The Masons returned to the Lall Baradari in procession, the troops to their barracks, and the spectators to their respective homes.
Thus concluded a ceremony that will not soon be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
Sir George Couper's speech did full justice to the occasion; and that is saying much; for it is difficult to imagine a position more trying than that on which it was spoken, or a subject that required such delicate treatment. With the object of being more generally heard, the speaker was deliberate in his enunciation; and the language of his address is, it must he confessed, chaste, elegant, and to the point, as was to be expected from his well-known powers of English composition.
Some have regretted that the services of H. M.'s 32nd, a detachment of H. M.'s 84th, the 13th N. I., a part of the 48th N. L, the 71st N. I. and the pensioners, present during the siege of Lucknow, were not prominently and specifically noticed. It should, however, be borne in mind, that out of the few names mentioned, three belonged to H. M.'s 32nd Regiment; Colonel Inglis, and Captains Case and MacCabe. In a speech of necessarily limited scope, it would have been difficult—perhaps invidious—to go through, in detail, all out of the vast number who distinguished themselves. Of this, however, we are quite certain, that no intentional slight was implied in the omission; or any desire to depreciate the value and importance of those who are well and universally known to have constituted the chief part and mainstay of the "Illustrious Garrison." The address throughout is full of kindly feelings, and touching recollections; and bears no trace of any desire to depreciate the services of a single branch or individual member of the gallant corps who bore themselves so nobly in all that time of unceasing anxiety, endurance and fatigue: and who met, "day by day, and hour-by hour," peril and death with that unflinching patience and self-abnegation that British soldiers know so well how to exercise. Still, had Sir Henry Lawrence's well-known love for the soldiers who were in the Garrison, his care and unceasing anxiety to spare them unnecessary fatigue and exposure been remembered, the recollection, at such a time and in the presence of so many British soldiers, would have added the crowning grace to a speech that in every other respect was all that could be desired.
The boom of the guns, as the Requiem over the good and the great Sir Henry Lawrence, must have echoed upon the battered ruins of the Residency with a strange new sound to those who, as is well-known, felt the stillness that succeeded the incessant cannonade of the siege painful. It must, we doubt not, have inspired feelings of wonder, and gratitude to the Great Preserver of men, that they have been spared to be present, on the 2nd of January, 1864, to assist in the sacred duty of rescuing from cold oblivion, the heroes and heroines, the sufferers and the slain, of the painful, yet in Lucknow victorious, year 1857.
APPENDIX E.
FROM THE "HOMEWARD MAIL."
A complete nominal list of the European members, including women and children, of the Lucknow Garrison in 1857.
Abbott, Mrs, and child (child dead.)
Aitken, Lieut, and Quartermaster, 13th Native Infantry, and wife.
