which have arrived do high honour to the courage and the
gallantry of your Majesty's forces, as well as of the East India
Company's Army, yet the loss sustained has been very great, and many
valuable officers have fallen the victims of a widespread conspiracy
which seems to have embraced within its confederation the most warlike
tribes of the Afghan nation.

Lord Fitzgerald begs leave most humbly to lay before your Majesty an
interesting despatch from Lord Auckland, comprising the most important
details of the late events in Afghanistan.

It is very satisfactory to Lord Fitzgerald to be enabled humbly to
acquaint your Majesty that Lord Auckland has decided on waiting
the arrival of his successor, Lord Ellenborough, and states to Lord
Fitzgerald that he will feel it to be his duty to remain in his
[Government], in the present critical state of affairs, until he is
relieved by the new Governor-General.

All of which is most humbly submitted to your Majesty, by your
Majesty's most dutiful Subject and Servant,

FITZGERALD AND VESCI.

[Footnote 3: _See_ Introductory Note, 1841, _ante_, p. 254.
The rebellion broke out at Cabul on 2nd November, and Sir
Alexander Burnes was murdered. (Intro Note to Ch. X)]

[Pageheading: THE OXFORD MOVEMENT]

_Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria._

BROADLANDS, _12th January 1842._

Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He has this
morning received your Majesty's letter of the 10th inst., and is glad
to infer from it that your Majesty and the Prince are both well and in
good spirits.

With respect to the Oxford affair, your Majesty is aware that for a
long time a serious difference has been fermenting and showing itself
in the Church of England, one party leaning back towards Popery, and
the other either wishing to keep doctrines as they are, or, perhaps,
to approach somewhat nearer to the dissenting Churches. This
difference has particularly manifested itself in a publication, now
discontinued, but which has been long going on at Oxford, entitled
_Tracts for the Times_, and generally called the Oxford Tracts. The
Professorship of Poetry is now vacant at Oxford, and two candidates
have been put forward, the one Mr Williams, who is the author of one
or two of the most questionable of the Oxford Tracts, and the other Mr
Garbett, who is a representative of the opposite party. Of course the
result of this election, which is made by the Masters of