December 17.

I rejoice to send a good account of both my Emilies, whom I accompanied some way down the river yesterday, and left very comfortably accommodated.

This letter will go by the purser of the Grenville, who is not yet set off. Captain Manning went yesterday, having taken charge of Emily and her little girl as far as the Sand-heads; they are to be very little on shore, but are to cruize about the roads during the day, and return at night to anchor. Believe me, my dear Sir,

Ever your obliged and affectionate

REGINALD CALCUTTA.

TO R. J. WILMOT HORTON, ESQ.

MY DEAR WILMOT,

Calcutta, December, 1823.

The speed of our voyage in the Grenville, by landing us in India some weeks before the time at which we might have been expected to arrive there, has been productive of one uncomfortable effect, by making us appear so much the longer without letters from England. Only one Liverpool vessel has since arrived, which was not of a date previous to the time of our own sailing, and she brought papers only a very few days more recent than ours. Reports, however, have from time to

time been raised, of vessels supposed from Europe, seen working up towards Saugor; and you may well conceive the eagerness with which we have, on such occasions, anticipated the arrival of those bundles of information and kind wishes which form the delight of an English post-day, and to us, on the Ganges, would be, I cannot say how interesting. The Grenville, however, is now about to sail again, and I take advantage of her return to remind those valued friends who may, possibly, not yet have written to us, how much their correspondence allays the pain of absence.

This is a fine country, and, at this time of year, a very fine climate. We have, indeed, no mountains, not even an elevation so high as the mount in Kensington Gardens, which I recollect the more, because in them was my last ramble with yourself and Hay. We have no springs, no running streams except the Ganges, and we have not much of open plain and dry turf. But we have wood and water in abundance; the former of the noblest description of foliage which I have ever seen, both in form, verdure, variety, and depth of shadow. I had no idea of the beauty and majesty of an Indian wood: the coloured prints which I had seen in England being as unlike the sober richness of the reality as the bloom of Mrs. Salmon's wax-work goddesses to Mrs. Nor, to those who like wandering about an immense conservatory, or who are pleased and interested with cane-work cottages, little gardens of plaintains and pine-apples, and the sight of a very poor but simple, and by no means

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inelegant race of peasants, are there prettier rides than those afforded by the lanes and hedgerows round Calcutta. The mornings from five to eight, are now equal to the pleasantest time of year in England; then follow about eight hours, during which a man does well to remain in the house, but which, under such circumstances, are not too hot either for comfort or any kind of mental exertion; and from four to dark it is again about the temperature of our summer evening. This is, indeed, the best time of year. Of the rains and the hot winds every body speaks with very alarming eloquence; and I apprehend that, during their continuance, a bare existence is all that any man can hope for. We had some little of these last on our first arrival, but not sufficient to prevent our morning and evening airings. They were, however, sufficiently potent to induce us to believe all which had been told us of the necessity of cool clothing, cool diet, and quietness.

Of the people of this country, and the manner in which they are governed, I have, as yet, hardly seen enough to form an opinion. I have seen enough, however, to find that the customs, the habits, and prejudices of the former are much misunderstood in England. We have all heard, for instance, of the humanity of the Hindoos towards brute creatures, their horror of animal food, &c. ; and you may be, perhaps, as much surprised as I was, to find, that those who can afford it are hardly less carnivorous than ourselves; that even the

purest Brahmins are allowed to eat mutton, and venison; that fish is permitted to many castes, and pork to many others, and that, though they consider it as a grievous crime to kill a cow or bullock for the purpose of eating, yet they treat their draft oxen, no less than their horses, with a degree of barbarous severity which would turn an English hackney-coachman sick. Nor have their religious prejudices, and the unchangeableness of their habits, been less exaggerated. Some of the best-informed of their nation, with whom I have conversed, assure me that half their most remarkable customs of civil and domestic life are borrowed from their Mohammedan conquerors; and at present there is an obvious and increasing disposition to imitate the English in every thing, which has already led to very remarkable changes, and will, probably, to still more important. The wealthy natives now all affect to have their houses decorated with Corinthian pillars, and filled with English furniture. They drive the best horses and the most dashing carriages in Calcutta. Many of them speak English fluently, and are tolerably read in English literature; and the children of one of our friends I saw one day dressed in jackets and trowsers, with round hats, shoes and stockings. In the Bengalee newspapers, of which there are two or three, politics are canvassed with a bias, as I am told, inclining to Whiggism, and one of their leading men gave a great dinner not long since, in honour of the Spanish Revolution. Among the lower orders the same feeling shews itself more beneficially, in a growing

neglect of caste-in not merely a willingness, but an anxiety, to send their children to our schools, and a desire to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged, might, I verily believe, in fifty years' time, make our language what the Oordoo, or court and camp language of the country (the Hindoostanee) is at present. And though instances of actual conversion to Christianity are, as yet, very uncommon, yet the number of children, both male and female, who are now receiving a sort of Christian education, reading the New Testament, repeating the Lord's Prayer and Commandments, and all with the consent, or at least without the censure, of their parents or spiritual guides, have increased, during the last two years, to an amount which astonishes the old European residents, who were used to tremble at the name of a Missionary, and shrink from the common duties of Christianity, lest they should give offence to their heathen neighbours. So far from that being a consequence of the zeal which has been lately shewn, many of the Brahmins themselves express admiration of the morality of the Gospel, and profess to entertain a better opinion of the English since they have found that they too have a religion and a Shaster. All that seems necessary for the best effects to follow is, to let things take their course, to make the Missionaries discreet, to keep the Government as it now is, strictly neuter, and to place our confidence in a general diffusion of knowledge, and in making ourselves really useful to the temporal as well as spiritual interests of the people among