day designates Indo-Britons, or Eurasians, and a sharer, as such, in the supposed sorrows and imagined proscription which have, of late, awakened the fashionable sympathies of those who take a lively interest in the affairs of others, with the simple proviso of not being out of pocket by their philanthropy. But years glided away before the light burst in upon me, that I belonged to an aggrieved and persecuted race. From infancy almost to manhood, that consoling truth never flashed its conviction upon me. A liberal allowance, the best instructions that India could supply, a horse, a palanquin, and the superintendence of a kind parent and indulgent guardians, wafted me along so smooth a current of existence, that I had no leisure to cherish that high-minded sense of wrong, without which, according to prevailing doctrines, a man is neither free nor deserves to be so. It is astonishing how apt an unbroken flow of ease and enjoyment is to blind a man to the miseries of his own condition, as well as to make him insensible to the miseries of others as well off as himself. It is an apathy highly culpable in an enlightened age.

"I am the fruit of a mixed union, the confluence of Western and Asiatic blood in the same veins; in other words, the child of a casual congress between a major in the Honourable Company's ser

vice and a decent Pariah female, named Latchmy Ubby, one of those beauties that wear the darkest livery of a burning sun. The country languages came to me with a natural facility, for I rapidly acquired sufficient of their vernacular gabble to communicate my wish to have what I wanted— the primitive element of every language. My father, the worthy Major Middlerace, undertook the task of teaching me English; but, though my docility was great, and my apprehension somewhat lively, my proficiency in that difficult tongue did not probably respond to the pains he took with my instruction, particularly when he endeavoured to teach me his own Yorkshire patois, which, in phrase and accent, he considered the purest English that could be spoken.

"I made considerable progress in more miscellaneous studies; yet, from my boyhood upwards to maturity, I frequently encountered a strange inexplicable sensation, that came over me at those times when a proposition more complex than usual, or embracing several accessories or relatives, lay before me. It was a discouraging, deadening sensation, partaking of an external sense and an inward sentiment, probably compounded of both. It seemed as if, from the beginning, a mysterious decree had gone forth, by which an impassable

boundary had been prescribed to my thinking faculties. I despair adequately to describe it, unless to those whom the same predicament of birth may have rendered accessible to its influence. Yet, possibly, those of our little community who have felt its tyranny, have preserved too inaccurate a notice of its operation to undertake the analysis. For myself, I can explain it only by metaphor and analogy.

"Have you noted the strange phenomena of your sleeping hours? You will easily call to mind those disturbed dreams, in which, having been pursued by a bull, or by a human assassin still more ferocious, you have betaken yourself to an alley or narrow street, you vainly mistook for a thoroughfare, and to your horror found it to be a cul-de-sac, that interposed an effectual bar to your escape, your adversary being all the while close at your heels; and then, in the faintness of despair, you have given yourself up for lost, but with an inward consciousness of ease and satisfaction in the surrender. Even so, when, hurrying onwards in the acquisition of knowledge, a doubt or difficulty came across me, I attempted to fly from it through some easier avenue, but sunk overpowered with something of a pleasing stupor, whilst the horns of the dilemma were about to goad me. Night-mares

like these rode me in the solution of every problem, whether of learning or conduct. At the same time, the very obstacle to which I had thus yielded was triumphantly vanquished by my competitors of unmixed descent, whether Europeans or Hindoos, as a well-poised skiff mounts with the wave and rides gallantly over it. In short, I was conscious of a certain quickness of apprehension, that carried me lightly along to a certain point. The sentiment stimulated my ardour and soothed my vanity; but when I had to thread consecutive reasonings, which, though of the simplest form, lay beyond the proposition I had embraced, my way became dark and confused, and, in despair of advancing an inch further in the labyrinth, I sunk down in a fit of torpor, which became by degrees rather agreeable than painful.

"Whence was this? I was alarmed at the soothing complacency that came over me on these occasions. Had I persisted in the struggle to the last, and then retired with defeat, my case would have been less hopeless; but, instead of making an effort to burst through the barrier, I tranquilly laid myself to rest the moment I reached it.

"Years glided calmly and pleasurably along: I pursued the unambitious tenor of my way, unoffending and unoffended. In truth, when I turn

back to the events of my life, which have left on my mind a chequered feeling of pleasure and pain, I feel a grateful veneration towards the Supreme Disposer, who shed upon my earlier course the choicest of his blessings. I looked around amongst my contemporary half-castes - Eurasians, I beg their pardons—and observed them to be in the same peaceful condition of fortune. Indeed, the Eurasian lot, which it is so much the fashion to commiserate, is for the most part auspiciously cast. The British parent, engrossed in the pursuits of gain, and the gradual accumulations which are to enable him to return to England, and having, therefore, no inclination to an union with one of his own countrywomen-for English beauty is a divinity that requires costly sacrifices at her altar-bestows his undivided cares on his Eurasian progeny; and nature, who always acts by rule, has in each family limited this progeny to a small number, and, in the greater part of a given number of instances, to a single one. Thus, the fruit of the connexion is endeared to him who has condemned himself to celibacy for the sake of fortune; and we are fondly nurtured in an affluence of all that is sufficient to render those happy, who are neither sufficiently English to be enamoured of intemperate pleasures, nor sufficiently Hindoo to