funds of a treasury, which in India as well as in England is seldom overflowing, was wont to take the pains to translate the drama about to be performed into Persian, and to have the MS. printed at a press which he had established. Thus made acquainted with the subject of the story, the acted play afforded amusement to many of the rich inhabitants of Benares, who subscribed very liberally to the support of the theatre. It is doubtful whether so good an example has been followed by the present management, the conciliation and gratification of the natives being too little studied in India; but the Benares theatre is distinguished for the introduction of performances better adapted to amateur actors than the regular drama. Charades and proverbs have diversified the usual entertainments, and the réunions, first established at this station, have become popular at Calcutta. The tableaux vivans, though so well suited to the peculiarities of the country, and permitting the introduction of ladies without offending prejudices, have not yet found their way to the Company's territories: so averse are the Anglo-Indians to innovations of any kind. In no part of Hindoostan can one of the most beautiful of the native festivals be seen to so great an advantage as at Benares. The duwallee is celebrated there with the greatest splendor, and its magnificence is heightened by the situation of the city on the bank of the river, and the singular outlines of the buildings. The attraction of this annual festival consists in the illuminations: at the close of evening, small chiraugs (earthen lamps), fed with oil which produces a brilliant white light, are placed, as closely together as possible, on every ledge of every building. Palace, temple, and tower seem formed of stars. The city appears like the creation of the fire-king, the view from the water affording the most superb and romantic spectacle imaginable, a scene of fairy splendor, far too brilliant for description. Europeans embark in boats to enjoy the gorgeous pageant from the river; all the vessels are lighted up, and the buildings in the distance, covered with innumerable lamps, shine out in radiant beauty. Eoropean illuminations, with their colored lamps, their transparencies, their crowns, stars, and initial letters, appear paltry when compared to the chaste grandeur of the Indian mode; the outlines of a whole city are marked in streams of fire, and the coruscations of light shoot up into the dark blue sky above, and tremble in long undulations on the rippling waves below. According to the native idea, every thing that prospers on the evening of the duwallee will be sure to prosper throughout the year. Gamblers try their luck, and, if they should be successful, pursue their fortune with redoubled confidence. Thieves also, anxious to secure an abundant supply of booty, labor diligently on this evening in their vocation; while others eat, drink, and are merry, in order that they may spend the ensuing period joyously. The Hindoo servants of an Anglo-Indian establishment, when this festival comes round, offer little presents of sweetmeats and toys to those members of the family who they think 17 VOL. III. NO. I. will coudescend to accept them, the children and younger branches. Many of these toys are idols of various descriptions, which, before they are consecrated, may be appropriated to purposes unconnected with their original destination. Benares is particularly famous for the manufacture of wooden and earthen playthings, which are seen indiscriminately in the temples and in the hands of European children; there are others, however, which are never used for any religious purpose, and amongst these are effigies of European ladies and gentlemen, seated upon elephants, or taking the air in buggies; all very inferior to the Calcutta toys, which are made of paper, and which give very accurate imitations of those things which they are intended to represent: elephants a foot high, colored according to nature, are provided with trunks which move with every breath; and birds in cages are suspended by such slight threads, that they appear to be alive, the most delicate touch setting them in motion. The Calcutta artists are also very expert in moulding reptiles in wax, which seem to be possessed of vitality, and occasion much alarm to persons who entertain a horror of creeping things. The whole of the Moosulman population are abroad to witness the superb spectacle produced by the blaze of light which flames from every Hindoo building, at the duwällee, and the festival, being one of a very peaceable description, goes off without broil or bloodshed, and what is still more extraordinary, without occasioning the conflagration of half the houses; but the brahmins of the holy city have not always permitted its profanations by the bigots of another creed to pass unmarked by an attempt to expel the intruders. Benares has been the scene of numerous and desperate struggles between the Moslems and Hindoos. The sacred bulls have been slaughtered in the streets by the one party, and swine slain in the mosques by the other; and were it not for the extreme vigilance exercised by the British Government, these mutual outrages would be continually renewed. The Jains, a peculiar sect of Hindoos, who carry their veneration for animals to a very outrageous length, have a temple at Benares, which is also the residence of several Mahratta families, who differ from their Hindoo brethren in having refused to immure their wives and daughters, after the example of the Moslem conquerors of India. The Mahratta ladies enjoy perfect freedom in their own country, and though they may not shock the prejudices of the citizens of Benares by appearing publicly in the streets, they look out from their terraces and house-tops, unveiled, not even retreating at the gaze of European spectators. Benares forms the head-quarters of the religious mendicants, who swarm all over India; some of these devotees are distinguished only by their disgusting filth, an indisputable mark of sanctity; while others attain a wretched preeminence by the frightful tortures which they inflict upon themselves. Hitherto, the efforts of the most zealous missionaries have failed to persuade the fanatic worshippers of Benares to quit the shrines of their idols, and to the slow progress which education is making in the East, we can alone trust for the extirpation of that horrid system of religion, which is so revolting to the Christian dwellers of the land. The cantonment of Secrole is possessed of a handsome church, very elegantly fitted up in the interior, and large enough to accommodate all the Protestant inhabitants of the station. Here, however, as at other places in India, not even excepting Calcutta, the lower offices are served by Pagans. Hindoo bearers being employed to pull the punkahs and to open the pew-doors. No one appears to be at all scandalized by the presence of these men, though, as the service is performed in a language with which they are wholly unacquainted, there can be no hope that their attendance will lead to their conversion; and it seems very extraordinary that the few Christians necessary to keep the church in order, should either not be found or not be employed for that purpose. The church compound (as it is called), during evening service, which is always performed by candlelight, exhibits the usual bustle and animation attendant upon every assemblage of Anglo-Indians. Vehicles of all descriptions are waiting outside, and the grooms, chuprassies, bearers, and other attendants, muster in considerable numbers. Within, in the cold season, when punkahs are not required, there is little or nothing to remind the congregation that they are breathing their orisons in a foreign and a heathen land; but when the porch is gained, the turbaned population around, the pagodas in the distance, and the elephants and camels which wend their way across the plains, display a scene so different from that presented in the quiet neighbourhood of a country church-yard at home, that the pleasing delusion can be cherished no longer. ART. IX.-LITERARY CORRECTION. The last, the noblest art, the art to blot, is one which at present seems to have fallen into decay. How it was practised in former times, may appear from the following extract, which we take from an article by Mr. Thomas Moore, published in "The Metropolitan." "The fastidious care with which some of those works the world reads with most pleasure have, in every sentence, been corrected and re-corrected by their authors, is sufficiently proved by the rough copies of some of these master-pieces that have been preserved. I recollect in turning over a brouillon of the Héloise, which they show in the Library of the Chambre des Députés, to have remarked, among other instances, a sentence in which the simple word "peutêtre" had been inserted and again erased four different times, before this most fastidious of writers could satisfy himself with its position. On referring afterwards, too, to the pas sage, as printed, I found that the correcting spirit had been again. at work, and that, in despair doubtless of being able to manage his adverb gracefully, the author had altered the construction of the sentence altogether. In the manuscripts of Ariosto, at Ferrara, we find one of his most celebrated stanzas written by him in no less than sixteen different ways; and it is a proof of the success that, in most cases, rewards such labor, that the last of these repeated efforts at perfection is accounted the best. "But among the writers who have thus let us into the secret, that, if poets can boast their 'Heaven of Invention,' they have also this sort of Purgatory, or 'place of amending fire,' connected with it, there are none, perhaps, in whom it so much surprises us to find this elaborate degree of revision as in Petrarch. The sources of Imagination, it is true, lie deep, and they who would draw forth its treasures into light, may have to try long and often before they succeed to their wishes; but that a feeling, gushing at once from the heart, like that which would seem to have fed the poetry of Petrarch, should have required so much time and study to regulate its flow, appears to those uninitiated in the mysterious processes of Genius, almost inconceivable. "The same species of evidence, however, the author's own MSS. which has put us in possession of the manner in which the imaginative Rousseau and the fanciful Ariosto labored, has also revealed to us the still more slow and workmanlike operations of Petrarch; -- has shown the steps by which this tender and, as it would seem, impassioned writer brought to their present state of rare and, perhaps, inimitable perfection those Sonnets over which young hearts have, for so many centuries, sighed. This sort of glimpse into the alchymist's laboratory is rendered still more curious, by the habit which the poet had of dating, and commenting upon, his corrections; and it will be owned, I think, after the perusal of a few of these memorandums, that no ledger in a counting-house was ever pondered over more coolly than were the items of this running account between Petrarch and Love, in the various articles of 'capei d'oro,' ' sospiri,' &c. "I must make these two verses over again, singing them,* and I must transpose them; 3 o'clock, A. M, 19th October.' "I like this;-30th October, 10 o'clock in the morning. "No; this does not please me. 20th December, in the evening; — I shall return to this again; I am called to supper. "February 18th, towards noon; it again. "Consider this; I had some thoughts of transposing these lines, and of making the first verse the last, but I have not done so for the sake of harmony, the first would then be more sonorous, and the last less so, which is against rule. "The commencement is good, but it is not pathetic enough."" *It is said to have been the practice of Burns, to sing his verses, while he wrote, even when not intending them to be associated with music. 1. Rapport sur les Expériences magnétiques faites par la Commission de l'Académie Royale de Mé decine. 2. Examen historique et raisonné des Expériences prétendues magnétiques faites par la Commission de l'Académie Royale de Médecine; pour servir à l'Histoire de Philosophie médicale au 19° Siècle. Par E. F. Dubois. II. WALPOLE'S LETTERS TO SIR HORACE MANN Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir LORD DOVER. III. LIFE AND POSTHUMOUS WORK OF ARCHDEACON COXE IV. PELLICO's Gismonda da MENDRISIO V. INHABITANTS OF A COUNTRY TOWN PAGE. 133 167 185 219 230 Inhabitants of a Country Town. By Miss Mitford. The Life of William Roscoe. By his Son, HENRY PAGE. 137 |