My principal labour here is in the multitude of letters from the archdeacons, the chaplains, the charitable institutions, the supreme government, and the inferior governments of Madras and Bombay, which I have constantly to read and answer. Besides my official secretary, I am obliged to keep a native amanuensis, and as everything connected with churches, chaplains, missionaries, and school-masters, passes through my hands, or is referred to me by Government, besides my being visitor of Bishop's College, and agent to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, I find myself daily in a sort of business in which I have much to learn, and in which I certainly take no great pleasure. I have this morning, for instance, and yesterday evening,

had to answer four letters about the rate of exchange between Calcutta and England, and the expediency of drawing bills on the latter to pay the college debts; and I have just finished reading a long sheet of queries from the secretary to Government, respecting some ecclesiastical buildings, their expense, workmanship, &c., which will take some time and many previous inquiries to answer properly. All this will, however, I doubt not, become familiar to me by degrees; and I only regret it now, because it completely hinders the composition of my sermons, and very materially retards my acquisition of the Oriental languages. On the political state and prospects of India, as they at present appear to me, I hope to write another letter. It is an extensive and not uninteresting subject, and one which, I think, is not generally understood in Europe.

Dec. 17.

I rejoice to send a good account of both my Emilies, whom I accompanied some way down the river yesterday,

TO R. J. WILMOT HORTON, ESQ.

Calcutta, Dec., 1823. MY DEAR WILMOT,-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 plantains and pine-apples, and the sight of a very poor, but simple, and by no means 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 everybody 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.

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 draught 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 everything, 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 trousers, 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 shows 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 Hindoo- | stanee 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 shown, 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 whom we live. In all these points there is, indeed, great room for improvement. I do not by any means assent to the pictures of depravity and general worthlessness which some have drawn of the Hindoos. They are decidedly, by nature, a mild, pleasing, and intelligent race; sober, parsimonious; and, where an object is held out to them, most industrious and persevering. But the magistrates and lawyers all agree that in no country are lying and perjury so common, and so little regarded. Notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their manners, the criminal calendar is generally as full as in Ireland, with gang-robberies, setting fire to buildings, stacks, &c. &c.; and the number of children who are decoyed aside, and murdered, for the sake of their ornaments, Lord Am

herst assures me, is dreadful. Yet in all these points a gradual ameliorationTM is said to be perceptible; and I am assured, that there is no ground whatever for the assertion, that the people are become less innocent or prosperous under British administration. In Bengal, at least in this neighbourhood, I am assured by the missionaries, who, as speaking the language, and associating with the lower classes, are by far the best judges, that the English Government is popular. They are, in fact, lightly taxed (though that taxation is clumsily arranged, and liable to considerable abuse, from the extortions of the native Aûmeens and Chokeydars); they have no military conscrip tion, or forced services; they live in great security from the march of armies, &c.; and, above all, they some of them recollect in their own country, and all of them may hear or witness in the case of their neighbours in Oude and the Birman empire, how very differently all these things are managed under the Hindoo and Mahommedan sovereignties.

One very wise and liberal measure of Government has been the appropri ation of all the internal transit duties to the construction of roads and bridges, and the improvement of the towns where they are levied. A more popular, however, and I believe better policy, would have been to remit those duties altogether. They are precisely the things in which the chokeydars, and other underlings," are most fraudulent and oppressive. Twice as much is extorted by these fellows from the poor country people as they are authorized to receive, and of what is authorized, only a moderate part finds its way into the Company's coffers. Under such circumstances it might, perhaps, be better to remove all restraints from internal intercourse and traffic, to make the people industrious and prosperous, and to be assured that improvements would follow by degrees, in proportion as they became necessary or desirable. Lord Cornwallis's famous settlement of the zemindary rents in Bengal is often severely censured here, as not sufficiently protecting the ryuts, and depriving the

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