at present bears pretty nearly the same estimation here as a in England, and is conferred by government in almost the

peerage

same manner.

The house is surrounded by an extensive garden, laid out in formal parterres of roses, intersected by straight walks, with some fine trees, and a chain of tanks, fountains, and summer-houses, not ill adapted to a climate where air, water, and sweet smells, are almost the only natural objects which can be relished during the greater part of the year. The whole is little less Italian than the façade of his house, but on my mentioning this similarity, he observed that the taste for such things was brought into India by the Mussulmans. There are also swings, whirligigs, and other amusements for the females of his family, but the strangest was a sort of "Montagne Russe" of masonry, very steep, and covered with plaster, down which he said the ladies used to slide. Of these females, however, we saw none,—indeed they were all stayingat his town-house in Calcutta. He himself received us at the head of a whole tribe of relations and descendants on a handsome flight of steps, in a splendid shawl, by way of mantle, with a large rosary of coral set in gold, leaning on an ebony crutch with a gold head. Of his grandsons, four very pretty boys, two were dressed like English children of the same age, but the round hat, jacket, and trowsers, by no means suited their dusky skins so well as the splendid brocade caftans and turbans covered with diamonds, which the two elder wore. On the whole, both Emily and I have been greatly interested with the family, both now and during our previous interviews. We have several other eastern acquaintance, but none of equal talent, though several learned Moollahs, and one Persian doctor, of considerable reputed sanctity, have called on me. Raja of Calcutta, and one of the sons of Tippoo Sultan, do not choose, I am told, to call till I have left the fort, since they are not permitted to bring their silver-sticks, led-horses, carriages, and armed attendants within the ramparts. In all this, nothing strikes me more than the apparent indifference of these men to the mea

The

sures employed for extending Christianity, and rendering it more conspicuous in Hindostan. They seem to think it only right and decent that the conquering nation should have its hierarchy and establishment on a handsome scale, and to regard with something little short of approbation, the means we take for instructing the children of the poor. One of their men of rank has absolutely promised to found a college at Burdwan, with one of our missionaries at its head, and where little children should be clothed and educated under his care. All this is very short indeed of embracing Christianity themselves, but it proves how completely those feelings are gone by, in Bengal at least, which made even the presence of a single missionary the occasion of tumult and alarm. I only hope that no imprudence, or over-forwardness on our part, will revive these angry feelings.

I have been very busy, busier indeed than I ever was before, except during the Oxford election;

The country, the society, and, at this season of the year, the climate are all very agreeable, and there are several amiable and excellent people here, who have shewn us much and cordial kindness, and whose friendship would, in any country, be a valuable privilege. Of the country we have as yet seen little,

very

except in one voyage up the river, and in the vicinity of Calcutta. But all Bengal is described to us as like those parts which we have seen, a vast alluvial plain, intersected by the innumerable arms of the Ganges, overflowed once a year, but now covered with fields of rice, divided by groves of tall fruit trees, with villages under their shelter, swarming with a population beyond any thing which Europe can shew, and scarcely to be paralleled in China. Calcutta, when seen from the south, on which side it is built round two sides of a great open plain, with the Ganges on the west, is a noble city, with tall and stately houses ornamented with Grecian pillars, and each, for the most part, surrounded by a little apology for a garden. The churches are not large, but very neat and even elegant buildings, and the Government House is, to say the least of it, a more shewy palace than London has to produce. These are, however, the front lines; behind them ranges the native town, deep, black and dingy, with narrow crooked streets, huts of earth baked in the sun, or of twisted bamboos, interspersed here and there with ruinous brick bazars, pools of dirty water, cocotrees, and little gardens, and a few very large, very fine, and generally very dirty houses of Grecian architecture, the residence of wealthy natives. There are some mosques of pretty architecture, and very neatly kept, and some pagodas, but mostly ruinous and decayed, the religion of the people being chiefly conspicuous in their worship of the Ganges, and in some ugly painted wooden or plaster idols, with all manner of heads and arms, which are set up in different parts of the city. Fill up this outline with a crowd of people in the streets, beyond any thing to be seen even in London, some dressed in tawdry silks and brocades, more in white cotton garments, and most of all black and naked, except a scanty covering round the waist, besides figures of religious mendicants with no clothing but their long hair and beards in elf locks, their faces painted white or yellow, their beads in one ghastly lean hand, and the other stretched out like a bird's claw to receive donations; marriage processions, with the bride in a covered chair, and the

bridegroom on horseback, so swathed round with garlands as hardly to be seen; tradesmen sitting on the ground in the midst of their different commodities, and old men, lookers on, perched naked as monkeys on the flat roofs of the houses; carts drawn by oxen and driven by wild-looking men with thick sticks, so unmercifully used as to undeceive perfectly all our notions of brahminical humanity; attendants with silver maces, pressing through the crowd before the carriage of some great man or other; no women seen except of the lowest class, and even these with heavy silver ornaments on their dusky arms and ancles; while coaches, covered up close with red cloth, are seen conveying the inmates of the neighbouring seraglios to take what is called "the air;" a constant creaking of cart wheels, which are never greased in India, a constant clamour of voices, and an almost constant thumping and jingling of drums, cymbals, &c. in honour of some of their deities; and add to all this a villainous smell of garlic, rancid coco-nut oil, sour butter, and stagnant ditches, and you will understand the sounds, sights, and smells of what is called the " Black Town" of Calcutta. The singularity of this spectacle is best and least offensively enjoyed on a noble quay which Lord Hastings built along the shore of the river, where the vessels of all forms and sizes, Arab, Indian, Malay, American, English, the crowds of brahmins and other Hindoos washing and saying their prayers; the lighted tapers which, towards sun-set, they throw in, and the broad bright stream which sweeps them by, guiltless of their impiety and unconscious of their homage, afford a scene such as no European and few Asiatic cities can at all parallel in interest and singularity.

Great state, of a certain kind, is still kept up, not only by the Governor-General (who has most of the usual appendages of a sovereign, such as body-guards, gold-sticks, spear-men, peacocks' plumes, state carriages, state barge, and elephants,) but by all the principal persons in authority. You would laugh to see me carried by four men in a palanqueen, two more following as a relay, two Q q

VOL. II.

silver maces carried before me, and another man with a huge painted umbrella at my side; or to see Emily returning from a party, with the aforesaid silver maces, or sometimes four of them behind her carriage, a groom at each horse's head, and four men running before with glass lanthorns. Yet our establishment is as modest and humble as the habits of the place will allow.

After all, this state has nothing very dazzling in it; a crowd of half-naked followers is no splendid shew, and the horses, the equipages, and the furniture of Calcutta, are all as far from magnificent as any that I am acquainted with. Our way of life in other respects is sensible and suited to the climate. The general custom is to rise at six in the cold season, and at half-past four in the morning during the hot weather, and to take exercise on horseback till the sun is hot, then follow a cold bath, prayers, and breakfast. This last is a sort of public meal, when my clergy and other friends drop in, after which I am generally engaged in business till two, when we either dine, or eat our tiffin; we then go out again at five or six, till darkness drives us home to dress for dinner, or pass a tranquil evening. Our rooms are large and lofty, with little very furniture; the beds have no drapery but a musquito net, and now the climate is so cool as even to require a blanket.

We have excellent turf for gallopping and excellent roads for driving on the great plain of which I have spoken. But there is no necessity for confining ourselves to it, the roads round Calcutta as soon as its boundary is passed, wind through beautiful villages, overhung with the finest and most picturesque foliage the world can shew, of the banyan, the palm, the tamarind, and, more beautiful perhaps than all, the bamboo. Sometimes the glade opens to plains covered, at this time, with the rice harvest, or to a sight of the broad bright river, with its ships and woody shores; sometimes it contracts into little winding tracks, through fruit-trees, gardens, and cottages; the gardens fenced in with hedges of aloe and pineapple; the cottages neater than those of Calcutta, and mostly of