trials and adventures such as fall to the lot of few. The epitaph on her tomb gives her history in brief, and reads as follows:

Beneath are deposited the remains of Mrs. Frances Johnson; she was the second daughter of Edward Crook, Esq., Governor of Fort St. David, on the coast of Coromandel, and was born on the 10th April, 1725. In 1738 she intermarried with Parry Purple Templer, Esq., nephew of Mr. Braddyl, then Governor of Calcutta, by whom she had two children, who died infants. Her second husband was James Altham, of Calcutta, Esq., who died of the small-pox a few days after the marriage. She next intermarried with William Watts, Esq., the Senior Member of the Supreme Council of Bengal, by whom she had issue four children: Amelia, who married the Right Honourable Charles Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, by whom she had issue one child, Robert Banks, now Earl of Liverpool, &c. &c.; Edward, now of Hanslope Park, in the county of Bucks., Esq.; Sophia, late the wife, now the widow of George Poyntz Ricketts, Esq., late Governor of Barbadoes; and William, who died an infant. After the death of Mr. Watts, she in 1774 intermarried with the Rev. William Johnson, then principal chaplain of the Presidency of Fort William, by whom she had no issue. She died on the 3rd February, 1812, aged 87, the oldest British resident in Bengal, universally beloved, respected, and revered.

Mrs. Johnson's third husband, Mr. Watts, was chief at Cossimbazar, an important factory of the East India Company in the neighbourhood of the Nawab's capital Murshedabad, in 1756, when Suraj-ud-Dowlah attacked and proposed to exterminate the English in Bengal. Cossimbazar was taken by the Nawab on his march to Calcutta, and Mr. Watts and his family were made prisoners, as were all the English at the different trading centres; among others, Warren Hastings, then a young writer, who, with one or two others, was released on the French and Dutch merchants at Cossimbazar becoming bail for them. Mr. Watts was less fortunate, for, as the chief of the English factory, he was kept prisoner, and with another Englishman, Mr. Collet, was carried in the train of the Nawab in his march against Calcutta. Mrs. Watts and her children were sent to Murshedabad, and there the Nawab's mother, the Begum, with whom Mrs. Watts had been on friendly terms before, treated the family with every kindness, and ultimately sent them down the river to the French settlement at Chandernagore, where they were received and sheltered with hospitality. The Begum, at Mrs. Watts' entreaty, interceded with the Nawab on his return, and obtained Mr. Watts' release, so that he was able to rejoin his wife and family.

When Clive's conquering arms had recovered Calcutta and taught the Nawab the strength of the English, Mr. Watts returned to Murshedabad as the English Agent or Resident at Court. Here, when it was found that the Nawab was plotting against the English, VOL. CCLXXXII. NO. 1996.

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Mr. Watts carried out the dangerous negotiations with the dissatisfied nobles which ended in the Battle of Plassey and the deposition of Suraj-ud-Dowlah in favour of a Nawab of Clive's creating. In 1760, when the English were securely established, Mr. Watts returned with his family to England, where he died. Mrs. Watts went back to India, in 1769, to arrange her husband's affairs, and, having married the Rev. William Johnson, she, on that gentleman's retirement from India in 1788, elected to remain behind, and she continued to reside in Calcutta till her death, a leading member of society. She was popularly known as Begum Johnson, possibly, we may surmise, from her frequent reference to her whilom patroness, the Murshedabad Begum, and also, no doubt, from an appropriateness of the title to the dignified lady whose hospitable house was a fashionable rendezvous for Calcutta society. The old burial-ground of St. John's Churchyard had been closed for nearly half a century when Mrs. Johnson died, in 1812, but she had some years before her death obtained a promise from Lord Wellesley that her remains should rest in that ground, and she had herself selected the spot where her grave was made. Her funeral was attended by the Governor-General in his state coach drawn by six horses, and attended by his body-guard, and also by the Members of Council and all the élite of Calcutta society.

After Clive's victory at Plassey, by which the English were at once firmly established as a power in the land, Calcutta began to grow and to expand from a settlement and factory to a city. Strong enough to guard their own, there was no further need for the English to gather together for safety, and the houses fast spread to the east and south of the old Fort. It was then felt that a cemetery further removed from the town was desirable, and a site was selected in what was then an outlying district, though it is long since the city came up to and spread far beyond it. A road was made to the new ground, and was called Burying Ground Road, and up this road passed many a sad procession bearing to their last resting-place, "the homeless grave in lone, barbaric land," many a one who "died for England."

A writer of that period, Sophia Goldborne, in a lively book entitled, "Hartley House, Calcutta," published in 1789, wrote:

Funerals are indeed solemn and affecting things at Calcutta, no hearses being here introduced or hired mourners employed, for, as it often happens in the gay circles, that a friend is dined with one day and the next in eternity, the feelings are interested, the sensations awful, and the mental question for the period of interment at least, which will be to-morrow's victim? The departed one of

whatever rank is carried on men's shoulders (like walking funerals in England), and a procession of gentlemen equally numerous and respectable from the extent of genteel connections following, the well-situated and the worthy being universally esteemed and caressed while living, and lamented when dead.

The same writer, describing the cemeteries, of which there are two, one on either side of the broad tree-shaded road, the old Burying Ground Road, now Park Street, wrote:

Obelisks, pagodas, &c., are erected at great expense, and the whole spot is surrounded by as well turned a walk as those you traverse in Kensington Gardens, ornamented with a double row of aromatic trees, which afford a solemn and beautiful shade; in a word, not old Windsor Churchyard, with all its cypress and yews, is in the smallest degree comparable to them.

Time has dealt hardly with the old Calcutta burial-grounds, and it would not be easy to find a spot of more saddening and melancholy interest. The immense obelisks and pagodas, weather-stained and marred, rise dark and gloomy in endless succession; they shoulder each other in crowded ranks, and where the larger structures have left the least space a small tomb has been edged in, till it is often impossible to approach a particular monument without climbing on its neighbour.

The cemeteries are surrounded by high walls and tall trees, and the sound of the traffic of the busy streets beyond comes in a subdued murmur, while faint and sweet may be borne to the listening ear the soft, far chimes of the distant cathedral clock. The burning Indian sun forbids a visit to the cemeteries during the day, and it is usually in the sad evening hour that the stranger paces the quiet walks, with the level rays of the golden sun casting long shadows across his path, and a faint aromatic smell rising from the brown earth and the thick coarse grass, to greet the cool evening air after the fierce heat of the day. The shrill voices of the little brown children at play in the neighbouring native homesteads come softened by distance; the brown kites wheel in the evening air, and the gaunt form of a jackal may skulk away among the tombs: no other sign of life disturbs the precincts devoted to death.

Down the long Burying Ground Road, on a sultry April morning in 1794, moved a procession of all that was highest and best in Calcutta society, paying the last tribute of honour and respect to one who had won honour and respect in a fuller measure than is granted to most. Sir William Jones, the great Oriental scholar, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal, was laid to his rest in the South Park Street Burying Ground on April 28, 1794. Far away in his native land his monument stands in St. Paul's Cathedral, but the lofty obelisk that marks his grave towers up to

the brazen Indian sky under which he carried out the great labours of his life, and bears the following noble inscription, written by himself:

Here was deposited the mortal part of a man who feared God, but not death, and maintained independence, but sought not riches; who thought none below him but the base and unjust, none above bim but the wise and virtuous; who loved his parents, kindred, friends, and country with an ardour which was the chief source of all his pleasures and all his pains; and who, having devoted his life to their service and to the improvement of his mind, resigned it calmly, giving glory to his Creator, wishing peace on earth, and with good-will to all creatures on the twenty-seventh day of April, in the year of our blessed Redeemer, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four.

On a separate tablet is the simple record :

Sir William Jones, Kt., died the 27th April, 1794, aged forty-seven years and seven months.

Although a century has elapsed since Sir William Jones died, the following extracts from an unpublished private diary of the time bring vividly before us the almost passionate sorrow that was evoked among his fellow-countrymen in Calcutta by his death in the prime of life and in the midst of his labours, which, as Dean Milman has said, "first opened the poetry and wisdom of our Indian Empire to wondering Europe." It may be premised that Lady Jones had been obliged to leave India for her health, and Sir William was living alone in his house at Garden Reach at the time of his death. Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, was Governor-General, and had a "garden-house" at Garden Reach.

April 27th, 1794.-Received the news that Sir William Jones was no more ! I confess it struck me severely, and, in the bitterness of my grief, I almost cursed my own existence to think that such really great and good men as he should be snatched away, whilst the wicked and ignorant are permitted not only to walk this planet, but to commit their depredations upon it! Whatever is, is right!

April 28th.-Arose at 5. W. and I rode on horseback to the west of the Fort, round by the eastward to Chowringhee, where we waited upwards of an hour to see the funeral of Sir William Jones pass by. All the European troops in garrison were there with clubbed arms.

April 30th.-Had a conversation this day with R. about Sir William Jones, whose lamented death lays uppermost in my mind. He told me he had been ill for about a week or ten days (or rather complained of being ill about that period) before his death. That Dr. Hare . . . found a tumour as big as his fist; inquiring when this came, he said it appeared about four or five months ago, but that, as it came of itself, he imagined it would go away in the same manner, and had taken no notice of it, only by way of exercise had walked every day before his carriage to and from the garden (to attend Court), upwards of four miles. On being asked if it had not been very painful, he replied that it had been so very severe that he would not go through such another period for all the riches and honours in the world! On hearing this, one is tempted to cry out, "Oh! the weakness of a strong mind!" He said he thought it beneath him to let the mind bend to the

pain of the body. He must have been delirious much longer than they think, as he would not let anyone approach him, not even his favourite slave boy, Otho. Sir John Shore had even offered to sit up with him, but he answered he was better, and his mind quite easy. On Saturday night the doctors thought him better, and had recommended him to go home either on the Boddington or Sugarcane (Botany Bay ships), by which time they hoped to have him able to undertake the voyage, proposing first to salivate him. Early on Sunday morning the consomah ran over to Sir John Shore's and said his master was "mad," by which he understood he was delirious, and accordingly went there accompanied by Sir Robert Abercromby, the General. Just as they came to the premises, another servant came out and said that, since the consomah had left the house, Sir William had called for a dish of tea, drunk it, and died! On their entrance, they found him reclining on the couch, his head against his right hand, and the forefinger upwards towards his forehead, his usual attitude; his extremities were warm. Thus ended the mortal career of that truly great man, Sir William Jones.

Just eleven months before Sir William Jones' death, a very different type of man, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Kyd, was laid to rest in the same cemetery. Colonel Kyd was a devoted and eminent botanist, and it was due to his exertions that the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, was established by the East India Company in 1786, with a view to the introduction into Bengal of plants and trees of economic value. Colonel Kyd was Military Secretary to Government, and resided at his garden-house at Shalimar, on the opposite bank of the Hooghly to Calcutta. He appears to have been very fond of the place, for in his will, dated a week before his death, he gave detailed directions for the up-keep of his garden and establishment until the return of his relative and heir, Major, afterwards General, Alexander Kyd. Colonel Kyd also desired, in earnest and pathetic terms that show how his last thoughts clung to the place where he had no doubt spent many days of quiet happiness, that his remains should be committed to earth in his own garden at a spot which he indicated, privately and without military honours. This wish was, however, disregarded; it was probably felt that it would be improper to allow so distinguished and honoured a servant of the Company to be laid in unconsecrated ground, and his funeral, which was ordered by Government, took place with military honours in the South Park Street Cemetery. Possibly as a concession to his expressed wishes, neither monument nor tablet was placed over his grave, which, left thus unprotected, was soon obliterated by the destructive agencies ever at work in the Indian climate. In later years a well was sunk on the very spot, and the dead man's last wish for an obscure grave has thus been granted.

A handsome monument, a funeral urn, sculptured in white marble