r when Clive, in 1751, came forward with a daring
scheme for its relief. With a few hundred English and sepoys he pushed
through a thunderstorm to the surprise of Arcot, the Nabob's capital,
entrenched himself in its enormous fort, and held it for fifty days
against thousands of assailants. Moved by his gallantry, the Mahrattas,
who had never before believed that Englishmen would fight, advanced and
broke up the siege. But Clive was no sooner freed than he showed equal
vigour in the field. At the head of raw recruits who ran away at the
first sound of a gun, and sepoys who hid themselves as soon as the
cannon opened fire, he twice attacked and defeated the French and their
Indian allies, foiled every effort of Dupleix, and razed to the ground a
pompous pillar which the French governor had set up in honour of his
earlier victories.

[Sidenote: The American Colonies.]

Clive was recalled by broken health to England, and the fortunes of the
struggle in India were left for decision to a later day. But while
France was struggling for the Empire of the East she was striving with
even more apparent success for the command of the new world of the West.
From the time when the Puritan emigration added the four New England
States, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to
those of Maryland and Virginia the progress of the English colonies in
North America had been slow, but it had never ceased. Settlers still
came, though in smaller numbers, and two new colonies south of Virginia
received from Charles the Second their name of the Carolinas. The war
with Holland in 1664 transferred to British rule a district claimed by
the Dutch from the Hudson to the inner Lakes; and this country, which
was granted by Charles to his brother, received from him the name of New
York. Portions were soon broken off from its vast territory to form the
colonies of New Jersey and Delaware. In 1682 a train of Quakers followed
William Penn across the Delaware into the heart of the primaeval forest,
and became a colony which recalled its founder and the woodlands among
which he planted it in its name of Pennsylvania. A long interval elapsed
before a new settlement, which received its title of Georgia from the
reigning sovereign, George the Second, was established by General
Oglethorpe on the Savannah as a refuge for English debtors and for the
persecuted Protestants of Germany.

[Sidenote: Their progress.]

Slow as this progress seem