90 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
ing has become an artillery barrack. Although some 
of these edifices in the palmy days of the Mahomedan 
glory, under Hyder Ali in the Mysore, were occupied 
by persons of the first distinction in the state, they af- 
ford but indifferent accommodation to our countrymen, 
who are especially partial to air and light, neither of 
which are very liberally admitted into these struc- 
tures, they being for the most part heavy without, 
as well as close and inconvenient within. 
In Tippoo’s time the population of Seringapatam 
was estimated at upwards of a hundred and forty 
thousand souls, a considerable population for so con- 
fined a spot. The Sultan had a numerous and well- 
appointed army, and such was his hostility to the 
English that nothing less than their utter extirpation 
would have satisfied his sanguinary antipathy. Like 
the father of the great Carthaginian general, Hyder 
Ali transmitted to his son his own detestation of those 
national foes who had obtained a footing in India, 
which seems likely only to he extinguished with their 
existence as a nation. 
It was this very hostility that proved in the issue 
the cause of his family’s downfal, and the extinction 
of a dynasty which he had established at so much 
cost of labour and of blood. The energies of that 
mind which established and bequeathed to Tippoo Sul- 
tan such a powerful principality in southern India, 
bore in their own fierce strength the elements of 
ruin which finally overwhelmed it under the weaker 
domination of his son. Although Hyder Ali was 
a sagacious man, he was neither honest nor truly 
wise, for he made everything subserve his ambi- 
