still they are not wanting in barefacedness to identify it with its original. Its situation on the river-bank has been made to accord with the legend. The Gopinees of yore had come to bathe in the Jumna, and leaving behind their garments on the bank, were engaged in laving and sporting in the waters. Krishna had watched the opportunity for a prank, and, coming unperceived, softly stole away their clothes to a neighbouring tree. He got up on it, and, hanging the clothes up on the branches, sat upon one, playing on his flute. On getting out of the stream, the Gopinees were extremely surprised to miss their dresses. But soon they discovered them suspended from the branches of a tree, and the author of the mischievous act sitting thereon to enjoy the frolic of their exposure-to see beauty 'double every charm it seeks to hide.' No entreaty could prevail upon the naughty youth to give up his waggery, and save young damsels the expense of their modesty. The Gopinees had to come up to the tree, hiding their nudity as well they could by the flowing tresses of their hair, and to stand soliciting to have their clothes thrown to them. Though the fact of the present Vrij-maces leaving behind their garments like the Gopinees of old on the steps of a ghaut, and then making a rush to the waters to conceal their nakedness, might give a colouring of truth to the story, still it cannot but be regarded as the invention of a prurient imagination to tell upon soft minds, and win over soft hearts. Standing, as it does, just upon the brink, and overlooking the stream, if the present tree be supposed to occupy the position of

its original, then it is doubtful how any man could have played the prank in question without instant detection. There hang from the branches of the tree vari-coloured linen in imitation of the dresses of the Gopinees. The waggish god is fancied to be still perched on its top, with the naked nymphs standing in a group below him, and praying for the return of their clothes. The pilgrims, therefore, coming to visit this famous tree, cannot make up their minds to go away without leaving behind them the token of a piece of linen suspended from the branches in very pity of the distressed Gopi

nees.

Near the entrance of the town from the river, was pointed the Ukoor-ghaut, or the spot where Ukoor halted, and left behind the car in which he had travelled from Muttra. He was related to Krishna as uncle, and had been sent by Kunsa to invite him to a festival at the Court of that Rajah. The exiled scion of the house of the Sursena had become tired of his incognito life, of tending cattle, and of skying with milkmaids. He hoped to reap important results from the opportunity, and gladly accepted the invitation to the Court of Muttra. It is the occasion of this departure from Brindabun that is annually made the cause to observe that carfestival, which is celebrated with so much éclat in all parts of India, and which ushers in the season to chant in soft and plaintive lays the farewells' and ' valedictories' and forget-me-nots' that soothe the griefs of a love-lorn heart. In vain did Nunda, and Jushoda, and the associates of Krishna dissuade him from his purpose.

In vain did the Gopinees implore the false youth to stay. In vain did Radha weep and lament and refuse to be comforted. As the daughter of Rajah Birshobhano, she had tarnished the honour of a princely house. As the wife of Ayan Ghose, she had proved faithless to a man of fair fame. She had left parent and husband, had lost heaven, mankind's and her own esteem;' and the anguish of her soul was exceeded only by the injustice done to her feelings. But Krishna refused to give up, for her pouting lips, a crown. He departed to recover his patrimony, breaking his plighted troth with Radha, and abandoning her to struggle with a passion she could not cast aside. It was all over

'For her on earth, except some years to hide

Her shame and sorrow deep in her heart's core :'

and from the day of his exit she never ceased to mourn the sad fate to which she had been left behind-a fate which has afforded and shall yet afford to generations of Hindoos the most touching theme to exhaust their most pathetic strains upon. In pity of her disconsolate condition, the worshippers of Kaniya have made Radha the heiress of his prestige in Brindabun, and her name as the Ranee of Vrij is in the mouths of the men, women, and children of this land.

The Kalya-dah is another famous ghaut, where Kalya-nag, the black serpent, infested the waters of the Jumna. Poisonous effluvia issued from the place of his abode. No finny tenant could dwell near him. Not a blade of grass grew upon the bank. The stray kine that drank water there instantly perished. To get rid

of the monster, Krishna dragged him from the stream, and bruised him on the head. The sun is said to have darkened, the sky rained blood, the earth shaken, and portentous fires to have broken out, so long as the desperate contest lasted. But this is most probably a plagiarism from the Evangelists, to suit the events of a story so akin to the other. Be that as it may, we may extract a meaning from the Puranic account of the coiling and uncoiling of the Hydra, which is but an allegory of the wars with the Nagas and Takshaks of our ancient history, a race of people inhabiting Cashmere, Punjaub, and Sind, who worshipped the dragon, and were the enemies of the Aryas from the Vedic period. The ophiolatrous Takshak had been scotched in seventeen battles, and was finally vanquished in the eighteenth -though it was not long before Parikshita, the successor of Judishthira on the throne of Indraprasthe, died by the bite of a snake, that is, lost his life in a conflict with the Takshaks. The pestilential effect of the Kalyadah waters is but an allusion to the moral nuisance of the serpent-worshipping Naga race-unless some peculiar properties in the soil had, at a former period, really made the waters unwholesome. No such effect as the legend ascribes to them was visible to us in an inanimate tract void of every vegetation. The grass is as green there as in any of the adjacent spots, and tortoises floated in shoals. The inhabitants bear no prejudice against the waters, which they freely use for both bath and drink. They show here an old Kaili-kudumbo tree as the one from which Krishna had plunged into

the stream-as well as the spot on which Jushoda sat lamenting for his non-appearance. In commemoration of the great Vishnuvite triumph, an annual mela is held at the Kalya-dah.

Only a solitary boat lay moored on the Jumna below the Kaisee-ghaut, as on the day when Krishna had acted as the ferryman, and the Gopinees as rowers, to enjoy a yachting excursion in the round of their amorous plea

sures.

To the Brahma-koond, a little square tank, supposed to be of natural excavation, and regarded as the sacred spot of Vishnu's triumph over Brahma. In Benares, they make Vishnu worship Shiva-in Brindabun, they make Brahma worship Vishnu, to assert the superiority of sect over sect. Brahma, the creator of the universe, had heard of Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu, and, visiting Brindabun, had misgivings from his age and occupations, as to his real character. To try him, he one day slyly carried off through the sky a herd of cattle, old and young, boys and all, that were attending them. Knowing how much the parents of the boys and the owners of the cattle would be distressed at their disappearance, Krishna forthwith created a new herd and other attendants, so exactly similar to those that Brahma had taken away, that the owners of the one, and the parents of the other, remained quite unawares of the change. Equally did the new creations themselves remain ignorant of their transformation; and the cattle walked into their stalls, and the boys into their houses, where they recognized, and were recog