Moorshedabad,-The new Palace.

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land,' and of whom the natives say that they proposed to block up the passage of the Bhagiruttee with rupees, are now reduced to the greatest poverty. One of their descendants still lives, and occupies the ancient ancestorial residence, which is in a very dilapidated state. He subsisted for many years by the sale of the family jewels, till, at last, the British government granted him a monthly pension of 1,200 Rs. His ancestors are reputed to have possessed ten crores of rupees. The title of Jagat Sett, or the Banker of the World, was conferred upon the family by the emperor of Delhi. However reduced in circumstances now, the descendant of the Setts still has his musnud on the left in the Durbar of the Nabob Nazim.

In Moorshedabad, the chief object to attract the traveller now is the New Palace. This is a splendid edifice, planned and executed by Colonel Macleod. He was the only European, the rest having been all natives, engaged in the work. The building is 425 feet long, 200 wide, and 80 high-being the noblest in all Bengal. The cost is twenty lacs. Architectural men describe the Government House as a building pulled by four elephants, from the four corners, and give the palm to the Palace of Moorshedabad. The staircase is as grand as that which leads a man to the levees and durbars of the Viceroy. The marble floors are splendid. Nothing can be more sumptuous than the great banquettinghall which is 290 feet long, with sliding doors encased in mirrors. The different rooms are adorned in different styles. In the centre of the building is a dome,

from which hangs a vast and most superb chandelier with 150 branches, presented to the Nabob by the Queen. Here lay a beautiful ivory seat, very nicely painted and gilt in flowers, which was said to be the throne of the Nabob. It was not old Luchmunya's seat that a Hindoo should have felt any reverence for it; rather it called to mind the dark deeds of tyrants and profligates that were monsters in the human shape. The throne was a specimen of the perfection of that carved ivory work for which Moorshedabad is famous. Besides mirrors, chandeliers, and lanterns, which soon begin to cloy, there are no other decorations than a few portraits of the Nabob, his sons and ancestors. The latter does not extend beyond two or three generations.

From a balcony was shown to us the Zenana. Remembering how Hakeems and Coberajes even were not allowed to pass its threshold, and who prescribed medicine for the Begums by merely examining the urine, it was on our part an act of the highest espionage to overlook the Zenana. Inside the pale of the Killa, or enclosure, within which the buildings stand, the will of the Nazim is yet law. Civil authorities have no jurisdiction there, and we thought our audacity might cost our heads. From a hasty glance that we had of the Zenana we observed it to be a range of one-storied buildings in a circular form, with an open plot of ground in the middle, laid out in little gardens and flower-beds. There were 30 ladies in the harem we were told, and about 50 eunuchs to guard them. These eunuchs come from different places in Abyssinia, from

Moorshedabad,-the Emambarah,-the Punkhees. 81

Tigra, Dancali, Nubia, and the Galla country.' The former Nabobs had much larger harems. That of Serefraz had 1500 women. It was Ali Verdi only who had been content with a single wife. Suraja-aDowla's profligacies had no bounds. His favourite

mistress, Mohun Lall's sister, was a lady of the most delicate form, and weighed only 64 lbs. English.' Many of Suraja-a-Dowla's women taken in the camp had been offered to Clive by Meer Jaffier immediately after the battle of Plassey. The Seir Mutakherin describes the court of Moorshedabad as a kind of Sodom; the women of the court talked publicly of subjects which should never pass the door of the lips.'

From the Palace to the Emambarah, which is a great arcaded enclosure considerably larger than that of Hooghly. Of course, when fitted up with mirrors which reflect the light from numerous lustres, lamps, chandeliers, and girandoles, the place forms a scene of the most glittering splendour.

Off, on the other shore, lay some of the punkhees, or peacock and horse modelled yachts and pleasure-boats of the Nabob, which give to one a faint idea of those pleasure-boats of the Timurian princes upon which were floating markets' and flower-gardens.' No other craft chequered the surface of the river. The days are gone when the Ganges below Moorshedabad exhibited a brilliantly lighted-up scene, and bore onward upon its bosom 'floating palaces, towers, gates, and pagodas, bright with a thousand colours, and shining in the light of numberless glittering cressets.'

The festival of the Beira is said to have been introduced by Suraja-a-Dowla. It is an annual Mahomedan fête 'instituted in honour of the escape of an ancient sovereign of Bengal from drowning; who, as the tradition relates, being upset in a boat at night, would have perished, his attendants being unable to distinguish the spot where he struggled in the water, had it not been for a sudden illumination caused by a troop of beauteous maidens, who had simultaneously launched into the water a great number of little boats, formed of cocoa-nuts, garlanded with flowers, and gleaming with a lamp, whose flickering flame each viewed with anxious hopes of a happy augury. The followers of the king, aided by this seasonable diffusion of light, perceived their master just as he was nearly sinking, exhausted by vain efforts to reach the shore, and guiding a boat to his assistance, arrived in time to snatch him from a watery grave.'

The stables, the stud of elephants, the hunting establishments of the Nabob, are all yet on a princely scale. He wears every day a new suit of clothing, which become 'cast-off finery' on the following morning. If the physician prescribes a bel-fruit for the regulation of his bowels, the price of it must be mentioned to be a couple of rupees, or it would not be touched by his Highness. But the dominion that extended throughout Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, is now bound within the nutshell of a little killa, not half a mile in circumference. He has to wear no more slippers worth 50,000 Rs. He gets not now to chew such rich

Termination of native Titles.

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bitels, as the spit would kill a sweeper. There can be no doubt that the same end awaits the close of the title of Nabob Nazim of Bengal, which, without any exceptional reason in its favour, has so long been permitted to survive its congener, the Nabobate of the Carnatic. The endeavour to maintain a stilted position on the strength of ancestral offices, is a pretension which under a Mahomedan rule would long since have collapsed; attendance at the Royal levees in refulgent kinkhaub, and a discreet use of shawl presents, will not long stave off the inevitable oblivion; and it has been due to the ignorance as much as to the pseudo-tenderness of British sentiment that the vitality of such empty phantoms of departed greatness has been somewhat unreasonably protracted. The error was a venial one, though if anything similar had been attempted in behalf of those whose names had been prominent in England's history, ridicule and mockery would have trampled such pretensions to the dust. The time has, however, arrived when the descendants of the families of the Nabob of the Carnatic, of the Nabob Nazim, of Tippoo, and of the King of Oudh cannot too early realize the necessity of accepting a position in Native Society analogous to that occupied by the noblemen of England with respect to its commoners. They cannot hope for a higher or more honourable one; the framework of society and of our administration does not allow of their holding any other; and it will, when fairly accepted, enable them to train and educate their sons in a manner which would fit them for employment