overtaken him. A few of them were very gentlemanly-looking men, and courteous, salaaming to us as we passed them. But it was too painful to complete the entire round, so we walked sadly away.
On the 27th of the following month the Emperor was put upon his trial in the Dewanee Khass, having counsel to aid in his defense, and, after a patient investigation lasting nineteen days, was found guilty on all the charges against him, and sentenced to be transported for life. Many thought the sentence too light; but it was probably sufficiently severe thus to pass from a throne to the deck of a convict ship, to end his days among strangers. Zeenat Mahal and one other of his wives shared his exile. He died at Rangoon in 1861. Two years after, when in Burmah for the benefit of my health, I had the opportunity of passing by his lonely grave behind the quarter guard of the English lines. But no Taj or Mausoleum will ever rise over the spot where rests, solitary and alone, on a foreign shore and in a felon's grave, the last descendant of the Great Moguls!
The closing words in the defense of one of his own nobles, the Nawab of Bullubghur, whom I saw tried and sentenced to die in that same Dewanee Khass, might well apply to his Imperial master. The Nawab was a noble-looking man, with dark, lustrous eyes, and fine figure, clad in the usual style of an Oriental prince. There he stood, during those long hours, before that commission of English Officers, making the best defense he could for his life.
He admitted the charge, but pleaded in extenuation, that in sending his wealth and troops to Delhi to help the Emperor he had acted under compulsion. This was known to be untrue, as it was well understood that he had acted freely and promptly, and had even submitted to circumcision, and forsaken his Hindoo faith, to curry favor with the rising Mohammedan power.
He evidently felt, as he closed his address, that he was not believed—that he was a doomed man. With considerable feeling, and in their figurative phraseology, he ended his defense with these words: “Gentlemen, one short year ago I sat on the topmost bough of prosperity and honor; in an evil hour I lent my ear to
