There is no rule governing their costumes. They are as free to choose the color and texture of their garments as ladies at home. I cannot but think that our heathen friends have learned better than ourselves the lesson of dress, especially for the tropics. We swathe ourselves in dismal and uncomely black, and here in India, where every feather's weight you lift from your raiment is a blessing to body, the Englishman, so lacks in imagination and enterprise that he endures the same cloth which he wore in Berkeley Square. The natives were in loose gowns of cool, flexible stuffs, that seemed to play and dally with the heat, and as they streamed about in their airy, flowing, fleecy gowns, they looked more sensible than we civilians in our black evening dress, or the officers girded to the throat with scarlet cloth and braid. There is something for the eye in the varied hues of Indian costumes, and as to splendor, I suppose that one of the jewels that hung from the neck of the Prince of Oude, or the diamond that blazed from the finger of one of the rajahs, was worth ten times more than all the clothes worn by the Europeans.

The native gentlemen and princes of high rank were presented by the Viceroy to General Grant. Some of these names were the foremost in India. Some are deposed princes, or descendants of deposed princes. Others were Brahmins of high caste; some rich bankers and merchants. The son of the King of Oude came with his son. He has an effeminate, weak face. On his head he wore a headdress shaped like a crown, and covered with gold-foil and lace. The King of Oude lives in Calcutta, on an allowance of six hundred thousand dollars a year. He does not come near the Government House, partly because he is so fat that he cannot move about, except in a chair, more probably because he is a kind of state prisoner on account of his supposed sympathies with the mutiny. The old king spends a good share of his income in buying animals. He has a collection of snakes, and is fond of a peculiar kind of pigeon. A pigeon with a blue eye will bring him good fortune, and if one of his Brahmin priests tells him that the possession of such a bird is necessary to his happiness, he buys it.

Re

cently he paid one thousand pounds for a pigeon, on the advice of a holy Brahmin, who, it was rumored, had an interest in the sale. Not long since the king made a purchase of tigers, and was about to buy a new and choice lot, when the LieutenantGovernor interfered and said his Majesty had tigers enough. My admiration for the kingly office is so profound that I like.

it best in its eccentric aspects, and would have rejoiced to have seen so original a majesty. But his Majesty is in seclusion with his snakes, his tigers, his pigeons, his priests, and his women, and sees no one, and we had to be content with seeing his son. This prince seemed forlorn, notwithstanding his bauble crown, his robes, and his gems, and hid behind the pillars and

has been taken out of India, that during the reign of the company the policy was simply to scrape up every penny for revenue and dividends, it shows the wealth of the country that enough should have remained behind to give Calcutta its splendor. The monuments are worthy of note. One building in the Ionic style of architecture commemorates James Prinsep, an eminent student of science. There is a monument to the officers who died in the Gwalior campaign, built of Jeypore marble. The Eden Gardens were laid out by the Misses Eden, sisters of the former Viceroy, Lord Auckland. Here the band plays every evening. There is also a stately column to Sir David Ochterlony, one hundred and sixty-five feet high, with a Saracenic capital. Ochterlony was one of the great men in the history of the company. There is a statue to Lord William Bentinck, who was Viceroy forty-five years ago, when Macaulay was in India. The statue bears an inscription written by Macaulay, in which Bentinck is honored as the man who “infused into Oriental despotism the spirit of British freedom," "who abolished cruel rites" and "effaced humiliating distinctions." There are statues to Lord Hardinge, who governed India in 1848; Lord Mayo, who was assassinated in 1870; Lord Lawrence, who won fame in the mutiny, and Sir James Outram, the "Bayard of the East." The city has about four hundred and fifty thousand population, of whom three-fourths are Hindoos, and not more than twenty-one thousand Europeans. After the Hindoos the Mussulmans predominate. There are a few Parsees, but not so many as in Bombay. The Jews are

rich, and interested in the opium trade. There are Portuguese, Armenians, and Greeks. The Portuguese have fallen into the serving classes; the others are merchants. There are a few Chinamen of the laboring classes, who are carpenters and shoemakers. There are some Arab merchants who trade with the Persian and Arabian Gulf and coasts, and a class called Oriahs, natives of Orissa, a careful, patient race, who perform the lower forms of labor.

Education is widely advanced in Calcutta. The Hindoo College was founded in 1824 for the teaching of English and