agreeable to the eye and instinct of the majority of the human race. A colder climate, and a constant use of clothes, may have blanched the skin as effectually as a burning sun and nakedness may have tanned it; and I am encouraged in this hypothesis by observing that of animals the natural colours are generally dusky and uniform, while whiteness and a variety of tint almost invariably fol low domestication, shelter from the elements, and a mixed and unnatural diet. Thus while hardship, additional exposure, a greater degree of heat, and other circumstances with which we are unacquainted, may have deteriorated the Hindoo into a Negro, opposite causes may have changed him into the progressively lighter tints of the Chinese, the Persian, the Turk, the Russian, and the Englishman. The Arab vessels attracted his attention, in the Hooghly,-no longer clumsy, but of European built and swiftness, and manned by a people "who are gradually becoming formidably maritime, and are not unlikely to give great trouble in the Indian seas, to the English and other European nations." On landing, and conversing with the inhabitants of a village which had very seldom been visited by Europeans, he heard the word policewala, for a peace-officer, and a Brahmin called the Padre of the village. The occurrence of these European sounds, in a scene so purely Oriental, had a whimsical effect, and became more interesting, when he learned that the name of Padre, originally caught from the Portuguese, was then applied to religious persons, of whatever description, all over India, even in the most remote situations, and where no European penetrates once in a century; and that, likewise, almost throughout the Indian empire, the term Grigi, a corruption of Ecclesia, is employed when speaking of any place of worship. Cosák is the common word for a predatory horseman, all over Northern and Central India. This itinerant faculty of language is important, in the consideration of points connected with the supposed original identity of nations, and the extent of mutual intercourse. It might save some erudite but knotty and inconclusive disquisitions, and aid the philosophy of comparative vocabularies. When within nine miles of Calcutta, the Bishop found carriages waiting for his party, drawn by small horses with switch tails, and driven by postillions with whiskers, turbans, bare legs and arms, and blue jackets with tawdry yellow lace. By the side of each horse, ran a saes or groom, and behind one of them were two decent looking men with long beards and white cotton dresses, who introduced themselves as his peons or hurkarus, and whose badges were a short mace or club of silver, and a long silver stick. The saeses kept pace with the carriages. In his new dwelling, his servants were immediately paraded before him, under many respective and sonorous titles, eight or nine of which he enumerates. The most conspicuous of the array, was "a tall fine looking man in a white muslin dress, speaking good English, and the editor of a Bengalee newspaper," who ap peared with a large silken and embroidered purse full of silver -who coins; which purse he presented, in order that it might be merely taken and returned. This proceeding is the relick of the ancient Eastern custom of never approaching a superior without a present. In like manner, all the natives who visited the Bishop, offered a piece of gold or silver money. He found a sort of literary attendance on another occasion, when making a short excursion in one of the Governor-General's boats. The Diary says: "It is a large, light, and beautiful canoe, paddled by twenty men, who sit with their faces towards the head, with one leg hanging over the side of the boat, and the great toe through a ring fastened to its side. They keep time with their paddles, and join occasionally in chorus with a man who stands in the middle, singing what I was assured were verses of his own composition: sometimes amatory, sometimes in praise of the British nation, the Company Sahib,' and the Governor-General; and in one or two instances were narrations of different victories gained by our troops in India. The tunes of many of them are simple and pleasing, but the poet has not a good voice. His appearance is singular—a little, thin, squinting man, extremely conceited, with large silver manacles, like those of women, round his naked ankles, which he jingles in cadence to his story." At Barrack poor, the prelate first mounted an elephant, a steed with which he became fully familiar, in progress of time. He thought the motion far from disagreeable, though very different from that of a horse. He gives these details: "As the animal moves both feet on the same side at once, the sensation is like that of being carried on a man's shoulders. A full grown elephant carries two persons in the 'howdah,' besides the 'mohout,' or driver, who sits on his neck, and a servant on the crupper behind with an umbrella. The howdah itself, which Europeans use, is not unlike the body of a small gig, but without a head. The native howdahs have a far less elevated seat, and are much more ornamented. At Calcutta, or within five miles of it, no elephants are allowed, on account of the frequent accidents which they occasion by frightening horses. Those at Barrackpoor were larger animals than I had expected to see; two of them were at least ten feet high. That which Lord Amherst rode, and on which I accompa nied him, was a very noble fellow, dressed up in splendid trappings, which were a present from the king of Oude, and ornamented all over with fish embroidered in gold, a device which is here considered a badge of royalty. I was amused by one peculiarity, which I had never before heard of; while the elephant is going on, a man walks by his side, telling him where to tread, bidding him take carc,'-step out,' warning him that the road is rough, slippery, &c., all which the animal is supposed to understand, and take his measures accordingly. The mohout says nothing, but guides him by pressing his legs to his neck, on the side to which he wishes him to turn, urging him forwards with the point of a formidable goad, and stopping him by a blow on the forehead with the butt end of the same instrument. The command these men have over their elephants is well known, and a circumstance lately occurred of one of them making a sign to his beast, which was instantly obeyed, to kill a woman who had said some. thing to offend him. The man was executed before our arrival." Calcutta is particularly described in the second, third, and fourth Chapters of the Journal. The resemblance of some parts and views of it, to some of St. Petersburg, which the traveller had seen, is so close, that it was "hardly possible" for him to fancy himself any where else than in the Russian metropolis, His first letter to Mr. Wynn, has this passage: "We arrived in Fort William on the evening of the 10th. The impression made by the appearance of the European houses which we passed in Garden reach,-by our own apartments, by the crowd of servants, the style of the carriages and horses sent to meet us, and almost all the other circumstances which met our eyes, was that of the extreme similarity of every thing to Russia, making allowance only for the black instead of the white faces, and the difference of climate, though even in Russia, during summer, it is necessary to guard against intense heat. This impression was afterwards rather confirmed than weakened. The size of the houses, their whiteness and Palladian porticos, the loftiness of the rooms, and the scanty furniture,-the unbounded hospitality and apparent love of display, all reminded me of Petersburg and Moscow; to which the manner in which the European houses are scattered, with few regular streets, but each with its separate court-yard and gate-way, and often intermixed with miserable huts, still more contributed. "I caught myself several times mixing Russian with my newly acquired Hindoostanee, talking of rubles instead of rupees, and bidding the attendants come and go in what they, of course, mistook for English, but which was Sclavonic." Serampoor he paints as a "handsome place, kept beautifully clean, and more like an European town, than Calcutta or any of its neighbouring cantonments." Its veteran Danish governor had been more than forty years resident in Bengal, still preserving "the apparently robust health and florid old age of Norway, of which country he was a native." In Calcutta, the Portuguese are numerous, and have two large and very handsome churches. Their clergy wear their canonical dress of white cotton. The Botanical Garden-admirably picturesque, and vastly rich in indigenous plants and in exotics,-more perfectly answered Milton's idea of Paradise, than any thing which the Bishop ever saw. He was scarcely less delighted with the moral beauty of the scene of the native female schools, instituted by Mrs. Wilson, wife of a missionary. This lady, at the end of the year 1826, had about six hundred scholars in various schools in the suburbs of Calcutta. At the commencement of her benevolent enterprise, (1821,) she thought herself fortunate in obtaining the presence of six or seven children; and, at that period, there was no instance of a native female of Bengal, having been instructed in reading, writing, or sewing. In 1823, there were, besides, in Calcutta and the surrounding villages, twenty flourishing schools for boys, under the care of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Church Missionary Society. The Hindoo parents, however, exacted the promise that no attempts would be made to convert the children to Christianity. Nothing can be more edifying than the efforts and success of Mrs. Wilson, which are circumstantially reported in the fourth letter of the Correspondence. At Calcutta, in the large native houses, 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 wealthy Bengalese 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." Whiggism predominates in the politics of the Bengalee newspapers, and the Bishop mentions that one of the leading men gave a great dinner, about the period of his arrival, in honour of the Spanish Revolution. They show a predilection for European society, but are rarely permitted or encouraged to frequent it on terms of any thing like equality. The "John Bullism," exercised in this impolitic exclusion, is strongly condemned in the Journal. When as far as Agra, in his first circuit, the Bishop holds this emphatic language: "I took an opportunity of inquiring here in what degree of favour the name of the French stood in this part of India, where, for so many years together, it was paramount. I was told that many people were accustomed to speak of them as often oppressive and avaricious, but as of more conciliating and popular manners than the English Sahibs. Many of them, indeed, had completely adopted the Indian dress and customs, and most of them were free from that exclusive and intolerant spirit, which makes the English, wherever they go, a caste by themselves, disliking and disliked by all their neighbours. Of this foolish, surly, national pride, I see but too many instances daily, and I am convinced it does us much harm in this country. We are not guilty of injustice or wilful oppression, but we shut out the natives from our society, and a bullying, insolent manner is continually assumed in speaking to them." Returning one day from Calcutta to Serampoor, Heber passed by a funeral pile nearly consumed, on which a Suttee had just taken place. The body of the widow who had been burnt alive, was reduced to ashes. This first shock of the kind, made the humane Heber "sick at heart," but custom had steeled all his Hindoo retinue. There were from twenty to thirty people present, "with about the same degree of interest as would have been called forth by a bonfire in England." When the boat in which the Bishop was, drew near to the spot, a shout was raised on the shore, in honour of Brahma, which was met by a similar outcry from his boatmen-like the clamour in the splendid verse of Southey : "And with a last and loudest cry, They call on Arvalan O sight of misery! You cannot hear her cries,-all other sound In that wild dissonance is drown'd ; But in her face you see The supplication and the agony, See in her swelling throat the desperate strength Towards the crowd in vain for pity spread, They force her on, they bind her to the dead." Interest, custom, jealousy, and superstition, cause the male part of the Hindoos, to cling to the practice of thus sacrificing wives and mothers; while the females, though they ascend the pile with seeming courage and alacrity, would, it is known, re joice in its abrogation-a measure which the British rulers dare. not attempt. At a public meeting held by the Hindoo gentlemen of Calcutta, (Baboos,) to vote an address of thanks to Lord Hastings, on his leaving Bengal, one of the most distinguished proposed as an amendment, that the marquis should be particularly thanked "for the protection and encouragement which he had afforded to the ancient and orthodox practice of widows burning themselves with their husbands' bodies." The proposal was seconded by another opulent Baboo. In the district of Ghazeepoor, the Bishop found that suttees were more frequent, than even in the neighbourhood of Calcutta. To show "how little the interference of neighbours is to be apprehended in such cases, and how insignificant female life is deemed," he relates some instances of which we shall proceed to copy one as quite sufficient for our object: "A short time ago, at a small distance from the city of Ghazeepoor, in consequence of a dispute which had taken place between two small freeholders about some land, one of the contending parties, an old man of seventy and upwards, brought his wife of the same age to the field in question, forced her, with the assistance of their children and relations, into a little straw hut built for the purpose, and burned her and the hut together, in order that her death might bring a curse on the soil, and her spirit haunt it after death, so that his successful antagonist should never derive any advantage from it. On some horror and surprise being expressed by the gentleman who told me this case, one of the officers of his court, the same, indeed, who had reported it to him, not as a horrible occurrence, but as a proof how spiteful the parties had been against each other, said very coolly, why not?-she was a very old woman,-what use was she? The old murderer was in prison, but my friend said he had no doubt that his interference in such a case between man and wife was regarded as singularly vexatious and oppressive; and he added, "The truth is, so very little value do these people set on their own lives, that we cannot wonder at their caring little for the life of another."" With Hindoo saints, faquirs, and living idols of different species, the Lord Padre Sahib, (Bishop,) became familiar, even before he had completed the greater part of his first tour. At the festival of "Churruck Poojah," he saw many devotees going about with small spears through their tongues and arms, and still more with hot irons pressed against their sides. All were naked to the waist, covered with flowers, and plentifully raddled with vermillion, while their long, black, wet hair hung down their backs, almost to their loins. The holy swinging on a tree, is an amusement which we should not covet-either as a spectacle or an exercise. Hooks are thrust through the muscles of the swinger's sides, and he is thus raised up, and then whirled or spun round with great rapidity. Soon after setting out from Calcutta, the Bishop gives the following specimens of the idolatries and austerities which fell under his observation : "A few days since I saw a tall, large, elderly man, nearly naked, walking with three or four others, who suddenly knelt down one after the other, and catching hold of his foot kissed it repeatedly. The man stood with much gravity to allow them to do so, but said nothing. He had the string ('peeta') of a Brahi |