d an independent spirit, and seemed to care little what others
thought of him; even at Haileybury, at that time a training-school for
the service of the East India Company, he was most irregular in his
studies, though he carried off several prizes; and he seems to have
impressed his fellows rather as an uncouth person who preferred mooning
about the college, or rambling alone through the country-side, to
spending his days in the pursuits which they esteemed.

When the time came for John Lawrence to take up his work, his brother
Henry, his senior by five years, was also going out to India to rejoin
his company of artillery, and the brothers sailed together. John had to
spend ten weary months in Calcutta learning languages, and was very
unhappy there. Ill-health was one cause; another was his distaste for
strangers' society and his longing for home; it was only the definite
prospect of work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a
post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to
leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had
acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this
stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the
peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence in the
coming years.

Delhi has been to many Englishmen besides John Lawrence a city of
absorbing interest. It had even then a long history behind it, and its
history, as we in the twentieth century know, is by no means finished
yet. It stands on the Jumna, the greatest tributary of the Ganges, at a
point where the roads from the north-west reach the vast fertile basin
of these rivers, full in the path of an invader. Many races had swept
down on it from the mountain passes before the English soldiery appeared
from the south-east; its mosques, its palaces, its gates, recall the
memory of many princes and conquerors. At the time of Lawrence's arrival
it was still the home of the heir of Akbar and Aurangzeb, the last of
the great Mughals. The dynasty had been left in 1804, after the wars of
Lord Wellesley, shorn of its power, but not robbed of its dignity or
riches. As a result it had degenerated into an abuse of the first order,
since all the scoundrels of the district infested the palace and preyed
upon its owner, who had no work to occupy him, no call of duty to rouse
him from sloth and sensuality. The town was filled with a turbulent
population