genealogy-monger is not more necessary to the discovery of ether a blooming bride or a wealthy bridegroom, and to the drawing up of the marriage contract; the presence of a priest is not more necessary to make the sweet tie binding, than the humbler ministry of the barber to the consummation of the rites of Hymen. Under-servant of Madan--the Indian god of love, the barber does a great deal more than his senior brethren. With a light heart and a cheerful countenance he goes about whistling, and gives to friends and relatives timely notice of the approaching solemnity. The marriage oil and turmeric, without which no Bengali marriage can be celebrated, and with an infusion of the latter of which articles the parties about to be united, as well as their rejoicing friends, profusely rub their bodies and stain their clothes, the barber carries to neighbouring families. Who that has lived in a Bengali house a few days immediately before a wedding, and has witnessed the incessant noise, the agreeable confusion, the delicious disorder reigning everywhere, but must have marked the important part played by our brother of the razor? He runs about from one apartment to another, answers every call, and gives animation to each scene. His is the loudest laugh, and his the merriest joke. On the wedding-day, and a few hours before the solemn celebration, the barber takes out his best razor and shaves the fore-head of the rejoicing bridegroom. Nor is the barber's wife unemployed on so interesting an occasion. She gently scratches the nails of the fingers of the gay bride, takes the superfluous brawn of the soles of her feet, rub's them with burnt brick, and points them with lac. While these operations go on, what blessings do not both the barber and his wife pour on the heads of the bride and the bridegroom? To the latter the barber eulogizes the charms of the girl about to be his, expatiating, with an eloquence which practised orators might envy, on her gazelle-like eyes, her vermilion lips, her elephant-like gait, and her slender frame, while to the former the barber's wife holds out the prospect of heaps of gold, baskets full of ornaments, sons as handsome as Kirtik-the Indian god of war, and daughters beautiful as the Apsaras of Indra's heaven. The nuptial shaving over, tl barber and his wife diligently busy themselves with dressing the bride and the bridegroom and decking them with golden ornaments, and rend the air with the marital exclamations of " Ooloo! Ooloo! Ooloo!" And in the eventful hour when the solemn priest goes through the marriage-service, and joins the hands of the happy pair, the barber stands at their elbow as their guardian angel. It is hardly necessary to remark that for all these delightful services the barber is handsomely rewarded.

Nor are the ministrations of the barber of less importance in the season of death. His services are indispensably necessary

to the celebration of rites which follow either ten, fifteen, or thirty days after cremation, according as the deceased was a Brahman, a Vaidya, or a Sudra. When mourning, Hindus do not change their clothes, do not partake of the dainties of the table, neither do they shave. On the 10th, the 15th, or the 30th day, as the case may be, the near relatives-the kith and kin of the deceased, assemble themselves together, and call for the services of the barber who, on such occasions, is rewarded with clothes, brass-pots, and money. Thus is the barber a ministering spirit in the critical seasons of birth, death, and marriage. What Hermes was in the Greek Pantheon, what Mercury was among the gods of Pagan Rome, what Narad is to the immortals of Indra's heaven, that is a barber to Bengalees. Like Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, the Bengali barber is a "good man and cometh with good tidings." Is a ceremony to be performed in a village? Is an invitation to be given to a feast? Is a child born? Is a marriage to be solemnized? On such occasions who carries the news but our swift-footed, clear-headed and light-hearted brother of the strop? Happy men! to carry about only glad tidings to the children of men, to announce to rejoicing fathers the birth of new-born babes, to add hilarity to marriage festivity, to put an end to the lamentations of sorrowing and bereaved relatives, and thus to scatter sun-shine on the path of life!

The Bengali barber has a merry heart. He talks everlastingly, discoursing on all possible subjects, glancing from earth to heaven and from heaven back to earth, but delighting chiefly in gossip, revealing the secrets of the Zenana, and pouring sweet scandal into the ear of malignity;-on such matters he would talk on to the end of the chapter unless stopped by the necessities of his profession. His anecdotes, of which he has a plentiful store, of things new and old, he relates with a naïveté truly refreshing. His jokes-and he is full of them—are none of the Joe Miller kind, stiff, unnatural, cold: but fresh, lively and piquant. His laugh is not of the sardonic kind, consisting of a show of the teeth, a raising of the upper lip, and a wink of the eye, neither is it what a Bengali calls a wooden laugh, only lip-deep; but it is the loud, clear, sonorous, silvery guffaw of jolliest mirth. In a word the Bengali barber, like the nymph in L'Allegro, brings with him, wherever he goes,

The shrewdness of the barber has passed into a proverb. Whether it be that the sharpness of the tools he uses for the prosecution of his humble trade has produced a corresponding sharpness of his mental powers, or that his professional contemplation and manipulation of the cranium-the seat of the brain, and of the "human face divine," have quickened his intellectual perceptions, whether the one or the other or both be the cause and we leave the matter to be decided by abler heads than ourselves—certain it is that a barber is a most intelligent being. The "cunning barber" is a household phrase in Bengal. Cunning or canning (from can) as Carlyle often tells us, is indicative of mental power. Says the homely adage, "the crow 'is not more decidedly the most cunning of birds, the jackal of 'quadrupeds, and Narad of gods, than the barber of rational bipeds." In this respect the barber is said to present a striking contrast to the weaver. Our friend of the shuttle, says venerable tradition, puts his hands round a post, fills them with fried rice, and does not know how to take his hands back except by removing the post. He sees a field covered with the Saccharum Cylindricum, and, mistaking it for a field covered with water, attempts to swim, and comes home with a bleeding body. Our brother of the razor is no such simpleton. He passes a

shuttle where a pin refuses to enter, drives a camel where there is not room enough for a needle to pass through, makes anything of anything, and is, without all controversy, the cleverest animal that ever walked on two legs.

The barber's wife, who, in other countries, is quite a sinecurist, exercises no less influence in the parliament of women than her husband in the assemblies of men. We have already enumerated the services she renders to humanity. She pares off the accumulations of osseous matter on the nails of the fingers and toes of the ladies of Bengal, takes off the fleshy over-growth on the soles of their feet, and gives them the red paint. On such occasions, she is as eloquent, (we should rather say ten times more eloquent,-for what lady ever yielded in fluency of speech to the other sex?) as anecdotical, as jocose, as facetious as her husband. When pursuing her gentle avocations what jokes does she crack! What savage criticism does she make on the personal deformities of the betrothed of some throbbing maiden! What glowing eulogies of the corporeal graces of the husbands of the ladies she serves! What revelations of the nocturnal broils of ill-matched couples! She is the ladies' maid of honour, the ladies' surgeon, the ladies' messenger, the ladies' gazette.

We know not how it is, but it is a simple fact-and we leave the matter to be explained by professed ethnologists

that the barber so universally liked by Bengalees for "courtesy, 'humanity, and all the conversational and social graces which glad'den life," is thoroughly detested by Ooriya Palki bearers. Whether it is that a barber is looked upon as a sort of scavenger of humanity, or that his universally admitted cleverness is a sort of reproach to the proverbially stupid Ooriya bearer, it is a simple fact that the worthy gentlemen who bear us about on their shoulders will, for no inducement whatever, touch a Palki with a barber in it. No doubt with the progress of liberalism and the decline of orthodoxy which characterize this free-thinking age of ours, Ooriya bearers may possibly be found here and there, for high pecuniary consideration, to break through the time-honoured prejudice; but we are certain no orthodox bearers of the right Jajapura class will ever do it. Like Charles Lamb we ourselves are rejoiced in the acquaintance of a "truly polite and urbane friend" of the barber-caste, though not in the trade. And it amused us not a little. to hear our friend often say that he could never get a Palki for hire near his own house, for all the Ooriya bearers knew that he was of the barber-caste. Whenever he wanted a Palki he had to walk a great distance from his house, and engage bearers who remained in blissful ignorance as to his caste. The oil-man and the washerman share with the barber the Ooriya bearers' contempt.

It is not a little remarkable that the members of the trade whose manifold virtues we have thus attempted very briefly to delineate, have never risen to distinction in Bengal. While the proverbiably dull weaver and the socially degraded banker have, in a hundred instances, risen superior to their natural stupidity and social degradation, the barber, though possessed of quick parts and holding no mean position in the fabric of caste, has never distinguished himself from the rest of his countrymen. In England a barber invented the spinning jenny and was created a baronet, and the son of a barber not long since graced the woolsack. In Bengal, however, a barber is always a barber to the end of the chapter. The reason of this is very likely to be found in the scantiness of the remuneration he obtains in the prosecution of his humble calling, and the little facilities it affords for the accumulation of wealth. But what matters it after all that the barber has never risen to celebrity? It is sufficient for him that he has the hearty goodwill of mankind, that he alleviates their sorrows, and that he scatters cheerfulness wherever he goes. Long may Long may be pursue his useful avocations, long may he "gladden life by his conversational and social graces."

ART. V.-1. Standing Orders of the Department of Public Works; compiled under the authority of the Most Noble the Marquis of Dalhousie, Governor General of India, in concert with the Military Board, by LIEUTENANT COLONEL J. T. BOILEAU, Superintending Engineer, North Western Provinces. Roorkee. 1852.

2. Code of Regulations for the Public Works Department under the Local Governments of Bengal, the North West Provinces, and the Punjaub, and for the Minor Administrations under the direct control of the Government of India. Published by authority. Calcutta. 1858.

ONE of the first improvements that may be expected to follow the assumption by the Crown of the direct Government of India, is a more vigorous prosecution of public works. The favourite agency for this seems at present to be the establishment of private guaranteed Companies; but however rapidly these may increase, there must still for many years be left abundant room for the direct action of Government, even supposing that this is confined to works of necessity, and that the financial advantages to be gained by augmenting the otherwise inelastic revenues, through the Government itself undertaking the chief execution of works of a remunerative character, are not perceived, and adopted. At any rate the "Public Works Department" already includes an enormous number of officials, and if it be not extended, it certainly is not likely to be diminished. Its influence on the general improvement of the country must be very considerable, and it becomes therefore of great importance that its constitution should be of the most economical kind, and its machinery as efficient as possible. Of late years its organisation has undergone many alterations, and many more are in contemplation, so that the present time is opportune for discussing its merits. This we propose to do briefly in the following pages, pointing out what we conceive to be still. defective in existing arrangements, and what should be the remedies.

To comprehend thoroughly the present state of its organisation it will be necessary to note the different changes through which the department has passed, from its first formation to the present time, and to distinguish clearly between those changes in its economy which have arisen naturally in the course of things, and those which have been advisedly made from time to time with a view to its improvement. This distinction, if kept clearly in view, will be of much service in our enquiry, as we shall find that what is defective at present is generally a class of causes;