The company, besides ourselves, consisted of several pilots of different ranks in that service; their acquirements seemed to be much upon a par with those of the worthy whom I left lon board the frigate, except one, a tall young man, whose conversation and manners shewed that his opportunities had been much superior to those of most of his brethren, and he seemed to be perfectly conscious of that superiority. After tiffin, we proceeded across, and I found the thing of which they had spoken to be a large decked boat with a round-house abaft, which furnished most comfortable accommodations. We were hardly on board of her, when a native servant came off with his master's salaam, requesting our company to dinner. We immediately accepted, and were conducted to the house of Mr Harton of Kedgereepark, who received us more with the cordiality of an old friend, than the civility of a mere stranger; and we soon found ourselves seated at an excellent dinner. Here we met with a jolly old parson, who had come down to the sea-side to recover the effects of a bilious attack, and taken up his abode with Mr Harton. We found him a most valuable acquisition

he was quite the life of the company. As he had come late into the vineyard, and had been a soldier in his youth," he was more a man of the world than most clergymen I have met with. It was probably owing to this circumstance that he wanted that austere and dignified carriage, so peculiarly becoming a minister of the gospel, which a residence in a university, where the highest veneration is always shewn to exalted piety and superior learning, (added, perhaps, to a strong inward consciousness of possess ing in an eminent degree these good gifts) is said to have bestowed on some of his superiors in the Indian church. Notwithstanding this deficiency, however, he is a most benevolent man, and did great good among a most neglected class of his countrymen in the east, whose lowness of worldly and spiritual estate, and vulgar and disgusting vices, throw them very properly without the pale of the charity of more dignified and orthodox churchmen. We at least found the reverend gentleman a most agreeable companion; he told the drollest stories with such imperturba

ble gravity of countenance, that, but for a roguish twinkle in his eye" one might have supposed that he did not participate in the merriment which every sentence he uttered never failed to create. I since saw him in London, reading a lecture on propriety of conduct to an inebriated exquisite in the theatre, who was disturbing some ladies in the same box with him, His eloquence (though powerful) might have been unavailing, had he not concluded his homily with a gentle hint, that, in case the annoyance was repeated, he should be under the disagreeable necessity of tossing the cause of it into the pit. This argument seemed to have a wonderfully sedative effect on the rising passions of the spirited dandy.

After dinner he took off a wig, the episcopalian dimensions of which were reduced to suit it the better to the climate in which it was destined to flourish; and, hanging it on the back of his chair, he took his claret with right good will. After a very liberal allowance of which we rose to depart, but our host protested against it, as he said it was a flagrant violation of the laws of his house, informing us at the same time, that he had got beds prepared for us. To this, however, my companions objected, (much to my disappointment) that they were obliged to hurry on to Calcutta. He said, that as that was the would not detain us; but, as the tide. would not serve for two hours to come, it was needless to go on board yet;, and, upon the word, a devill'd turkey was produced, which, after having washed down with a modicum of brandy and water, we repaired on board, feeling remarkably comforta ble.

case,

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I cannot take leave of mine host, distinguished as he is for hospitality even in that hospitable country, without expressing my thanks, and those of all my messmates, for the unremit ting kindness and attention he shewed us, all the time we were in the river. I may never have the happiness of expressing what I feel to himself personally; but if by y chances Te should ever catch him in Rothsay, if I don't bouse up his jibb with w with whisky toddy as taught as any private gentle man could desire, then an am I sous d grunet." We arrived at the Chandpaul

any

Ghaut next morning after breakfast, and one of the young civilians pro cured me a hired palanquin to take me to the different offices where my business lay, and sent a servant (called a

AFTER going through all the offices, public and private, to which my business led me; and from the accommodating and obliging character of the gentlemen with whom I had to deal, particularly the agents, who, with one exception, were extremely polite, (that one, I am sorry to say, was a Scotchman, and the head of a Scotch house -a silent, sulky, morose, old savage; who, though I had particular claims on his attention, never even asked me to sit down,) I got over all I had to do much sooner than I expected, and proceeded towards my temporary home.

As I had, in the course of my peregrinations, been shewn an ill-proportioned row of houses, forming one side of a large square, under the title of the Writers' Buildings, I thought this might be my destination-but in this I was mistaken. These houses, though quite as good as any single man can require, are not deemed sufficiently stylish by the majority of the class for whom they are intended, so are generally given up by them to people of inferior rank, (officers on furlough, for instance) and they take up their residence in Chowringhee, or Garden Reach, (the genteel suburbs of Calcutta) where they occupy a house at

Castle of Indolence.

བཡོས་༦བརྩེ

a rent not much exceeding the amount of their whole income. To a very handsome house of this description I was carried, and arrived about midday, where I found a party of young civilians endeavouring to kill the enemy, until the hour of tiffin should put an end to their troubles, and, as they say, the day together; for after that hour they can fill up the time which has hung so heavily on their hands during the forenoon, with occupations genial to their dispositions, till bed-time. By that meal alone-spun out as it is by hookah smoking, beer drinking, and chatting-they contrive to consume from one o'clock till between four and five, when the labours of the toilette come into their aid till near six. Then comes the display of all this adornment, heightened by the eclat of equestrian or charioteering adroitness on the course for two hours longer; after which, dinner, and its accompanying hearty drink, (by much the preferable pastime to my mind,) till bed-time.

These, with an assembly or play once a-fortnight-a rout or masquerade once a-year, and a race and a gallop after a pack of wretched hounds, in pursuit of a jackall, during the cold weather, (which is the season of festi

vity in Bengal,) form the total of the whole, as Dr Hume hath it, of the domestic life of a Calcutta writer.

While these gentlemen are amusing themselves as best they may, with eulogiums on their steeds, complaints against Dr Lumsden for not allowing them to quit college before they have learned any thing they have been sent there to learn; admiring drawings, or rather daubs of horses and dogs by a Hindoo Stubbs, and French prints of a less innocent nature, I shall endeavour to give you the natural history of the animal called a writer.

Writers are the sons of families in the higher and middle ranks of life, who have interest sufficient to procure them their appointment, and in this interest consists their great, if not sole qualification, as they take their station among their brethren of the same year, according to the seniority of the director by whose patronage they were placed there; and no inattention or misconduct, short of what is sufficient to remove them entirely, can depress them one step in the books of the service; and conversely, no ability, however splendid, no assiduity, however unwearied, no conduct, however irreproachable, can raise them in the comparative scale in which they are unalterably fixed.

After spending a year or two at a catch-penny school, which they dignify with the title of a college, and learning not enough of Hindoostanee to hold the commonest conversation in thatlanguage, they are shipped off for the higher college of Calcutta, with this animatingassurance, that they have only to behave themselves tolerably, and live long enough to arrive at the highest offices in the Honourable Company's service. A voyage of half-a-year's duration, spent in total idleness, and under no superintendance or control, to a young man, emancipated for the first time "from discipline, and the salutary awe inspired by a consciousness of being in some degree under the eye of his parents and guardians, with a prospect of pleasure uncontrolled by any of the checks that thwarted them at home, forms the most appropriate prelude for their life in India. There the languor induced by the climate, and the want of incitement to industry, soon inclines them to indolence; and the example of their superiors, and appro

4:.:ཀ

bation of their equals, confirm this dis position into a habit. Add to all this, an unlimited command of moneythe opinions of society forming no check upon the indulgence of the passions-the total want of religion as a guide of moral conduct; for in India it either falls off into apathy and scepticism on the one hand, or assumes the form of the most disgusting bigotry and fanaticism on the other; and the wonder will be, not that they are thoughtless and dissipated, but that they are not wholly profligate and worthless. Yet such is the power of early instruction, that I must do them the justice to say, that though prudence and propriety are rarely to be found in the list of their virtues, I have never known or heard of a single instance of one of them being guilty of a mean, dishonourable, or ungentleman-like action.

Could the honourable Court of Directors be brought to lay these truths to heart could they be brought to sacrifice the interests of the few blockheads the service contains to the general good of the whole-could they be got to forego the unenviable prerogative of making dulness and stupidity supersede genius and intellect, and make rank and emolument the certain reward of conduct, abilities, and application, there can be no doubt that they would make the civil service of India, excellent as the materials are they have to work upon, equal to any body of men on the face of the earth.

When tiffin was announced, an immediate change took place in the visages of my friends, from languor and ennui to life and gaiety. It is not to be supposed that they were particularly hungry, but any one who has been so long at sea as I have, must know that eating supplies occupation, and drives away the listlessness of inaction; and in a country like India, where our pleasures of every kind are so very li mited, those of the table, which can be enjoyed equally well as in a better climate, form a most prominent part. To this cause the tendency to gormandism, so generally observed in gentlemen long resident in the east, is to be ascribed, rather than to what people are facetiously pleased to denominate the luxuries of India; a term which must be applied in irony, as any luxuries I have ever seen there, are only

bad substitutes, procured at great expence, for what every one enjoys at home for nothing.

During the meal we had a deal of lively rattling talk, which could not be called conversation, but is to me as pleasant, and, I am ashamed to say, sometimes as edifying. The truth, since I must own it is, that I have had but few opportunities of witnessing that "sharp encounter of the wits," which Dr Johnson is of opinion can alone be dignified with that title, except at the Circuit, where I once had the happiness to listen to a good deal of it, from some young Edinburgh lawyers. The subject was either politics or literature, and alternate orations, of from five to fifteen minutes duration, were made by the Whigs or Tories, much as in the House of Commons. I no longer wondered at the unrivalled eloquence of the Scottish bar, when I found that such was their zeal to acquire that talent, that even the convivial board, where others waste their time in idle chat, and heedlessly blunder out whatever comes uppermost, was by the processes of their well-disciplined minds-by weighing carefully every sentence before they uttered it-by using no arguments but those which, by having stood the test of ages, have come to be considered self-evident axioms--converted into a gymnasium, to train them by (wordy) warlike exercises for the real conflicts in which they were to be engaged as the champions of some oppressed client in the lists of the Parliament House.

There is another cause, I have been informed, from which this superiority arises-their early education in the Edinburgh Speculative Society, a debating club where questions are given out for discussion, and parties appointed to support and oppose them after the manner in which the men of Kent make up a match at cricket. This gives them a habit of making long speeches whether they have any thing to say or not, an immense advantage in an argument, as those who have not listened (and who can command attention for three hours together) cannot impugn the reasoning. It also begets a sturdy pugnacious temper, highly conducive to logical attain ments, and as the impertinent sugges◄

tions of their reason (if any they might happen to have) would incline them more to one side than another, the indulgence of such improper feelings is checked in the bud, and the use of brains in forming an opinion for ever after set aside.

But though I was lost in admiration of the brilliant things they uttered, so defective is my taste, that I received no great pleasure from "the feast of reason, and the flow of soul." In fact, it was like treating a ploughman to claret and olives, whose taste being brutalized by ale and gingerbread, thinks these higly flavoured luxuries insipid and nauseous. But habit reconciles every thing; and should it ever be my good fortune to reside in Edinburgh, I have no doubt but that, by a daily dose of such fare, I may come to relish it mightily, as acquired tastes are always the strongest.

But to return from this digression, on rising from the table, the company retired to sacrifice to the graces. My oblations to these goddesses taking but little time, I contented myself with bathing, and exchanging my heavy uniform for a suit of light muslin, with which one of the gentlemen was kind enough to accommodate me. But the process was by no means so simple with my friends, for on returning to the large hall where we had dined, I had full three quarters of an hour for meditation before they were ready. At last they entered in all the conscious splendour of hunting frocks, striped waistcoats, cord breeches, and top boots, which, with their well-stiffened starchers and ear-cutters, were in a style of ultra dandyism, most probably copied from the caricatures of the day, and stylish enough, but not, I should suppose, the costume the best calculated in the world to yield comfort in a climate +95° of Farenheit.

They in one breath pressed upon me the means of any mode of conveyance I might prefer. One recommended his horse Knocknagrogherry, who, he assured me, being naturally endowed with a sweet disposition, and having arrived at the years of discretion, could be ridden by a child. Though my fears prevented me from accepting him on this occasion, I was under great obligations to that good-natured steed, and his equally good-natured master, during my stay in the coun

try, as, from reasons which will appear in the sequel, I thought myself much safer on his back than at the tail of many a more spirited charger. Another said he would tool me in his curricle; a third recommended his dennet, as the most varmint; and a fourth, whose offer I accepted, pressed me to take the lower cushion of his tandem, which he assured me he could fan along with any man on the course. So off we set for the evening parade of Calcutta

The City of Palaces really deserves that appellation. Nothing can be more imposing than the splendid houses of Chouringhee, viewed from the course, which is a broad carriage road on the esplanade of Fort William, adjoining the race course, from which, I presume, it derives its name. I think I have heard Edinburgh also called the City of Palaces, but the title does not apply nearly so well. There a number of houses form a grand architectural mass great when taken as a whole, but comparatively diminutive in its parts; and by the regular recurrence of street doors, you have it continually obtruded upon you that the habitations of a great many individuals are clubbed, without consulting either their individual taste or convenience to produce the effect. The Chouringhee houses generate a perfectly different feeling-each stands solitary, surrounded by its own garden and court yard, and each is approached through large folding doors, in the dead wall in front, like the houses of the richer nobility in London

These houses are of brick, flat roofed, and ballustraded, but covered with a composition that may easily be mistaken for Portland stone. The front is of great extent, and wings are often added. In the centre there is a pediment, supported by pillars of anomalous orders, within which is the front verandah. Though the details of all this are apt to be in the most barbarie architectural taste, the tout ensemble never fails to exhibit an air of grandeur I never saw equalled elsewhere

After driving for nearly a mile along the front of a succession of these splendid residences, we suddenly turned to our left into a crowd of carriages of all descriptions, such as you may have

VOL. XI.

seen of a Sunday at one of the gates of Hyde Park, which, from the multitude of that elegant but unsafe vehicle which crowds its entrance, has of late received the appropriate and descriptive appellation of Tilbury Fort. Here, I per ceived for the first time, to my no small alarm, that my friend was not "his crafts master" as a whip. His shafthorse, probably unaccustomed to that duty, was by no means free to the road; and to remedy this defect, the only shift his driver could fall upon, was to push the leader, who, by that arrangement, had not only to drag the carriage, but his unwilling yoke-fellow also, so that, though we came on but slowly, it was by no means surely. By great good luck we got through the throng without doing or receiving much damage; and, as we were clearing it, the young gentleman began to flourish his whip and square his elbows with considerable address; but his triumph was only of short duration; for, in at tempting to turn at the end of the fashionable part of the drive, the leadin er alone came round, and that with al jerk, so that both horses were brought to a stand-still, looking each other in the face, as if engaged in earnest conversation.

This unexpected manoeuvre put our Jehu rather to a non-plus; but as the good people seemed to mark us out as fit subjects whereon to exercise their wit, he adopted the most spirited course, and laid in the silk profusely on both steeds. This only made bad worse, for the shaft horse lashed out, and the leader bolted, and nearly cap sized us. We found ourselves now un der the necessity of alighting, and by the assistance of the native grooms, who very properly attend their masters on such occasions, we succeeded in placing the horses in a longitudinal direction; and my friend not being anxious to receive the condolence and congratulations of his acquaintances, proceeded round the course, and so home, without encountering any one who was aware of our disaster. Once safely landed, I made a resolu tion never again to sport my figure in such a conveyance; and, though not a better horseman than most gentle-son men of his Majesty's navy, I ever after i stuck to Knocknagrogherry vidend The dinner was splendid the tables groaned under a profusion of dishes

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