battle of Sobraon early in 1846. He was subsequently employed in settling the boundaries of the territory of Maharaja Gholáb Sing, the new ruler of Cashmere, and in a mission to Gilgit, and in the spring of 1848, being then assistant to the resident at Lahore, was sent to Multán with instructions to take over the government of that province from Mulráj, the dewán or governor, who had applied to be relieved of it, and to make it over to Khán Sing, another Sikh official, remaining himself in the capacity of political agent to introduce a new system of finance and revenue. On this mission he was accompanied by Lieutenant W. A. Anderson, of the Bombay army, who had been his assistant on his mission to Gilgit, and also by Khán Sing, the dewán designate, and an escort of Sikh troops. The mission reached Multán on 18 April 1848. On the following day Agnew and Anderson were visited by Mulráj, and some discussion, not altogether harmonious, took place as to the terms upon which the province should be given over, Agnew demanding that the accounts for the six previous years should be produced. On the 20th the two English officers inspected the fort and the various establishments, and on their return to their camp in company with Mulráj were attacked and wounded (Anderson severely) by the retainers of the retiring dewán, who immediately rode off at full speed to his country residence. The two wounded Englishmen were placed by their attendants in an idgah, or fortified temple, where, on the following day, their Sikh escort having gone over to the enemy, they were brutally murdered by the adherents of Mulráj.
This tragic incident, so important in its political results, produced a profound sensation throughout India. Both the murdered officers, though young in years (Agnew would have been twenty-six had he lived one day longer), had already established a high reputation in the public service. Anderson had some time previously attracted the favourable notice of Sir Charles Napier in Sind, and the duties upon which Agnew had been employed, including his last most responsible and, as the event proved, fatal mission, sufficed to show the high estimation in which his services were held. Nor was it only as a rising public servant that Patrick Vans Agnew's death was mourned. In private life his brave, modest, and unselfish nature had won the esteem and affection of all who knew him. ‘If,’ wrote Sir Herbert Edwardes to one of his nearest relatives, ‘few of our countrymen in this land of death and disease have met more untimely ends than your brother, it has seldom been the lot of any to be so honoured and lamented.’
[Bengal Civil List; Edwardes's Year in the Punjáb; Kaye's History of the Sepoy War; Marshman's History of India.]
AGUILAR, GRACE (1816–1847), novelist and writer on Jewish history and religion, was born of Jewish parents, of Spanish descent, at Hackney, in June 1816. Of delicate health from infancy, she was chiefly educated at home, and rapidly developed great interest in history, especially in that of the Jews, besides showing much aptitude for music. In her youth she travelled through the chief towns of England, and resided for a long time in Devonshire, whither her family removed in 1828. At an early age she first attempted literary composition. Before reaching her twelfth year she produced a drama on ‘Gustavus Vasa,’ and in her fourteenth year she began a series of poems, of no particular merit, which were published in a collected form in 1835, under the title of the ‘Magic Wreath.’ She never completely recovered from a severe illness by which she was attacked in the same year, and when the death of her father soon afterwards forced her to depend on her writings for a portion of her livelihood, her health gradually declined until her death, twelve years later. At first she devoted herself to Jewish subjects. The ‘Spirit of Judaism,’ her chief work on the Jewish religion, after being printed for private circulation in England, was published in America in 1842, with notes by an American rabbi who dissented from her views, and it met there with a warm welcome. In the treatise she boldly attacked the formalism and traditionalism of modern Judaism, and insisted on the importance of its purely spiritual and high moral aspect, as indicated in much of the Old Testament. Four years later she produced a work with a similar aim for general reading in this country, entitled ‘The Jewish Faith, its Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope.’ And about the same time (1845) she published a series of essays on biblical history, called ‘The Women of Israel.’ Her occasional contributions to periodical literature on religious questions were collected after her death, under the title of ‘Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings,’ 1851. But Grace Aguilar is better known as a voluminous writer of novels, most of which were, however, published posthumously under the editorship of her mother. ‘Home Influence, a Tale for Mothers and Daughters,’ alone appeared in her lifetime (1847). It met at once with a good reception, and, after having
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