Mr. Colvin's own papers, much perished with his library at Agra in 1857, but there remains a little of interest. During the years 1837-1839, when he was Private Secretary to Lord Auckland, he kept a diary of the work which passed through his hands. In the fourteen volumes of this diary, among notes of daily work and passages from his private reading, are preserved extracts from letters addressed to Lord Auckland or to his Private Secretary by the chief actors in the events of that time. Some of the flotsam and jetsam of his miscellaneous papers came also to the surface after the wreck of 1857. Letters of interest, written by Sir William Macnaghten when on his way to negotiate with Mahárájá Ranjít Singh the terms of the invasion of Kábul, are in the present writer's hands. So are copies of letters written by Mr. Colvin, as Lieutenant-Governor, from November 1853 to May 1857; and copies of those which he addressed to the Governor-General (Lord Canning), the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Dalhousie, and to others during the months of May, June, July, August, till within a week of his death, on September 9, 1857. The writer, finally, is much indebted to Mr. F. Reade, for allowing him to use an unpublished narrative written by his father, the late Mr. E. A. Reade, an eminent member of the Indian Civil Service, describing the course of affairs at Agra in the Mutinies of 1857.
The career of Mr. Colvin as an Indian civilian was in some respects singular. Although he was on the Bengal establishment, barely half the period of his
