inevitable, in the interests of order, to relieve him temporarily of his charge.
Mr. Colvin continued to do what he could to collect and to forward intelligence; and to communicate with the Governor-General, and others. His papers show that he wrote constantly, and at much length; trusting to some letters at least passing safely through. But to the last the Calcutta Government could not refrain from reproaches. It seems to have been thought in Calcutta that Mr. Colvin could see from Agra to Benares in June and July 1857, as clearly as one glances from Government House across the Maidán; or that a letter could be sent from Agra to Calcutta as surely as from Chauringhi to Sérampur. 'A full despatch,' he wrote to Lord Canning on July 30, 'goes on my supposed neglect in getting intelligence and in sending communications. In that matter I am certainly guiltless; and I trust that many of my letters will have been intermediately received.' Thrice only does he allude to his health; once on August 6 to Lord Canning; once, a week before his death, on September 2, to Sir John Lawrence; on September 4, to Mr. Campbell. To Lord Canning he closes a letter with the words, 'My own health is, I fear, much shaken.' To Sir John Lawrence he writes, ' If you ask my disease, it is the utter powerlessness, with such rotten agency as we have, of doing for the present any good.' To Mr. Campbell he writes in terms similar to those used to Lord Canning. He has been blamed by an historian of the Mutinies
