having converted a Hindoo of decent acquirements and respectable caste, who was baptized a few days ago. The Portuguese are numerous, and have two large Churches here. The one I have seen, which is not however the

largest of the two, is very handsome, exactly like the Roman Catholic Churches of Europe, and as being something more obscure and shadowy in its interior, is both more solemn and better adapted to the climate than the Protestant places of worship. Their Clergy wear their canonical dress of white cotton. A Roman Catholic Bishop, titularly of Thibet, whose station is in the upper provinces, about this time passed through Calcutta. I did not see him, but he called on Lord Amherst. He is an Italian by birth, but has passed almost his whole life as a priest in Brazil, and since as a Bishop in the Portuguese settlements of Congo and Loango. From thence a translation must, I should have thought, have been a great happiness, yet, Lord Amherst said, he spoke of his past and future prospects with a sort of doubtful regret and uneasy anticipation, and seemed to stand in very needless fear both of the English and Native governments. He is, I believe, the only Bishop of his Church in this country, though there are two or three more in the southern extremity of the Peninsula.

November 18.-My wife went to a Nâch given by one of the wealthy natives, Baboo Rouplâll Mullich, whose immense house with Corinthian pillars, we had observed more than once in our

passage along the Chitpoor road. She has given a full account of it in her journal'. I was kept

1 I joined Lady Macnaghten and a large party this evening to go to a Nâch given by a rich native, Rouplâll Mullich, on the opening of his new house. The outside was brilliantly illuminated, and as the building is a fine one, the effect was extremely good. The crowd without the gates was great. We were ushered into a large Hall, occupying the centre of the house, round which run two galleries with a number of doors opening into small apartments, the upper ones being for the most part inhabited by the females of the family, who were of course invisible to us, though they were able to look down into the Hall through the venetians. This Hall is open to the sky, but on this as on all public occasions, it was covered in with scarlet cloth, with which the floor was also carpeted. All the large native houses are built on this principle, and the fathers, sons, and grandsons, with their respective families, live together, till their numbers become too great, when they separate like the Patriarchs of old, and find out new habitations. The magnificence of the building,-the beautiful pillars supporting the upper galleries,—and the expensive and numerous glass chandeliers with which it was lighted,-formed a striking contrast with the dirt, the apparent poverty, and the slovenliness of every part that was not prepared for exhibition; the rubbish left by the builders had actually never been removed out of the lower gallery,— the banisters of the stair-case, in itself paltry, were of common unpainted wood, and broken in many places, and I was forced to tread with care to avoid the masses of dirt over which we walked.

On entering we found a crowd collected round a songstress of great reputation, named Viiki, the Catalini of the East, who was singing in a low but sweet voice some Hindoostanee songs, accompanied by inartificial and unmelodious native music. As the crowd was great, we adjourned into a small room opening out of the upper gallery, where we sat listening to one song after another, devoured by swarms of mosquitos, till we were heartily tired, when her place was taken by the Nâch, or dancing girls,—if dancing that could be called which consisted in strained movements of the arms, head, and body, the feet, though in perpetual slow motion, seldom moving from the same spot. Some story was evidently intended to be told from the expression of their countenances, but to me it was quite unintelligible. I never saw public dancing in England so free from every thing approaching to indecency. Their dress was modesty itself, nothing but their faces, feet, and hands, being exposed to view. An attempt at buffoonery

away by a regard to the scruples of the Christian and Mahommedan inhabitants of Calcutta, many of whom look on all these Hindoo feasts as indiscriminately idolatrous, and offered in honour of some one or other of their deities. The fact is, that there are some, of which this was one, given chiefly if not entirely to Europeans by the wealthy Hindoos, in which no religious ceremony is avowed, and in which if any idolatrous offering really takes place, it is done after the white guests are departed.

About this time I attended the first meeting of the Governors of the Free School which had occurred since my arrival. I, on this occasion, saw the whole establishment; it is a very noble institution, consisting of a school where 247 boys and girls are lodged, boarded, and clothed, and some received as day-scholars. They are all instructed in English, reading, writing, cyphering, and their religious faith and duties, for which purpose the different Catechisms and other compendia furnished by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge are employed. Some few of the dayscholars are Armenian Christians, whose parents

next followed, ill imagined, and worse executed, consisting of a bad imitation of English country dances by ill-dressed men. In short, the whole exhibition was fatiguing and stupid,-nearly every charm but that of novelty being wanting.

To do us greater honour, we were now shewn into another room, where a supper-table was laid out for a select few, and I was told the great supper-room was well supplied with eatables. I returned home between twelve and one much tired, and not the least disposed to attend another Nâch.-Extract from Editor's Journal.

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object to these formulæ ; and there are one or two Hindoos, who are allowed to attend, and who also stand on one side when the Catechism is repeated, though they say the Lord's Prayer and read the Scriptures without scruple. The children of Roman Catholics, of whom there are also several, apparently make no such difficulties, and even attend Church with the rest of the scholars. They are in fact so ignorant and neglected, that many of them have scarcely any idea of Christianity but what they acquire here. The girls' school is a separate building of somewhat less extent than the boys'; both are surrounded by good compounds, and built on the highest spot on this flat district.

The system of Dr. Bell is pursued in these schools, except that the climate requires more sitting than he allows, and this therefore is arranged according to the Lancasterian system. The boys are very well taught; many of them write beautiful hands, and are excellent accountants, for both which, indeed, they have a strong natural turn. Their reading is not so good, since in fact almost all of them have to learn English as well as reading, it being a curious fact that scarcely any children brought up in this country, either high or low, speak any thing, even with their parents, but the broken Hindoostanee, and vulgar Bengalee, which they learn from their nurses; while of these poor children, most have Bengalee mothers. They exhibit, according to the head-master, most of them considerable quickness, and a good memory; but are deficient, when compared with English

boys of the same age and rank in life, in common sense, courage, and honesty, as well as in bodily strength. They seldom fight, and are much afraid of pain, but when provoked scold each other fluently, and use very indecent and bad language. This is a crime which they but too naturally learn from their heathen neighbours, and for which it is most frequently necessary to punish them. The next most frequent crime is theft from each other. Lying, to conceal their faults, and under fear of punishment, is also very prevalent; but on this I cannot lay much stress, since even in English schools, among little boys of the lower rank, I know it is so common as hardly to be exceeded.

Leprosy, in both its most formidable kinds, elephantiasis, and leontiasis, is said to be almost as common here as in Syria and Arabia; and I have seen instances of both kinds among the beggars in the streets, though certainly not so many as the accounts which I had heard would have led me to expect. The swollen legs of the former complaint I have noticed in three or four excursions; of the latter only two instances have occurred to me,one a miserable native beggar, the other an European of the lower rank. The first has lost all his fingers, his nose, and several of his toes; the second is of a hideous mealy white complexion. Among Europeans it is allowed to be very unusual, but when it comes, it answers in all respects to the fatal disease described by Michaelis in his "Anmerkungen über die Mosaische Gericht," &c. and can