parliamentary and municipal borough and market-town of England, county of Sussex, 64 miles from London by the road, and 74 by the Hastings branch of the South-Eastern railway; in official proceedings ranks as the first of the Cinque Ports. Hastings lies on the seacoast at the mouth of the Bourne, a small stream which intersects the town. An amphitheatre of hills and cliffs shelters it on every side except the S., where it lies open to the sea. Its climate is thus both mild and equable, and annually attracts a large number of invalids. During the bathing season great crowds of visitors flock to the town, for whose comfort every provision has been made in the shape of hotels, libraries, baths, and promenades. The town originally consisted of two main streets, separated by the Bourne, but since it became a favourite summer resort many handsome streets and squares have been added to it. It has also been lighted with gas and paved, and the sewerage, at one time notoriously bad, has of late been much improved. The principal public buildings are the ancient parish churches of All Saints and St Clements, the townhall, custom-house, and gaol. There are also chapels belonging to the Roman Catholics, Baptists, Independents, Methodists, and other sects. Besides two endowed schools, there are British, national, and infant schools. The permanent residents in the town are chiefly engaged in fishing and boat-building, in both of which they are reputed to have much skill; but much of the prosperity of Hastings now depends on the influx of summer visitors. Of late years these have so much increased in number that for their accommodation houses have been built over the whole ground extending between Hastings and the little town of St Leonards. A few years ago, St Leonards was only a small village about a mile distant from Hastings, but it is annually increasing with great rapidity, and as its population is included in that of its larger neighbour, it is now considered as forming a part of it. The most striking part of the town is the Marina, a handsome street with a covered colonnade looking towards the sea. The united parades of Hastings and St Leonards are not surpassed, if indeed they are equalled, by any other sea-walks in England. The scenery in the neighbourhood of the town is charmingly picturesque. Among the places of interest in the vicinity may be mentioned Bulverthite, where William the Conqueror landed from France; the ruins of the old fortress on the high cliffs overhanging the town on the W.; and Battle Abbey, which, though it takes its name from the fight of Hastings, is 7 miles distant from the town. (See Battle.) The corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen, and 18 councillors. The borough returns two members to parliament. Pop. of parliamentary borough (1851), 17,011; of municipal, 16,966; number of registered electors, 976.

Hastings, Warren, the real founder of the English empire in Hindustan, was a scion of an old and noble but impoverished family of Worcestershire, and was born Dec. 6, 1782. The best part of his education he got at Westminster School, where he had Vincent Bourne for his teacher, and Churchill, Colum, Lloyd, Cumberland, and Cowper among his school-fellows. Though he was the cleverest lad of his standing, and would infallibly have distinguished himself at the university, it was determined that he should begin life for himself without delay; and interest having been made on his behalf he obtained a writership in the service of the East India Company, then beginning to struggle into existence. His first residence in India lasted for fourteen years. He went out in 1750, and he returned home in 1764. During that period he was sometimes engaged on diplomatic missions into the interior, but most of his time was spent in commercial enterprises. His opportunities of displaying his abilities were consequently few; and though he did not then attain any high rank in the service, he was silently educating himself for the great destiny that awaited him. He made himself a thorough master of the Persian and Hindustani languages, and probed to their subtlest depths the characters of the people that spoke these Hastings, tongues. To this knowledge of their languages and themselves Hastings owed in great measure his power over the natives, and the final triumph of his administration. At the close of the fourteenth year of his service, Hastings returned home with a fortune so very small and so unlike those that were then made in India, that nothing more is required to prove that he must have been strictly just in his dealings with the natives. His desire was to spend the remainder of his days in the calm retirement of home, but partly by over-liberality to his relatives, and partly by mismanagement of his own, his little fortune melted away altogether; and at the end of four years he was glad to return to India, with the appointment of member of council of Madras. Three years later he exchanged this subordinate office for the chief-magistracy of Bengal, from which in 1774 he was promoted to the governor-generalship of British India. It was not long before he was called upon to show what was in him. The struggle upon which he now entered, and from which in the end he came forth a victor, was begun, not for conquest but for existence; and this, though it is far from excusing, at least palliates the extreme measures to which he had recourse. The conquests of Clive, though they had greatly extended the territorial limits of the Company's possessions, were a source of weakness rather than strength, for they had not yet been consolidated, and from their position served as a tempting bait to the cupidity of the famous Hyder Ali, the able and daring rajah of Mysore. To baffle this dangerous antagonist, and the alliances which he formed in the East; to out-manoeuvre the tactics of his colleagues at the council-board, who hated and did their best to thwart him; to carry on the internal administration; and, above all, to remit regular dividends to England—to do all this, and at the same time maintain even the semblance of fair and scrupulous dealing, was plainly beyond mere human powers. It was no wonder, then, that rumours grew rife in England of cruelty, tyranny, and extortion carried on to an extent that made the blood run cold to hear of; and as little wonder that the directors of the Company were afraid to stem the tide of public opinion that ran so strong against the man to whom they owed the most part of their wealth and power. But all their anxiety to procure his removal was unable to move the proprietors, on whose support Hastings calculated in all his subsequent career. His conduct was now marked by an obstinate spirit of independence. He did not scruple to disobey the orders sent from England; reduced his refractory colleagues to silence or assent; and, with the title of a servant, swayed really a more despotic and irresponsible power over a greater population and a wider extent of country than any sultan or rajah in the Indian peninsula. In 1785 he resigned his high office and returned home. He was well aware that he would be called upon to give an account of his stewardship, and he did not shrink from the result. His trial is the most memorable in the annals of modern jurisprudence. Proceedings began in the session of 1786, and were not brought to an end before the spring of 1795. The serious business of the impeachment was entrusted to Burke, who was supported in the conduct of the case by the most eminent Whig notabilities of the day, Fox, Grey, Sheridan, and others. The counts of the indictment were finally reduced to four,—the oppression and final expulsion of the rajahs of Benares; the maltreatment and robbery of the Begums of Oude; the acceptance of presents of immense value; and connivance at unfair contracts and reckless expenditure of the public revenues. The prosecution was opened by Burke in a speech of extraordinary eloquence and power, which extended over three days. He was succeeded by Fox, who in his turn gave place to Sheridan. The speech of that brilliant wit was said by the ablest among those who heard it to have been the best that was ever delivered in the English House of Commons. It certainly was one of the most telling, for it caused so much excitement that no other speaker could obtain a hearing, and the debate was adjourned. Other speakers took up the cue, and the prosecution extended over the entire sessions of 1788, 1789, and 1790, engrossing no fewer than 72 days. The defence was longer still, and was skilfully protracted till April 17, 1795, on which day the accused was acquitted by an overwhelming majority. An acquittal had been expected, and the voice of the nation approved it. The defendant had come before his judges, well aware that the feeling against him was strong. He now left the bar of the Lords with an equally unreasonable feeling in his favour. It was believed that his accusers had, of set purpose, retarded the course of justice, though by far the larger share of the blame or merit of the delay was due to Hastings himself, who foresaw the reaction in the public mind which eventually took place. He was now regarded as an oppressed and persecuted man, and therefore an object of sympathy and compassion. The bitter invective of which the prosecutors made so liberal a use was adduced to prove that their hostility was that of personal and malignant rancour. The expenses of the case were enormous. This defence cost Hastings upwards of £76,000, and he had sworn in his trial that at no period had he ever been worth more than £1,100,000. His friends of the India House felt that his claims upon them were strong, and proposed to settle on him an annuity of £5,000. Some delay occurred in passing this proposal, and Hastings was reduced to such straits that he could hardly pay his weekly bills. His allowance was at length fixed at £400 a-year, and the company lent him £50,000 more for 18 years free of interest. This ought to have sufficed for the ex-governor to live in luxury, but he was a bad manager, and he had frequently to apply to his old supporters for aid, which was always liberally granted. The last 24 years of Hastings' life were spent at Daylesford, in Worcestershire—an estate which had been lost to the family by the unthrift of his ancestors, and which, from his earliest years he had determined to regain. He amused himself with embellishing his grounds, and endeavouring to naturalize in England some of the animals and vegetables of India. The peerage, which he not unnaturally looked for as the reward of his services, and of which it was said that the patent had even been made out, was from some unexplained cause or other withheld, and Hastings never rose beyond the rank of privy-councillor, to which he was raised shortly before his death, which happened Aug. 22, 1818, when he was in his eighty-sixth year. It was proposed that he should be buried in the abbey of Westminster, but permission was refused; and his dust was consigned to its last resting-place in the chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of Hastings. "On that very spot, probably," writes the most eloquent chronicler of his strange career, "a four-score years before, the little Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed, had played with the children of ploughmen. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not likely that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor orphan retrieved the fallen fortunes of his line; not only had he repurchased the old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling;—he had preserved and extended an empire; he had founded a polity; he had administered government and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu; and had patronized learning with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most formidable combinations of enemies that ever sought the destruction of a single victim; and over that combination, after a struggle of ten years, he had triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness of age—in peace, after so many troubles; in honour, after so much obloquy."

Those who look on his character without favour or male- volence will pronounce that in the two great elements of all social virtue—in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for the sufferings of others—he was deficient. His principles were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But while we cannot with truth describe him as either a righteous or a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect; his rare talents for command, for administration, and for controversy; his dauntless courage; his honourable poverty; his fervent zeal for the interests of the state; his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, and never disturbed by either.

*(Essay on Warren Hastings, by T. B. Macaulay; Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, by G. R. Gleig, M.A.; Mill's History of British India,* which last contains a very full and impartial statement of Hastings' case, and able summing up of the evidence of both sides, and a sentence qualified, yet, on the whole, favourable to him, who, as he was the first, was also the ablest of all the men to whom the destinies of our great empire in the East have ever been entrusted.)