to all his children. This is a tyranny and a folly as re- 6 large farms, by an exact economical management, will THE SCULPTOR OF BRUGES. ABOUT the middle of the sixteenth century, there was not an artist in the Netherlands whose fame had spread wider than that of Messer Andrea, the sculptor of Bruges. His father had come from Italy, and settled in Flanders, where he lived and struggled, an ardent and enthusiastic artist, whose genius cast just sufficient light to show him his own defects. This love of the beautiful was the sole inheritance he left his son. But Andrea's northern birth and education had, to a certain extent, qualified his Italian descent, so that to his father's ardent nature he added a steady perseverance, without which all the genius in the world is but as a meteor of a moment. sculpture, in which, by his wonderful skill, he surpassed all his contemporaries. In our day, it is impossible, from the few relics that remain, to know the perfection to which our ancestors of the middle ages carried this beautiful style of art; when Gothic saints and Madonas looked down from their niches in cathedrals, though the names of the unknown artists who carved these beautiful The branch of art that Andrea followed was wood the frail material in which they worked had lost its fresh ness. Such is the process now going on at a rapid rate in France; and any one who wishes to have a comprehensive idea of its consequences, will find the subject amply treated in the lately issued number of the Quarterly Review. The only modifying arrangement in that country consists in the father being allowed to leave by will a certain share of his property. If he has only one child, he can bequeath a half; if he has two children, he can will a third; and so on. But this has little prac-heads and graceful draperies were forgotten, even before tical efficacy, and as the father is not allowed to make a gift of his property during his life, he is, in fact, little better than a puppet in the hands of his family. Far better the most stern law of primogeniture than this grossly demoralising and impoverishing folly. It appears that, with a population of about thirty-five millions, France has upwards of eleven millions of landed proprietors, at least five millions of whom own no more than five acres each, and a vast number not more than one acre. It is calculated that five and a-half millions of these proprietors do not realise individually above L.11, 10s. annually; and yet, with their families, they amount to twenty-seven millions of souls. Thus the great bulk of the population of France, with the name of proprietors in enjoyment or prospect, are in a condition allied to that of paupers. That even in this abject and precarious state they enjoy greater tranquillity and independence than their forefathers prior to the Revolution, may be acknowledged; but to compare them-a poor, bare-legged, wooden-shoed, half-clad, half-fed set of beings-with the artisans of Great Britain, would be manifestly absurd. Yet, as we have said, some people are actually so insane as to propose a subdivision of lands in these islands on a similar scale. In certain districts of France the morsels of land are so small, that some families own no more than a single ridge; and the consequence is, not only excessive poverty, but constant litigation as to the elucidation and settlement of rights. If this practice of subdivision remain unchecked by law, an agrarian convulsion, more fearful in its effects than the Revolution of 1793, will, in the course of another generation, inevitably ensue. All things considered, we arrive at the following propositions respecting the tenure and management of land. First, that land, like every other commodity, ought to be at the free disposal of its proprietor, to sell it or bequeath it as he thinks proper-subject, of course, in the latter case, to making a reasonable provision for widow and children. Second, that land should be agriculturally managed in that form which would cause it to yield permanently the largest amount of produce at the smallest expenditure of means. If it can be shown, therefore, as we confidently believe it can, that The sculptor of Bruges was one of these now-forgotten artists; and yet an artist he was, in the highest sense of the word. He lived and moved among beautiful forms and ideas; they influenced his character, and refined his mind, yet did not make him unfit for association with the world. Riches and honour came with his fame, until he stood high in the regard of his fellow-citizens; and the son of the poor Italian student was at last deemed worthy to wed one who had long been the object of an almost hopeless love, a daughter of one of the highest families in Bruges. This union could not but be a happy one; and Andrea and his wife slowly advanced towards middle age, feeling that their present bliss had not belied the promise of their youth. Still, there were a few bitter drops in their cup: the husband and wife saw several of their children drop off one by one, until all that remained were two boys and a daughter-the lovely little fair-haired Gertrude, who was her father's darling. Nevertheless, these were sufficient to make the sculptor's home cheerful, and the lost brothers and sisters were hardly missed. At the time when our story begins, Andrea had finished his latest work. It was a group of angels, carved in wood, to adorn the church of Bruges. The burghers crowded to gaze upon and admire the work of their fellow-citizen, of whom they were so justly proud. It was indeed a beautiful specimen of the ancient Gothic style, such as one meets with sometimes even now in old churches, where the hand of innovation has not reached. Three and humbly-folded hands, while the other's stretchedangels formed the group, one kneeling with raised eyes out arms were lifted upwards in rapturous adoration; and the third, looking down on the worshippers below, pointed towards heaven. The perfect beauty of expres sion, the grand, yet simple masses of drapery, falling in broad folds, which are the characteristics of this style, won universal praise. The artist stood by, in pleasure, shook his own in friendly congratulation, and many an not unmingled with honest pride, when many a hand eye, made humbler by rank and distance, looked at him admiringly. In all the pleased assembly there was but one dissentient voice, and that was from a brother artist and rival of Andrea. Melchior Kunst was one of those dark and unquiet spirits who seem to cast a shadow wherever they go. He was a man of great talent, noble to look at, and at times most fascinating in manner, and yet no one loved him. There appeared to be an atmosphere of gloom and distrust about him, which made his fellowmen shrink from him. Even now, all instinctively made way for him, and Melchior strode on until he stood opposite the group. He folded his arms, and looked at it fixedly from under his dark brows. Then he addressed the artist, who stood at a little distance. 'Doubtless you think this very fine, Messer Andrea?' 'It is not what I think of it, but the judgment which the world puts on my work, that is of consequence,' answered Andrea calmly. And you never saw this design before?' 'Indeed!' said Melchior with that quiet sneer which is so galling, sitting on his curved lips--the handsomest feature of his very handsome face. Indeed! And so you never go into another's studio, and copy limbs, and attitude, and design, as you have here stolen from ine?' 'It is not true,' said Andrea, with difficulty restraining his passion. 'I tell you it is,' cried his opponent. Look, gentlemen, brother artists; look! this figure is mine-my own design; and here I execute my will upon what is my own!' and he drew a hatchet from under his cloak, and before the wonder-stricken spectators could interfere, he severed one of the upraised hands of the nearest figure. Andrea was stung to the quick by this mutilation of his work; all his Italian blood was roused within him: with a sudden impulse he rushed upon Kunst with the fury of a tiger at bay. Those around interfered; but it was needless, for Andrea's well-constituted mind had already got the better of his momentary rage, and he stood pale, but self-possessed, gazing alternately at his adversary and at his own despoiled work. 'Melchior Kunst,' said he at last, 'you think you have done me a great injury; and so you have, but not an irreparable one. I will not revenge myself now, but you will be sorry for it some time.' A loud laugh from Kunst made the sculptor once more clench his hands, while the bright-red mounted to his brow; but he said no more, and after Melchior's departure, he too left the hall with some friends, who were stricken dumb by this untoward event. It was late in the evening when Andrea returned towards his own home. He walked slowly along by the side of the dark and gloomy canal, which the setting light of the young moon only made more solemn and fearful. Thick ivy-hung walls, even in the daytime, cast a heavy shadow on the water; and now it looked like some dark abyss, which no man could fathom. Here and there some pale solitary ray of moonlight pierced through the branches of the acacias that overhung the opposite side, seeming like a bright arrow flashing through the darkness. Andrea's heart was very heavy. His triumph had ended in pain disappointment not only at the injury done to his work, but at the unjust accusation of Melchior Kunst. Andrea knew how ready are the suspicions of the world when once aroused; and he fancied that already cold and doubtful eyes examined his group with less favour than heretofore. And besides, the sudden ebullition of anger to which he had been goaded left a weight behind, both bodily and mental; for with men of Andrea's gentle and not easily-roused temperament, such excitement ever causes a painful reaction. The sculptor walked on quickly amidst the gathering darkness of the night, for the moon had now set. He fancied now and then that he heard stealthy footsteps at a distance behind him; and perhaps this made him unconsciously urge his pace. Andrea was no coward, but it was a lonely place by the water-side, and he was unarmed. Still, as the footsteps approached no nearer, he reproached himself for yielding to the delusion of an imagination heated by the events of the day. All at once Andrea heard distinctly a plunge in the water of some heavy body. His first idea was, that some unfortunate had thus ended his life and his miseries; but the sound was so distant, that he was uncertain. He retraced his steps; but there was nothing to justify his previous thought. The canal flowed on, silent and dark as before: not a struggle, not a groan, not a cry rose up from its gloomy depths. It could have been only a heavy stone, which had fallen from the old dilapidated wall into the waters beneath. Andrea felt sure of this, and went on his way until he reached his home-a home where, since he left, danger and anxiety had entered. Three days after this, two armed officers of justice made their appearance in the dwelling of the sculptor of Bruges. They came to take prisoner the master of the house, accused of the crime of murder. From the day of the contest in the hall, Melchior Kunst had never been seen until that morning, when his lifeless body had floated up from the bed of the canal into the very market-place, a fearful spectre among living men. Then one of the horror-stricken bystanders remembered that on the same night of their quarrel he had seen Messer Andrea pass by the way that led along the canal, and that not long after Melchior Kunst also followed. Another man, who lived near, had heard a plunge in the water, but thought it was only his own dog, who often at night swam across the canal. A third had met Messer Andrea beside the canal also, but had seen no other man. This was sufficient evidence to convict the unfortunate artist. The officers found their prisoner alone. He was sitting with his head buried in his hands, and hardly moved at their entrance. One of them laid his hand on the sculptor's shoulder, and claimed him as a prisoner. Andrea looked up with a face so listless, so vacant, so deadly pale, that the officer started, and unconsciously let go his hold. A prisoner!' said Andrea, without making an effort to move. 'What have I done? Who accuses me?' The officer was a man of kindly nature, who had known Messer Andrea in former times. He gently and respectfully explained his crrand; but had to repeat it several times before Andrea comprehended him. It seemed that some heavy cloud darkened his faculties. At last he understood the whole. 'So they accuse me of being a murderer-an assassin?' said he, rising, while a shiver ran through his frame. Then addressing the first officer, You were a good man once-follow me.' The other hesitated. You need not fear,' continued Andrea; 'I am unarmed-I have no thought of escaping from justice.' The man followed his prisoner until they came to a darkened room; it was the chamber of death. On the bed lay the pale and shrouded form of a woman. Very beautiful she must have been, and her beauty had scarcely passed its maturity. No long illness had taken away the roundness of health from her face, so that even in death she looked lovely as a marble statue. The long dark lashes rested on her cheek, and a few locks of jetblack hair, escaping from the fillet that bound her head, gave a lifelike air to her repose. By her side lay an infant-a flower of an hour-whose little soul had come from Heaven at sunrise, and returned thither at sunset. They were the wife and child of Andrea. The sculptor pointed to the dead. Look there,' he said, 'and say if I am likely to have revenged any trifling insult-if I am likely to have been a murderer!' His voice grew hoarse; he stretched his arms towards the body of his wife, and then fell to the earth in strong convulsions. Andrea, during nearly the whole time that elapsed between his apprehension and trial, was dead to the consciousness of his misery. A low fever enfeebled all his senses, and reduced his outward form to the appearance of an old man. His friends-for he had still many-took both his sons to their charge. It was well they did, for the father seemed to have lost all remembrance even of their existence. When they visited him, he took not the least notice of them; so the children were at last wisely sent far away from the scene of disgrace and suffering. But with Gertrude the father would not part. She was a sweet little creature, the image of her mother in feature and expression, but her complexion resembled her father. Her eyes were of that deep violet hue which is seldom scen beyond childhood-so dark, that a careless observer would call them black. Gertrude's hair was of that colour which the old masters often gave to heads of Christ and of the Virgin-a mingling of warm brown and reddish gold tints, which the uninitiated might call red, but which painters know to be the most beautiful of all shades. It gave to sweet Gertrude the appearance of an angel, for in the sunshine it looked like a coronet of golden light around her head. If ever human form seemed the visible embodiment of a perfect soul, it was this child's. We have lingered over the picture of her, partly because we love to think of beauty, and partly because such descriptions always give vividness to events that are long gone by. The first evidence that Andrea gave of returning consciousness to things around him, was in recognising his little daughter, and calling her by her name. It was her mother's also; and perhaps that, aided by the strong resemblance, was a comfort to the widowed husband. He began to talk coherently, first with Gertrude, and then with others who came to see him; and by degrees his mind and body gathered strength, so that he was able to think of his defence against the terrible crime laid to his charge. This was a momentous thing, for the proofs were all against him, and Andrea could bring no evidence in his favour, save his own explanation of what had happened on his way homewards that fatal day, and the irreproachable character he had borne all his life. At last the sculptor of Bruges was brought from his prison to the judgment-hall where he was to be tried. He seemed to himself like one risen from the grave, and indeed so he appeared to those about him. Andrea had been a strong, powerful, noble-looking man, but now all his flesh had shrunk away, and his height only made him appear more shadowy. Dark circles were round his eyes, and his face bore an unvaried sallow hue. Nevertheless, his mien was firm and composed; no one could look at him, and doubt for a moment his innocence. Andrea's little daughter stood by his side: one might have likened her to a flower growing close beside a tomb. Gertrude had become accustomed to the change in her father's looks, and the shocked and anxious gaze of all around struck her with alarm. She crept closer to him, never taking her eyes from his face. The trial proceeded. All was against Andrea: even the words he had uttered before Melchior left the hall were brought in judgment against him: they had sounded like a threat. None that had known Andrea doubted in their own hearts that he was a guiltless man, but the circumstantial evidence was too strong to be gainsayed by the law. He was found guilty of the assassination of Melchior Kunst; and Andrea-the gentle, upright man, who had never lifted a hand against a fellow-creature, save in that one evil hour when he was driven to passion by Melchior Kunst-was removed from the hall of justice with the stain of murder on his name. Condemnation was deferred for a short space, for the sake of the hitherto unsullied character of the criminal. In those days the hand of law was often tampered with, and never was it with greater show of justice than in this instance. Andrea's great talents, and the many friends who warmly protested how incapable he was of such a crime, interposed in his behalf. They succeeded in obtaining only a suspension of the sentence for a few months, that some chance might elicit the truth which so many doubted. But in the meantime the sculptor was ordered to execute some work of art to adorn the Palais de Justice at Bruges, where he had been tried. For this purpose he was brought from his cell, and confined in the hall which had witnessed his trial. It was a large gloomy-looking chamber, so dimly lighted from without, that even at mid-day the dark shadows in the corners of the room looked like night. An immense hearth, on which lay a few fagots, was the only cheerful object, but even that light and warmth did not reach beyond the immediate vicinity of the fire. There was no furniture in the room, save one small table in the centre, a bench, and a straw couch in the gloomiest corner. was a place in which one would instinctively shrink from It looking behind, and where the sound of one's own footsteps would sound hollow and full of dread, as if something fearful were following after us. Andrea and his daughter heard the heavy door close, and they were alone in the hall. The little girl led her father to the bench beside the hearth, and then sat down at his feet, holding his hands fast in hers. She dared not look anywhere but at the bright fire and at her father's face; even the shadows that the flames cast on the ceiling made her start sometimes. Gertrude had been accustomed to a prison, for she had never left her father, except when taken home at night, to return next morning-but this place seemed gloomier than any before. Andrea had no hope. His life had been free from any very heavy sorrows, and the first that came, so fearful as they were, overwhelmed him. His sole idea now was, to employ the short remnant of his life in executing some memorial of his talents to leave behind him, that, when time had removed the shadow from his fame, his children might have no reason to blush for their father. He returned again to his long-cherished occupation. For a while this gave him sensations almost amounting to pleasure. His step became lighter, and his countenance lost somewhat of the settled melancholy. He almost forgot his sorrows, his blighted name, his impending doom, in. the exercise of his beloved art. He would cease from his work, look at the beautiful image which had risen to life under his hand, and murmur to himself, 'What man will say that the hand of an assassin has done this? that the brain which formed this idea of beauty could plan a murder?' And by degrees the influence of his beautiful art in some measure soothed the mind of the sorrow-stricken man. His desolate prison became cheerful with the graceful forms which it contained, and Gertrude moved among the whole like a beautiful spirit. If ever the sculptor clung to hope and life, it was when he looked at his darling child, and at the more imperishable offspring of his genius. At last Andrea's work drew nigh to a close: the sculpture was finished. Then it was that the enthusiasm which had sustained him faded away, and the artist's soul sank within him. He gave the last touches to his beautiful work-he knew he could do no more-and then went and sat in dumb stillness, in a stupor of grief and despair. Gertrude clung round him in affection, mingled with fear, but he did not speak to her or embrace her. 'Father, dear father, are you tired? Are you angry with your little girl?' and the child stood on tiptoe, trying to remove the hands which covered his face. Andrea seemed hardly conscious of her presence, but repeated every now and then in a low tone, I have done my work-I have no hope-now let me die.' The terrified child, who had been all along kept in ignorance of her father's doom, began to weep, but her tears were interrupted by the entrance of the magistrates of Bruges. They came to view the finished work of the artist. High as Andrea's reputation had been, they did not expect so beautiful a creation as that which now met their eyes. They looked upon it in silence, and then turned to the artist, who, wan and haggard, without a single ray of hope illuminating his pale features, stood behind his judges. One of them, an old man, was melted even to tears. Forgetting the dignity of office, the magistrate took hold of the criminal's hand and led him to a seat. 'You must not stand, Messer Andrea; you are not yet strong,' said he compassionately. 'Sit and rest while we examine your beautiful work.' The sculptor obeyed without a word: he was passive as a child. Little Gertrude, who had shrunk away at the sight of strangers, came and stood silently behind her father, taking fast hold of his garments. The two magistrates inspected the sculpture, and could not restrain their admiration. The eye of the unfortunate artist brightened for a moment at their warm praise, but immediately his face returned to its accustomed melancholy. It is all in vain,' he answered; 'you cannot make men forget the past-you cannot take the shadow from the to hear it?' The artist started up, and raised his thin form to its full height. Tell me that I am proved innocent, and I will thank God and die.' 'We do not promise quite so much,' said one of the judges, wishing to temper Andrea's violent excitement. Only have hope. Many things have been discovered to-day,' continued the aged man whose kindness had first moved Andrea. Be calm now; to-morrow we may send you good news.' The magistrates departed, leaving the poor prisoner with a wildly-throbbing heart, which he vainly endeavoured to still. All that day he sat with Gertrude in his arms, kissing her, fondling her, at times almost weeping over her. To all the questions of the wondering child he only answered, 'To-morrow, love; we may be free to-morrow.' And when the attendants came to remove Gertrude for the night, he unclasped her arms from round his neck, with the promise that he too would go away with her to 'God forbid I should return! No, my child, never more,' answered the father with a shudder. 'And shall we go out together-shall we go to our own home?' pursued Gertrude. 'Yes, dear child,' said Andrea, as he kissed her once more, and set her on the ground from his trembling arms, too weak for even so light a burthen. Yes, my Gertrude, I shall indeed go home to-morrow.' He had spoken truth. Soon after daybreak next morning some officers entered the hall, bearing a release for the prisoner, whom the confession of a stranger had proved to be guiltless. Andrea was leaning on the table, his head resting on his arms, and his upturned face raised towards his work. But as they drew nearer, they saw that his countenance was meaningless, and that no life shone in his fixed and open eyes. The sculptor of Bruges was dead-his heart had broken with joy.* THE ENGLISH IN INDIA. ENGLISH Society in India has latterly been undergoing numerous pleasing meliorations. While rapacity and sensuality have been disappearing, integrity and refinement have been correspondingly on the advance. Among other tokens of an improved taste, not the least conspicuous is the support given to a quarterly literary journal, the Calcutta Review'-an actual six-shilling review, in the English language, printed on the banks of the Hoogly! We wish to draw attention to this gratifying specimen of Anglo-Indian literature, as well as a few other points not undeserving of attention in England. The Calcutta Review is an important work in itself, inasmuch as it frequently gathers into a single article the Indian information one would otherwise have to hunt for through a library; but it is likewise interesting from a circumstance not generally known in this country-namely, that some of its best articles are written by native contributors. This is a gigantic step taken by the Hindoo mind, and, considered in conjunction with the numerous periodicals now circulating in the national dialects, and edited by natives, is full of delightful hope. Our present business, however, is with the *The leading incidents of this story are strictly true. The works of Andrea may still be seen in the Palais de Justice at Bruges. Anglo-Indians. Hardly a single number of the Review has appeared without at least one article containing a contribution towards the social history of our countrymen in Hindoostan; and we persuade ourselves that we shall be able to collect from its pages, without much assistance from other sources, a pretty distinct idea of their actual position and character. With this general acknowledgment to the Calcutta Review, we shall proceed, without thinking it necessary to distinguish in detail the information we may owe to it, except when that is adopted in its own words. In the earlier part of the Company's history, their servants were sent out to fight and sell for their masters, and scramble as well as they could for themselves. Instead of a salary capable of supporting them, they were allowed all sorts of dishonest advantages in trade over speaking, they scorned the regular gains of their apthe natives; and the consequence was, that, generally pointments, and took to tyranny and spoliation. The unsuccessful never returned to Europe at all, while the comparatively few who had enriched themselves by unfair traffic, or something worse, brought home their huge fortunes and bilious physiognomies, to serve as studies for the playwrights, storytellers, and caricaturists. When Mr Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, arrived in India as a writer in 1769, his salary was eight rupees a-month; and he complains bitterly that, notwithstanding this short allowance, the commercial speculations of the government servants had been so much burthened with restrictions, as to make the privilege of hardly any use. He adds somewhat later, that when on a mission to Dacca, he might have made L.100,000 but for his scruples; and later still, he was offered by a native prince (as a bribe of course) five lacs of rupees and eight thousand gold mohurs. Shore accepted only a picture, having no ambition to swell the rank of the 'nabobs' in England. About the same time other sources, was L.65 a-year; and the consequence Mr Forbes's entire income at Madras, from salary and was, that the poor cadet was frequently obliged to go to bed soon after sunset for want of a candle! 'You may not believe me when I tell you,' writes Sir Thomas Munroe, that I never experienced hunger or thirst, fatigue or poverty, until I came to India; that since then, I have frequently met with the first three, and that the last has been my constant companion. If you wish for proofs, here they are-I was three years in India before I was master of any other pillow than a book or a cartridge pouch; my bed was a piece of canvas stretched on four cross-sticks, whose only ornament was the greatcoat that I brought from England, which, by a lucky invention, I turned into a blanket in the cold weather, by thrusting my legs into the sleeves, and drawing the skirts over my head. In this situation I lay, like Falstaff in the basket-hilt to point, and very comfortable, I assure you, all but my feet; for the tailor, not having foreseen the various uses to which this piece of dress might be applied, had cut the cloth so short, that I never could, with all my ingenuity, bring both ends under cover; whatever I gained by drawing up my legs, I lost by exposing my neck; and I generally chose rather to cool my heels than my head. My dress has not been more splendid than my furniture. I have never been able to keep it all of a piece. It grows tattered in one quarter whilst I am establishing funds to repair it in another, and my coat is in danger of losing the sleeves, while I am pulling it off to try on a new waistcoat.' This was during the period of nabobship, when a novelist who wanted to enrich his heroine suddenly, had nothing to do but to find her an uncle in India. But all this was neither the effect of magic nor the doing of Lord Cornwallis. Anglo-India is peopled from Besides a universal rapacity, there was a prevalent England, and educated in England; and generally speakand odious looseness of manners which shocked the un-ing, the same change of manners must be observable sophisticated natives. Those who came hither,' says there which goes on at home. The reign of George III. was the epoch of a social reform at home which gradually the Calcutta Review, 'were often desperate adventurers, changed the entire character of the people; and India whom England, in the emphatic language of the Scrip- partook of necessity in the revolution. The Company, ture, had spued out; men who sought these golden sharing themselves in the change as individuals, made sands of the East to repair their broken fortunes; to their service more respectable and more regular, by inbury in oblivion a sullied name; or to wring, with law-creasing the wages of their servants, and diminishing at less hand, from the weak and unsuspecting, wealth which once their power and their temptation to plunder; and they had not the character or the capacity to obtain by thus an entirely new form was given to the personel of honest industry at home. They cheated, they gambled, their establishments. Formerly, the daring, the dissithey drank; they revelled in all kinds of debauchery; pated, the worthless members of a family were cast off though associates in vice, linked together by a common to India-whistled down the wind to prey at fortune;' bond of rapacity, they often pursued one another with but now that it had become a field of regular industry desperate malice, and, few though they were in num- and honourable ambition, respectable men looked to the bers, among them there was no unity, except a unity service as offering an eligible provision for the cleverest of crime.' The fullest scope was given for the miscon- of their sons. Such men as these lads turned out were duct of such persons by the corporate immorality of the not fitted for the matrimonial prey of adventuresses; early companies; and we may suppose what a paradise and accordingly, the ladies-errant were seen returning the country must have been, when we are informed by in great numbers from their land of promise. A new the Abbé Raynal that the English were the best of the set of wives were now provided for the Anglo-Indians. Europeans in India! As morality advanced, and the numbers of half-caste children began to dwindle; and, more than all, as the officers, civil and military, became worth a tolerable sum living or dead, the legitimate daughters of residents returned to India after their English education had been completed, and married and settled under the eye of their parents. Gradually, therefore, and naturally, the once jarring elements of society subsided into their present form. Occasionally a merchant comes back, with an ample fortune made by legitimate trade; and every day numbers of civil and military officers make their reappearance, with a provision, more or less comfortable or handsome, for life. But nabobs are among the things that were. A returned Indian is simply an English gentleman who has passed much of his time abroad; and we should wonder at his intimate acquaintance with things and persons at home, if we did not know that the increasing facilities and diminished charges of travelling had permitted him to keep up, by an occasional visit, his old associations. As for his wife and daughters, they have no difficulty in gliding back into the English tastes the Calcutta reviewer would persuade us they once abandoned; and we question whether it would be possible to distinguish, at a soirée, a fair Anglo-Indian from the rest of her countrywomen. It is no wonder that the returned nabobs were seized upon with avidity by the romancers and dramatists, and that no exception was made in favour of individuals from the reprobation or ridicule showered upon the class. One of these curiosities - General Smith-when he was appointed high-sheriff of Berkshire, called a county meeting for the sole purpose of proposing to the noblemen and gentlemen to sanction a road to be cut through their properties, in order to enable him to drive to his seat of Chilton Lodge without the necessity of passing through the paltry town of Hungerford. The same nabob, on going into a gaminghouse in St James's, and finding no company, laid himself down to sleep on one of the sofas, telling the waiter to take care that he should not be disturbed, unless some fellow or other came in who had spirit enough to throw a main at hazard for three thousand guineas.' The fellow proved to be the dissipated Lord Littleton, who entered the room singing, with some of his congenial companions, and at once accepted the challenge. He continued his song throughout the game, which he won; and pocketing the money in the midst of shouts of laughter, bade the general good-night. But General Smith-who was the Sir Matthew Mite of Foote-was as profuse in deeds of generosity as of folly. He supported, for instance, the banking-house of the Drummonds, in an emergency in 1772, with a deposit of L150,000; and this for no other reason than that some of the partners had occasionally given him half-a-crown when he was a boy. Fifty years ago, M. de Grandpré declared Calcutta to be not only the handsomest town in Asia, but one of the finest cities in the world;' and since then, it has obtained the title, by which it is popularly known, of City of Palaces. This is not derived from its public buildings, though these are both numerous and handsome, In 1780, the first Anglo-Indian newspaper was pub- but from the private dwellings of the servants' of its lished at Calcutta. It was called Hicky's Gazette,' merchant-princes. These dwellings have an extensive and was a mass of slander and iniquity of every kind; frontage, and abundance of pillars and porticos; and in return for which an attempt was made to assassi- their white colour, seen through a hot and cloudless nate the editor. Before the end of the century, how- atmosphere, dazzles the eyes. Their rooms are usually ever, a great change for the better had taken place. large and lofty, opening en suite, and they are supplied Drinking, gambling, and rioting went gradually out of with glass windows and Venetian doors. They are full fashion; and Lord Cornwallis left the country on the of European furniture, the walls glittering with paintfair road to social as well as political improvement. A ings, the floors covered with carpets, and the doors reformation highly commendable,' says Mr Tennant in and windows hung with curtains. Plate, glass, por1798, has been effected, partly from necessity, but celain, bronze, papier maché, alabaster, lamps, lustres more by the example of a late governor-general, whose and chandeliers — everything, in short, that taste and elevated rank and noble birth gave him in a great mea-wealth could desire, is abundant in these luxurious sure the guidance of fashion. Regular hours and so- abodes, where the inhabitants voluntarily broil thembriety of conduct became as decidedly the test of a man selves with the comforts of Europe under the tropic of of fashion as they were formerly of irregularity. Thou- Cancer. sands owe their lives, and many more their health, to this change, which had neither been reckoned on nor even foreseen by those who introduced it.' Respectably conducted journals were now published, the number of half-caste children was diminished, and by degrees Anglo-Indian society assumed much of the appearance we find at home. In the article of female dress, there is usually seen in Calcutta a not less costly style of fashion. 'The immense investments of rich satins and gorgeous velvets - the latter rarely sold at less than a guinea a yard-which pass into the hands of consumers every cold weather, is altogether incommensurate with the number of ladies whose means and position would, in |