But though I fully believe the influence of Britain to have been honestly employed for the benefit of India, and to have really produced great good to the country and its inhabitants, I have not been led to believe that our Government is generally popular, or advancing towards popularity. It is, perhaps, impossible that we should be so in any great degree; yet I really think there are some causes of discontent which it is in our own power, and which it is our duty, to remove or diminish. One of these is the distance and haughtiness with which a very large proportion of the civil and military servants of the Company treat the upper and middling class of natives. Against their mixing much with us in society, there are certainly many hindrances, though even their objection to eating with us might, so far as the Mussulmans are concerned, I think, be conquered by any popular man in the upper provinces, who made the attempt in a right way. But there are some of our amusements, such as private theatrical entertainments and the sports of the field, in which they would be delighted to share, and invitations to which would be regarded by them as extremely flattering, if they were not, perhaps with some reason, voted bores, and treated accordingly. The French, under Perron and Des Boignes, who in more serious matters left a very bad name behind them, had, in this particular, a great advantage over us, and the easy and friendly intercourse in which they lived with natives of rank is still often regretted in Agra and the Dooab. This is not all, however. The foolish pride of the English absolutely leads them to set at nought the injunctions of their own Government. The tussildars, for instance, or principal active officers of revenue, ought, by an order of council, to have chairs always offered them in the presence of their European superiors, and the same, by the standing orders of the army, should be done to the soubahdars. Yet there are hardly six collectors in India who observe the former etiquette; and the latter, which was fifteen years ago never omitted in the army, is now

In almost every part of my journey, I have found the minds of the Europeans more favourably disposed to religion than I expected, and anxious, in a degree proportioned to their paucity, to avail themselves of every opportunity which offered for attending the rites of the Church. The native Christians of the Roman Catholic persuasion amount, I am told, to some thousands, and do not bear a good character.

Those who are members of the Church of England in this presidency have chiefly been converted by Archdeacon Corrie, and by his disciples, Bowley, Abdul Musseeh, and Anund Musseeh, and by Mr. Fisher of Meerut. Their number does not exceed, at most, five hundred adults, who are chiefly at the stations of Benares, Chunar, Buxar, Meerut, and Agra, a large proportion being the wives of European soldiers. Even this number is greater than might have been expected, when we consider how few years have passed since Mr. Corrie first came into the country. He was contemporary with Martyn, and before their time nothing was attempted here by the Church of England. I have made many inquiries, but cannot find that any jealousy on this head exists at present among the natives. Corrie, indeed, himself, from his pleasing manners, his candid method of conversing with them on religious topics, his perfect knowledge of Hindoostanee, and his acquaintance with the topics most discussed among their own learned men, is a great favourite among the pundits of Benares, and the syuds and other learned Mussulmans at Agra, who seem to like

conversing with him even where they differ most in their opinion. This good man, with his wife and children, went with me as far as Lucknow, and he has since gone to pass the hot weather in the Dhoon, his health being, I grieve to say, in a very precarious condition. At the same time I lost the society of a very agreeable fellow-traveller, the son of Mr. Lushington of the Treasury. My journey from thence to Delhi was, generally speaking, made alone; but I had then a medical man assigned to me by General Reynell. The want of such a person I had felt severely, both in the case of poor Stowe, and afterwards during my own illness, and when I had four men in my camp ill of jungle-fever.

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Mr. Adam, in spite of all which has been said and written, is, and uniformly has been, one of the most popular men in India. He is, perhaps, the only public man in whom, in any great degree, both Europeans and natives have confidence; and his absence from Calcutta during the early part of the war, and his present determination, which has just reached these provinces, to return to Europe, have been regarded by all, without exception, whom I have heard speak on the subject, as the heaviest calamities which could have befallen British India. I was Mr. Adam's guest for a few days at Almorah, and greatly pleased both with his manners and conversation; but he was then weak both in health and spirits, and my opinion of him has been formed rather from what I heard, than what I have myself known of him.

I am and have been in perfect health, and have performed my journey through all which was considered the adventurous part of the road very peaceably and quietly. Nothing can be wilder or more savage than these jungles, but they contain many spots of great romantic beauty, though the mountains are certainly mere playthings after Himalaya. The various tribes of the countries through which I have passed interested me extremely: their language, the circumstances of their habitation, dress, and armour, their pastoral and agricultural way of life; their women grinding at the mill, their cakes baked on the coals, their corn trodden out by oxen; their maidens passing to the well, their travellers lodging in the streets, their tents, their camels, their shields, spears, and coats of mail; their Mussulmans, with a religion closely copied from that of Moses; their Hin

months together, no small quantity of beasts of burden may well be supposed necessary; and in countries such as those which I have now been traversing, where every man is armed, where every third or fourth man, a few years since, was a thief by profession, and where, in spite of English influence and supremacy, the forests, mountains, and multitudes of petty sovereignties afford all possible scope for the practical application of Wordsworth's "good old rule," you may believe me that it is neither pomp nor cowardice which has thus fenced your friend in with spears, shields, and bayonets. After all, though this way of life has much that is monotonous and wearisome, though it grievously dissipates time and thought, and though it is almost incompatible with the pursuits in which I have been accustomed to find most pleasure, it is by no means the worst part of an Indian existence. It is a great point in this climate to be actually compelled to rise, day after day, before the dawn, and to ride from twelve to eighteen miles before breakfast. It is a still greater to have been saved a residence in Calcutta during the sultry months, and to have actually seen and felt frost, ice, and snow on the summits of Kemaoon, and under the shadow of the Himalaya. And though the greater part of the Company's own provinces, except Kemaoon, are by no means abundant in objects of natural beauty or curiosity, the prospect offering little else than an uniform plain of slovenly cultivation, yet in the character and manners of the people there is much which may be studied with interest and amusement, and in the yet remaining specimen of Oriental pomp at Lucknow, in the decayed, but most striking and romantic magnificence of Delhi, and in the Taje-Mahal of Agra (doubtless one of the most beautiful buildings in the world), there is almost enough, even of themselves, to make it worth a man's while to cross the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

Since then I have been in countries of a wilder character, comparatively seldom trodden by Europeans, exempt during the greater part of their history |

from the Mussulman yoke, and retain ing, accordingly, a great deal of the simplicity of early Hindoo manners, without much of that solemn and pompous uniformity which the conquests of the house of Timur seem to have impressed on all classes of their subjects. Yet here there is much which is interesting and curious. The people, who are admirably described (though I think in too favourable colours) by Malcolm in his " Central India," are certainly a lively, animated, and warlike race of men, though, chiefly from their wretched government, and partly from their still more wretched religion, there is hardly any vice, either of slaves or robbers, to which they do not seem addicted. Yet such a state of society is, at least, curious, and resembles more the picture of Abyssinia, as given by Bruce, than that of any other country which I have seen or read of; while here, too, there are many wild and woody scenes which, though they want the glorious glaciers and peaks of the Himalaya, do not fall short in natural beauty of some of the loveliest glens which we went through, ten years ago, in North Wales; and some very remarkable ruins, which, though greatly inferior as works of art to the Mussulman remains in Hindostan Proper, are yet more curious than them, as being more different from anything which an European is accustomed to see or read of.

One fact, indeed, during this journey has been impressed on my mind very forcibly, that the character and situation of the natives of these great countries are exceedingly little known, and in many instances grossly misrepresented, not only by the English public in general, but by a great proportion of those also who, though they have been in India, have taken their views of its population, manners, and productions from Calcutta, or at most from Bengal. I had always heard, and fully believed till I came to India, that it was a grievous crime, in the opinion of the Brahmins, to eat the flesh or shed the blood of any living creature whatever. I have now myself seer Brahmins of the highest caste cut of

the heads of goats as a sacrifice to Doorga; and I know, from the testimony of Brahmins, as well as from other sources, that not only hecatombs of animals are often offered in this manner as a most meritorious act (a raja about twenty-five years back offered sixty thousand in one fortnight), but that any person, Brahmins not excepted, eats readily of the flesh of whatever has been offered up to one of their divinities, while, among almost all the other castes, mutton, pork, venison, fish, anything but beef and fowls, are consumed as readily as in Europe. Again, I had heard all my life of the gentle and timid Hindoos, patient under injuries, servile to their superiors, &c. Now this is, doubtless, to a certain extent, true of the Bengalees (who, by the way, are never reckoned among the nations of Hindostan by those who speak the language of that country), and there are a great many people in Calcutta who maintain that all the natives of India are alike. But even in Bengal, gentle as the exterior manners of the people are, there are large districts, close to Calcutta, where the work of carding, burning, ravishing, murder, and robbery goes on as systematically, and in nearly the same manner, as in the worst part of Ireland; and on entering Hindostan, properly so called, which, in the estimation of the natives, reaches from the Rajmahal hills to Agra, and from the mountains of Kemaoon to Bundelcund, I was struck and surprised to find a people equal in stature and strength to the average of European nations, despising rice and rice-eaters, feeding on wheat and barley-bread, exhibiting in their appearance, conversation, and habits of life, a grave, proud, and decidedly a martial character, accustomed universally to the use of arms and athletic exercises from their cradles, and preferring, very greatly, military service to any other means of livelihood. This part of their character, but in a ruder and wilder form, and debased by much alloy of treachery and violence, is conspicuous in the smaller and less good-looking inhabitants of Rajpootana and Malwah; while the

mountains and woods, wherever they occur, show specimens of a race entirely different from all these, and in a state of society scarcely elevated above the savages of New Holland or New Zealand; and the inhabitants, I am assured, of the Deckan, and of the presidencies of Madras and Bombay, are as different from those which I have seen, and from each other, as the French and Portuguese from the Greeks, Germans, or Poles; so idle is it to ascribe uniformity of character to the inhabitants of a country so extensive, and subdivided by so many almost impassable tracts of mountain and jungle, and so little do the majority of those whom I have seen deserve the gentle and imbecile character often assigned to them. Another instance of this want of information, which, at the time of my arrival, excited much talk in Bengal, was the assertion made in Parliament, I forget by whom, that "there was little or no sugar cultivated in India, and that the sugar mostly used there came from Sumatra and Java." Now this even the Cockneys of Calcutta must have known to be wrong, and I can answer for myself, that in the whole range of Calcutta, from Dacca to Delhi, and thence through the greater part of Rajpootana and Malwah, the raising of sugar is as usual a part of husbandry as turnips or potatoes in England; and that they prepare it in every form, except the loaf, which is usually met with in Europe. This, however, is not the most material point in which the state of arts and society in India has been underrated. I met, not long since, with a speech by a leading member of the Scotch General Assembly, declaring his "conviction that the truths of Christianity could not be received by men in so rude a state as the East Indians; and that it was necessary to give them first a relish for the habits and comforts of civilized life before they could embrace the truths of the Gospel." The same slang (for it is nothing more) I have seen repeated in divers pamphlets, and even heard it in conversations at Calcutta. Yet, though it is certainly true that the lower classes