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 very 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, coco-trees, 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 archi→ tecture, 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 plaister 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 unmerci fully 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 neigh bouring 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 spec

tacle 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 bodyguards, 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 palanquin, two more following as a relay, two 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 furni

ture of Calcutta, are all as far from magnificent as any that I am acquainted with. in other respects is sensible and

Our way of life suited to the cli

mate. 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 coldbath, 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 very little furniture; the beds have no drapery but a mosquito 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 fruittrees, gardens, and cottages; the gardens fenced in with hedges of aloe and pine-apple; the cottages

neater than those of Calcutta, and mostly of mats and white wicker-work, with thatched roofs and cane verandahs, with gourds trailing over them, and the broad tall plaintains clustering round them. Adieu.

Yours most faithfully,

REGINALD CALCUTTA.

TO THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF ST. ASAPH.

MY DEAR SIR,

Fort-William, December 16, 1823.

Long before this reaches you, you will, I trust, have received the news of our safe arrival in India, and Emily's account of our first impressions of the country, the people, and Calcutta. These impressions were, and still continue favorable.

The climate at this time of year far surpasses my expectations, and indeed if it would always continue as it is now, would be, perhaps, the finest in the world. And I find the field of useful exertion before me so great, and the probability of doing good so encouraging, that if Providence blesses us with health, I have no doubt of being as happy here as we could be any where at such a distance from our dear and excellent friends. Emily and I have, thank God, remained perfectly well through our changes of climate. Some days ago I should have had a bad report to make of our dear little girl.