khan, son of the Ameer of Cabul, and, on the advance of General Gilbert to Peshawur, occupied Kohat with irregular troops.

On the annexation of the Punjab General Taylor was appointed a Deputy Commissioner on the Trans-Indus frontier, and has ever since, with the exception of ten months, when he officiated as

' Reynell Taylor retired from active employment as Major-General, but he became Lieutenant-General on October 1, 1877, and General, December 15, 1880.

Commandant of the Guide Corps, been in civil employ under the Punjab Government.

But this employment has not prevented General Taylor performing frequent, and always distinguished, service in the field, both as a military and a political officer. When Commissioner of the Derajat he was in political charge with the force under Sir Neville Chamberlain, which successfully undertook the expedition against the Muhsood Wazirs, and as Commissioner of Peshawur he was in political charge during the Umbeylah campaign, and was present at the destruction of Mulkah by the Guide Corps.

Subsequently General Taylor was Commissioner of the Umballa Division and Agent of the Lieutenant-Governor for the Cis-Sutlej States, and since 1870 has held the office of Commissioner of the Umritsur Division.

The Lieutenant-Governor believes that there is no officer in the Punjab Commission, which has included many honoured and distinguished names, whose services have been more eminent than those of Major-General Taylor. His acquaintance with frontier and Afghan politics is very intimate, and his influence with the chiefs and people has always been great and has always been exercised for good.

The Government which General Taylor has served so long and so faithfully, his brother-officers of the Punjab Commission, and the people of the province, whose best interests he has always had at heart, join in regret at his departure and in esteem for a character in which there is nothing which is not worthy of honour.

The Lieutenant-Governor trusts that General Taylor may have before him many years of usefulness, and that his sound judgment and unsurpassed knowledge of border politics may still be found of service to the State.

Thus was Taylor's active career brought to a close, and on April 3, 1877, he left India never to return.

CHAPTER XIII.

CLOSING YEARS-REST.

1877-1886.

To few people are the remarks of the biographer of Lord Lawrence, when speaking of the close of an Indian administrator's life, more entirely applicable than to Reynell Taylor. 'On returning to England,' says Mr. Bosworth Smith in referring to Robert Mertins Bird, ' after thirty-three years' service, amidst the warm appreciation of all who knew what he had done, and how he had done it, he lived quite unnoticed, and passed to his grave without a single mark of distinction.

'Such is the lot-the lot borne uncomplainingly and even gratefully-of many of our best Indian administrators. One here, and one there, rise to fame and honour, but the rest live a life of unceasing toil, wield a power which within its sphere is such as few European sovereigns wield, and, with an absolute devotion to the good of their subjects, such as few European sovereigns show. They have to be separated from their children during the most impressible period of their life, and the wife is often obliged to prefer the claims of the children to those of her husband. India can thus be no longer, in any true sense of the word, a home to them, and when at length they return to England, they do