the fatigues incident to a mode of travelling so disconcerting to the female nerves. Every successive bump would be a lecture upon her imprudence; her misplaced desires would be completely jolted to pieces; and I question whether the gallant himself, whilst spurring his flagging Arab under a burning sun, would not be inclined to think that he had at least gone far enough, and begin to vote the whole affair to be a bore. Then there are not, as in England, delightful inns, stored with exquisite viands and admirable wines, with smiling landlords and obsequious waiters, where the fugitive pair may halt, to recruit their spirits, and drown in champagne or claret the squeamish and uncomfortable risings of remorse, that may obtrude upon their felicity. But for these there are, at occasional distances, certain buildings called choultries, facetiously said to have been erected for the comfort of travellers; desolate, cheerless, uninhabited, echoing to no sounds but the howl of jackals and the hum of musquitoes. In these inhospitable edifices there is nothing to cheer or support you, and a much better chance of your being yourself eaten up, than of finding any thing to eat. Now absolute famine, or even bad fare, is a decisive antidote to love of any kind, lawful or unlawful. Travellers who refresh themselves at these places

are obliged to send on all their culinary preparations before them. In the case of an elopement, these preparations would betray the secrecy and impede the progress of the expedition.

Such then are the salutary checks which, in the English society of India, interpose between woman and the thoughtless folly that undermines her fame and her happiness in other countries. The black servants, I repeat, are as vigilant guards over your earthly paradise as if they were "cherubims with flaming swords" stationed at its gates. The impediments to rapid flight soon reconcile the wedded dame to the ills she has, instead of encountering those "she knows not of;" and it is a most invaluable law of our nature, that we are not long in learning to endure that from which we cannot fly. Fastidious moralists may cry out that these are equivocal signs of virtue, and degrading motives to abstain from evil. Senseless prate! If virtue consists in abstinence from vice, no matter how the end is accomplished, it is still virtue. The result of all this is, that handsome wives gradually subside into respectable matrons, that euthanasia of beauty, in which all irregular and unholy affections are buried in the quiet grave of conjugal stillness, and they return to England to spend the autumnal season of their charms with placid and

subdued desires, that never wander beyond their husbands or their nurseries, except to a little harmless gossip on the less guarded conduct of their friends, and the pardonable maternal vanity of witnessing the triumphs of their daughters in the ballroom or at the piano.

But there is another circumstance which operates most powerfully as a cement of the matrimonial union in India, which it would be unphilosophical to pass by. Every lady has a direct participation in her husband's advancement, and consequently a tenderer sympathy in his fortunes;—and this has an obvious tendency to strengthen her constancy and invigorate her attachment. For, as he rises step by step in the service,-I refer more particularly to the civil branch, he imparts to her that enviable distinction, which in limited spheres of society is the object of the warmest aspirations cherished in the female bosom. How many fair complexions have I seen ruined by unavailing and feverish competitions for the splendid plaything-the glittering toy, called rank! How many an interesting dimple has been fretted into a downright wrinkle by the slow corroding pangs of envy, that Mrs. W*** should have a right to walk first, because Mr. W*** has just received an appointment at the Board of Trade! Hence it is, that having once

embarked in, she adheres to, the vessel which not only carries the fortunes of Cæsar, but the rank of Cæsar's wife, a circumstance of no slight weight in strengthening the links of the matrimonial chain, and identifying by a bland and harmonious assimilation the mutual ambition of the parties. It is astonishing what the love of rank will effect in the coteries of Anglo-India. I verily believe, there

are some ladies that would rather crawl on their hands and feet, than not be allowed to go first into a room at all.

Sometimes the love of rank takes a retrograde turn. When a cause was tried in the Supreme Court, respecting the widening of the Marmalong bridge-a long series of arches whose needless and wearisome length bestrides the bed of a small river near Madras, but which was so narrow that two carriages accidentally meeting could not pass,-I remember a curious Irish attorney, in the broadest of brogues and with a face which had been thrice dipped in Shannon's brazen flood, in order to point out more emphatically the inconvenience of the bridge, was heard to exclaim, "Why, my Lord, it was only yesterday morning, that Mrs. O**** in her carriage met Mrs. D*** in her's, in the very middle of it, and there they stuck for a whole hour, quarrelling for precedence which should go backward."

But English life in India is a subject that unfolds itself as I advance. I pledge myself in future essays to treat the subject according to the most correct principles of our common nature; to shew that all that is eccentric or problematic in the character of Anglo-Indian society is to be traced to certain fixed and definite laws; and endeavour at least to supply a desideratum in the pictures of that society which have lately been given to the world, that has been long felt and long lamented.