On the whole, no branch of the Indian
army deserves greater praise or greater
reliance than, the Irregular Cavalry.

THE SWEETEST OF WOMEN.

THAT accomplished gentleman and elegant
poet, Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beaconsfield,
—Member of Parliament for the borough of
Agmondesham, courtier, wit and orator, man
of wealth and man of fashion—loved and
sang, upwards of two centuries ago, the
charms of Sacharissa.

Hereupon the majority may probably
inquire, Who was she? Who was she, this
beautiful and charming Sacharissa? She whose
name has thus, by the honeyed words of her
lover, been sweetened for ever in the world's
remembrance—literally preserved in the
sugary compliments of verse—candied with
poetry like a very sweetmeat in the bouquet of
our national literature. For, at once, be it
remarked, in regard to this fantastic and
delicious name of Sacharissa, that Dr. Johnson
has observed in reference to it, speaking of it
with characteristic reprehension, and in no
less characteristic phraseology, " The name is
derived from the Latin appellation of sugar,
and implies, if it means anything, a spiritless
mildness and dull goodnature." Whereas
Mr. Elijah Fenton has described it, however,
much more ingeniously and judiciously, as a
name recalling to mind (to his antiquarian
mind, that is to say!) " what is related of the
Turks " (he does not inform us where!)
"who, in their gallantries," quoth he quaintly,
"think Sucar Birpara, i.e., bit of sugar, to
be the most polite and endearing compliment
they can use to the ladies." Delightful Mr.
Fenton—it is the very key to the enigma—
the solution (of course, figuratively) of the
delicate love-puzzle of this melting saccharine
"appellation" of Sacharissa. Bit of sugar—
Sucar Birpara—let us nibble at it. It gives
one the whole flavour of the poetic flattery
conveyed in those rhythmic words of him
whom Mr. Addison has appropriately
designated the " Courtly Waller "—words rained
down by him at the feet of his mistress, not,
as in the instance of the Arabian princess of
the fairy tale, like a shower of pearls and
precious stones, but rather in this instance,
like a sprinkling of comfits and sugar-plums.

Almost all that the world-at-large really
appears to know about Sacharissa, might,
we conjecture, be summed up thus
succinctly: that she was, when her lover sang
of her, very young, very charming, very
beautiful. Scarcely anything besides; and
that assuredly, as far as it goes, might
safely enough have been taken for granted
without requiring one syllable in the way
of verification. Not but what these Loves
of the Poets have occasionally been very
startling personages indeed, by reason
sometimes even of the absolute incongruity of
their appearance. Appalling justifications of
the bandage significantly bound over the
eyes of Eros in the antique mythology!
Abominable pendants, in their way, to the
classic legend of Beauty wedded to the god
of the splintered thigh and the splay-foot!
However it may have been thus, with rare
exceptions, these Loves of the Poets have,
nevertheless—almost invariably—appeared,
upon investigation, to be what we have but
just now very briefly described Sacharissa.
Yet, invariably, they have been better than
merely visibly beautiful: they have been
beautiful, all of them, ideally; some of them
mentally; a few of them, in a very high
degree, spiritually. Types of excellence,
existing now and then exclusively, it is true, in
the singer's imagination; but, at any rate,
existing there, and, consequently, as such,
admitting, if merely as the creations of genius,
of these elevated poetic celebrations. "A
Thing of Beauty " each has proved to be in
some particular, several in many particulars:
as all know since the golden truth was first
articulated, in eighteen hundred and eighteen,
by one John Keats, son of a livery-stable
keeper, down in Moorfields—a truth but very
recently emblazoned, with appositeness, over
the grand entrance of the Manchester Fine
Arts Exhibition—

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever!"

So, no less than with her lovely compeers,
has it proved with Sacharissa. Her graces,
thanks to Waller, have become perennial.
Her charms—reflected in his pellucid verse
as in a mirror—have been perpetuated. She
has surpassed Diana of Poictiers without an
effort: retaining her beauty unimpaired, the
sparkle of her glance, and the bloom of her
complexion: not only through the wrinkling
and withering ordeal of old age, but—after
death—beyond the grave—when her dust
itself has long since mouldered away and
perished out into absolute nothingness.

At the period when Edmund Waller first
ventured to raise his voice in the impassioned
language of a suitor aspiring to the hand of
Sacharissa, he was still very young, although
a widower. Moreover, he was in his worldly
fortunes affluent; having enhanced rather
considerably by the addition to it of his first
wife's property his own ample and even
splendid patrimony. Beyond this, he was
vain enough to imagine himself to be little
less than irresistible, and gifted enough to
account, in some measure, for this not
absolutely unparalleled hallucination. It was
scarcely seven years from the date of the
premature demise of Edmund Spencer, when,
upon the third of March, sixteen hundred
and five, Edmund Waller first drew breath
at Cobshill, in Hertfordshire. His father,
Robert Waller, of Agmondesham, in the
county of Buckingham, dying during the
future poet's infancy, bequeathed to him
somewhere about three thousand five
hundred pounds a-year, an amount then equivalent