the cheerful scenes of day, with pangs which the greatest master of pathos could alone describe:

> Ιώ, ̓Ιω, λαμπάδουχος αμέρα

Διός τε φέγγος, ἑτέρον,

Ἑτέρον αἰῶνα,

Και μοῖραν οἰχήσομεν.

Χαιρέ μοι, φίλον φάος.

But, believe me, these are sufferings to which the Hindu widow is impassive. The choice of death (for the martyrdom is by no means compulsory, as many zealous but ill informed writers have asserted) is one of the purest volition. So far from its being forced upon her by the peremptory order of her religion, one of the most authoritative of the sacred texts declares, that a wife, whether she ascends the funeral pile of her husband or survives for his benefit (that is, lives the remainder of her days in performing certain expiatory ceremonies in his behalf), is still a faithful widow.' It has been my fortune to have been, on one or two occasions, the spectator of this afflicting ceremony, and I can myself bear testimony against the vulgar assertion, that the widows on either of these occasions had been overpowered, either by the entreaties of relatives or the persuasion of the Brahmins, into the execution`

* Iphigen. in Aul., a. 2.

of her resolve. On the contrary, the strongest remonstrances of her friends were aided by those of the Brahmins, to call her back to life and its duties. The truth is, the sort of existence,-life it can be scarcely called,-to which, as a surviving widow, she knows herself to be destined, has nothing in it to render death, in its most appalling form, an image of terror. It is this fearful perspective, which makes her future existence appear to her eyes a long, wearisome, and distasteful series of melancholy duties. This, added to the honourable distinction attached to the martyrdom, operates upon a feeble and enslaved understanding with a strength, that overpowers the instinctive love of life which nature has infused into every bosom, and she dies amidst the most beatific visions of having redeemed her deceased lord from a thousand years of penance, and dwelling with him in the seats of the blessed, till both are absorbed into the boundless infinity of nature. Amid these visions, she knows no taste of death, or even of suffering. Is it wise, therefore, is it genuine humanity, to be making these incessant appeals to the morbid sensibilities of those, who are remote from the spot, and untinctured with the slightest knowledge of Hindu institutions or Hindu society, and therefore have no opportunity of correcting, by actual ob

servation, the errors into which overheated and exaggerated representations of an irremediable evil must of necessity mislead them? In your future speculations upon the people amongst whom you are now thrown, you will, I trust, avoid the mistake of considering the suttee the worst of religious usages, or as one that calls for the impertinent gossiping interference of those, who talk so much nonsense about it at home.”

Years have intervened since my kind friend and patron addressed this discourse to me. It has been my good fortune to revive my acquaintance with him in London, and I have lately listened with still more pleasure to his opinions as to what he calls "New India," in other words, the ominous changes that have happened there since his time. "I read in the Bengal papers," he observed, the other day, "of strange doings there. Things are called by new names." I had already, from previous hints which had fallen from him, begun to conjecture the nature of the forebodings that had thrown so dark a cloud over his good-humoured brow, and what were the innovations that had grown up since my friend's departure from India. His prejudices on this subject were inveterate, and lay near his heart. "Our former relations to the natives of India are wholly subverted," he observed. "Only consider,

now, what a vast change, moral and political, is implied in the new fashionable slang of the Bengal newspapers-native gentlemen!' Observe here (reading a paragraph from a Bengal John Bull of a recent date): Last Thursday, a grand ball and supper were given by at his house in Chowringhee, at whic ha numerous, elegant, and brilliant assemblage of rank, beauty, and fashion, were present. A number of native gentlemen were present, who appeared to be highly delighted with a scene, which to them must have been new and striking."

I could scarcely repress a stare of astonishment at this almost microscopic prejudice of an AngloIndian of the old school; but I begged him to be more explicit, when, after a few half-muttered and half-suppressed imprecations against the march of intellect, which, without circumlocution, he recommended to the devil, calling it the march of folly and madness, he proceeded in his tirade against what I thought to be quite an innocent, though perhaps an unmeaning, designation.

"It is not," said he, "that I am in the least wanting in all due and seasonable feelings of respect for the virtues and amiable qualities of our Hindu fellow-subjects. Far from it; I have systematically and on all occasions condemned every one of those

senseless and impertinent molestations of their opinions and usages, which have of late been so prevalent, and have reprobated without mercy the premature and fanatical efforts, from certain quarters, to engraft upon their's a system of theology, to which only in the fulness of time, and in the season of God's high will, they will become reconciled; for they who have most plagued and pestered them with their restless experiments of conversion, have first in the regular process of their argument, and in order to prepare an adequate basis for their project, blackened them, after the fashion of the Wards and the Careys, with every pollution of which our nature is susceptible, and attributed to them every vice and atrocity, that makes us hang down our heads in sorrow and shame for our species:—and this for the benevolent object of making them little better than nominal Christians. It is my rooted opinion, I say, that in all our intercourses with this highly interesting order of mankind, the harsh relations of conquerors and conquered, the strong and the feeble, should be banished, and free, mild, and forgiving communications, in the spirit of gentleness and affection, subsist betwixt us. But let us not forget, sir, that there are lines of expediency which circumscribe all the virtues; which place limitations even upon the too eager pursuit of right