unsightly and slovenly. The passages are narrow, crooked, and irregular, 'so as to render a passage through them on an elephant or in a palankeen always difficult, and often impracticable.' There is only one street tolerably wide, that runs from the eastern to the western gate, but it is by no means straight nor regularly built. In the middle of the town is a long narrow sheet of water, which, as it dries up, becomes exceedingly dirty, offensive, and malarious. The suburbs are built in a straggling and ill-defined manner, and they are bare and thin of population. The country here is low and flooded during the rains, and being thickly planted, is the source of great unhealthiness to the town. Ancient Pataliputra had been eight miles long and two and a half broad. Modern Patna is little more than a mile from east to west, and three-quarters of a mile from north to south-though the inhabitants pretend it to extend nearly nine miles along the banks of the Ganges from Jaffer Khan's garden to Bankipore. Of the towers and gateways spoken of by Megasthenes, or of the lofty pillars, columns, and turrets of the Suganga palace mentioned by the Hindoo dramatist, not a trace exists surviving the ravages of time and war. There is no building in Patna now which is two hundred years old. Chanakya's house with 'old walls, from which a thatched roof projects, covered by a parcel of fuel stuck up to dry, and furnished with a bit of stone for bruising cow-dung fuel,' may easily be recognised in a squalid hut of the present day. But there is no lofty building from which Chandragupta may see

'the city decorated as suits the festival of the autumnal full moon.' The Buddhist shrines and temples have been displaced by those of Mahadeva, and Gopala, and Patnadevi. Instead of a Buddhist monastery seen by Hwen Thsang, we see now a Sikh synagogue, and Mahomedan musjeeds. There are no more celebrated in Patna the festivals in which 'sportive bands of either sex spread mirth and music through the echoing streets, and the citizens with their wives are abroad and merrymaking.' The days are gone when Hindoo females showed themselves in public, but rather the streets are made narrow now from jealousy to keep persons of rank from approaching their women.' The Mahomedan is now the predominating element in Patna, and a Mahomedan viceroy wanted to change its name into Azimabad. The Mahomedans form a large part of the population of Patna, and a hundred thousand of them assemble at the Emambarah to celebrate the Mohurrum. From a stronghold of Buddhism, it is now a city of Sheiks and Syuds, to keep whom in a good humour an especial deputation of one of their countrymen was made in the late mutiny. Now that Delhi and Lucknow have ceased to be the great centres of Mahomedan intrigue, Patna is the only remaining place where the knot of Mahomedans is strong and influential.

It is not easy to tell of what the buildings in ancient Pataliputra were principally constructed. In the present day, they are seen to be built, for the most part, of wood and bricks. Two-thirds of a pucka-building in Patna are of wood. Not only is this the material of

beams, doors, and windows, but of pillars, floors, and half of the walls. The booths that project into the street and the verandahs that overhang them, are all of wooden architecture. This is because timber is so abundant and cheap in Patna, being easily procured and floated down from the forests of the Terai. The oldest part of Patna on the river-bank is very closely built. The streets are overhung by the upper stories, and have an old pavement of stone. They are so narrow that draining, clearing, and lighting them are all out of the question.

No old remains, as it has been said above, exist in Patna, unless a lofty mound of earth, with a Mahomedan Durgah on its top, near the Railway station, may be taken as a stupa of Asoca. The oldest ruins are those of the fort defended by Ramnarain against the Shazada, and situated very advantageously on a high bank above the river. The citadel has only a few of its bastions, and nothing more.

The only object for sight-seeing in Patna, is the monument over the 150 Englishmen massacred in cold blood by Sumroo under the orders of Meer Cossim. It is a tall, slender column, of alternate black and yellow stone, that lifts its head about 30 feet high in the old English burial-ground at Patna.

The trading quarters of Patna are out of the walled town, in the eastern suburbs, called Maroogunj. It is such a large mart, that 1700 boats of burthen have been counted lying here at one time.' Unless the rolling-stock of the Railway Companies be augmented

to the number of boats at each of the stations, they can never hope to divert all the trade from the river. Patna is a noted manufactory of table-cloths of any extent, pattern, and texture that may be ordered.' The Chinese have forgotten Pataliputra, and know Patna now for its opium. In Patna are many wealthy Hindoo merchants and bankers.

Two facts came to our knowledge as peculiar to the inhabitants of Patna. One of them relates to the practice of celebrating their marriages only in the months of January and February. They are preferred, we think, for their being pleasant dry months, and this marriage-season has the effect of producing an important demand in the piece-goods market for local consumption. The other fact is that no Hindoo dying at Patna is burnt here, but on the other shore. It may be, that ancient Magadha is a banned land for not having been included in the Puniya-bhumi of the Aryas.

To Bankipore, the Civil station of Patna―a distance of six miles. Here are the Opium Warehouses, the Courts of Justice, and the residences of the Europeans. In Bankipore is seen a high massive building, shaped like a dome, with two flights of steps outside to ascend to the top, resembling, says Heber, 'the old prints of the Tower of Babel.' There is a circular opening at the top to pour in corn, and a small door at the bottom to take it out. The building in question was erected by Government in 1783, after a severe famine, as a public granary to keep down the price of grain, and marks the politico-economical knowledge of the day. It was

'abandoned on discovery of its inefficacy, since no means in their hands, nor any building which they could construct, without laying on fresh taxes, would have been sufficient to collect or contain more than one day's provision for the vast population of their territories.' Moreover, it displays such architectural blockheadism 'as, by a refinement in absurdity, the door at the bottom is made to open inwards, and, consequently, when the granary was full, could never have been opened at all.' Passing up in the train, a glimpse of this remarkable tower may be caught by the traveller through the groves and orchards extending behind Bankipore.

Near the Bankipore station, a road has branched off to Gaya, six miles south of which is Boodh Gaya, famous for being the spot of the holy Peepul tree, under which Gautama, or Sakya Muni, sat for six years and obtained Buddha-hood. There is a temple 'more than two thousand years old,' in which three complete arches have been observed by Baboo Rajendro Lall Mittra,' as affording a remarkable proof of the Hindoos having had a knowledge of the principle of the arch at a very early period, though the credit of it has been denied them by all our Anglo-Indian antiquaries.' This is the place to which pilgrims from China and Burmah travelled in former ages, and on the ruins of which has modern Gaya risen, supplanting the ancient Buddhapud by the Vishnupud of the Brahmins.

The Herihar-Chetra and Sonepore Races.-Took a boat at the ferry-ghaut of Bankipore, and set out for the mela, On a tongue of land formed by the junction of