hinted, and of detailing his sentiments on what he called, sarcastically, "the home-legislation" of India, and on the folly as well as danger of making, upon slight or inadequate grounds, the notions and usages of large portions of mankind, and those civilized portions too, the subjects of such indiscriminate and unsparing vituperation. I must protest, however, against being understood to identify my own feelings or opinions with those of my Anglo-Indian friend, when I give the substance, or something like the substance, of what he said;-my purpose being merely, in accordance with the plan on which I first set out, that of shewing in what manner, and in what degree, mind and its opinions are modified by a residence of considerable duration in India.

"So long," he said, "as we are rather clamoured than philosophized into the greater part of our opinions, it will be almost a matter of peril to utter a word in behalf of many things, which, however cried down in the gross, may nevertheless be susceptible of excuse. It is enough that they are in the index expurgatorius of those who profess the morality of the day, which is, you well know, by no means deficient in verbal pretensions to a pure and refined benevolence, and is for the most part careful in selecting those subjects which make no further demand upon its commiseration; and so

prevalent is this cheap and economizing virtue, that no one, unless he is a candidate for the downright abhorrence of half the decent, respectable, welldressed persons he meets with in society, would venture so much as to whisper or breathe an apology for them. Candid reasoners, indeed, may admit that there is a wide distinction between excuse, which is merely relative, and defence, which proceeds upon some unqualified and absolute principle. But where are you to look for candid reasoners? Upon the subject of the religious customs of India, there are a hundred second-hand declaimers to one original thinker. It might, indeed, be expected, in an age which is proud of its philosophy and its exemption from vulgar prejudice, that understandings capable of liberal and extended views of our common nature, and familiar from the nature of their habitual inquiries with that copious chapter of its errors and obliquities implied in the word 'superstition,' would be aware how many palliations, not merely the spirit of philosophy but of common charity, might suggest for religious practices, however alien from our best feelings, and however discordant with the tone and genius of Christianity, which I allow, and indeed feel, to be the only perfect wisdom that has yet beamed upon mankind.

"It has always struck me as very remarkable,

that the most heated enthusiasts who condemn those practices, and in particular that of the suttee,-all their knowledge of which is mere hearsay,—disavow the expediency or the right of interfering with the religion of India. But the same consistent people, whilst they avow their tolerance towards the whole system of Hindu theology in the gross, yet in their talk about its specific rites and ceremonials, which, though far from being the essence, in fact constitute the greater part, of all the subsisting theologies of mankind—when they talk, I say, of specific rites and ceremonials, although part and parcel of the inveterate religion of Hindustan, and entwined with it by a coeval root and simultaneous growth, the very next moment forget the forbearance they still think it politic to profess, and feel no delicacy even in calling for restrictive measures, to suppress them as nuisances and abominations. Such is the marked inconsistency of their mode of speaking of the Hindu religion generally, with their zeal for the compulsory repeal of its vital and not unessential parts.

"Happily, however, it is only a verbal zeal; for words are the coin in which our modern philanthropy pays its debts. its debts. Verbal denunciations reduced to action would be fatally ominous to the

repose of India, and the stability of our Indian empire; for they would evince a total departure from every maxim of justice, policy, and reason, on which it has been hitherto administered. I was strangely amused," he continued, with a sardonic expression in his looks, "in seeing, by one of the English papers in the packet you brought me, that a petition signed by one solitary gentleman has been actually presented to Parliament, for an immediate penal enactment against the practice of suttee. One individual actually lifting up his voice in the British senate for the abolition of one of the religious usages of a people, removed from the natural sphere of our legislation, not more by physical distance, than the strong discriminations which the wisdom of Providence has impressed on the various families of the earth;-that usage, an integral part of an immense and venerable pile of opinions, or, if you will, errors, which, for a long cycle of years, beyond the reach of all rational chronology, has been wrought inseparably into their moral identity! But as no practical result has yet happened, or is likely to happen, from the petition, one cannot help smiling to observe how vast a field is open for the overflowings of this worthy creature's benevolence; how unrestrained

his imagination may wander amidst so many soothing dreams of human amelioration, with the whole chart of Brahminical superstitions, all the

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum

of Hindustan, unfolded before him. What a glorious privilege is secured to him by the happy constitution of his country, that permits him to petition by lines of latitude and longitude all over the globe, and to display his benevolence on so large a scale, without the slightest appeal to his pocket, or any expense beyond that of the paper on which he writes his petition! Happily for India, however, it is a species of philanthropy as noiseless and inaudible as it is cheap and economical. Long may it 'lie upon the table,' that limbo of unamended grievances and forgotten wrongs, and expire in the gentle euthanasia of the utter oblivion which, by this time, has in all probability overwhelmed it, along with many other pieces of congenial folly!

"Yes, you must allow me again to indulge a smile, ”—here the sardonic expression of his features began again to display itself," whilst I figure to myself in fancy the enviable enthusiasm that must have glowed in the breast of this magnanimous lover of his kind. For your English philanthropy," he continued, "seems on all occasions to be a mighty