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services, a battle of almost unexampled severity and duration, and fought less for his country than for the world, his gratitude to the Giver of victory was expressed in a manner the most edifying and delightful.

But when external responsibilities had ceased to divert his attention from himself, his religious principles acquired new strength, and exercised a more powerful influence. They guided him to peace: they added dignity to his character: and blessed his declining years with a serenity, at once the best evidence of their truth, and the happiest illustration of their power.

'He cherished a very strong attachment to the church; and for more than thirty years had been a member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which he joined when the claims of the Society were so little appreciated, that only principle could have prompted the step. It might therefore be expected that he would feel deep anxiety, when the safety of that church was threatened. But upon this subject his mind was firm; and in one of the last letters he ever wrote, dated August 28th, 1832, he declares his confidence in the most emphatic language. After some personal observations to the friend he was addressing, one of his old officers, he alludes to the cholera, then raging in his neighbourhood; "which," he says, "I am much inclined to consider an infliction of Providence, to show his power to the discontented of the world, who have long been striving against the government of man, and are commencing their attacks on our church. But they will fail! God will never suffer his church to fall; and the world will see that his mighty arm is not shortened, nor his power diminished. I put my trust in Him, and not in man; and I bless Him, that he has enabled me to see the difference between improvement and destruction."

Sustained by the principles which had guided him so long, his death-bed became the scene of his best and noblest triumph. "Every hour of his life is a sermon," said an officer who was often with him; "I have seen him great in battle, but never so great as on his deathbed." Full of hope and peace, he advanced with the confidence of a Christian to his last conflict, and when nature, was at length exhausted, he closed a life of brilliant and important service, with a death more happy, and not less glorious, than if he had fallen in the hour of victory.'-pp. 353-361.

'They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in the great waters, these men see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep!'*

*Psalm cvii. 23.

ART.

ART. VI.-Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan. By Miss 3 vols. 12mo. London. 1835.

Emma Roberts.

THERE was a time, a golden age, when every man who re

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turned from India was a Nabob'; and a nabob, as all the world knows, was a man of almost unbounded wealth. The very tinge of his complexion was respected as the reflection of mohurs and pagodas. But while his wealth secured to him influence and consideration, there was, nevertheless, something mysterious and questionable about the man. The son of a tradesman, a yeoman, or gentleman of limited fortune, or the result of some indiscretion in a higher circle, probably the scapegrace of the school, the plague of the parish, he had been shipped off for India as the most obvious mode of providing for him when there was no longer the smallest hope of his ever doing any good at home. After an absence of some years he returned, rich enough to purchase the properties of half the ruined squires whose orchards and poultry-yards had been the scenes of his early depredations. Yet, with all his wealth, the nabob was obviously not a happy man. Valued only for his money, and hated for his success,-too proud to court the society of those to whose level he believed himself to have been raised, and too vain to descend to that of the class from which he sprung,-estranged from all around him by the peculiar habits he had contracted, and haunted by an overweening idea of his own importance, he wandered about sallow and solitary, spoke an unknown language to dusky heathen domestics, and was speedily discovered by the gossips of the place to be tormented by an evil conscience.' Crimes, by which his plum or two had been acquired, were darkly hinted. Something of dread and awe mingled with the feelings of envy which his elevation had excited, and few had charity enough to find out that his haggard looks, wakeful nights, and gloomy temperament, were but the ordinary effects of a diseased liver.

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In proportion as the possessions of the East India Company were extended, the number of their servants was increased, and the facilities for amassing large fortunes diminished. Nabobs' became more rare, and though men continued to return from India in even greater numbers than before, with the same complexions and the same habits as their predecessors, they no longer brought with them the same riches. At length, the race of the nabobs seemed to be extinct, and the whole class was degraded from the dignity and acquitted of the iniquities which had been associated with that title, receiving in exchange the descriptive appellation of old Indians.' Though they mixed in general society, they were still a separate class. Their discourse was of scenes

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and transactions with which no one else was familiar-of kingdoms and of princes known only to themselves-of battles, sieges, and conquests which had never figured in the gazettes, or had been read of only to be forgotten. Little was known of the country in which they had resided, and from which they derived their designation and their fortunes, except that it was inhabited by black men whose gold and jewels, voluptuousness and effeminacy, had for ages been a proverb. Of their mode of life while in that region, it was concluded that, as they were the conquerors of India, they must have lived in Asiatic pomp and splendour,' -surrounded by all the luxuries of the East,'-adorned with precious stones, enveloped in embroidered shawls and glittering brocades, attended by bands of male and female domestics, who ministered to their comforts and their pleasures; that they rode in golden pavilions mounted on elephants, were transported in luxurious palanquins on the shoulders of their slaves, or reclined on gorgeous couches in stately indolence, shampooed by dark beauties, or fanned to sleep by the menials of their countless trains; while princes and potentates lingered in their outer chambers, and the nobles of the land humbled themselves before them. At length it was discovered that this picture was somewhat too highly coloured, that every Englishman in India does not maintain a princely state and fare sumptuously every day,—that though a considerable number of young gentlemen, and some young ladies, besides a few elderly governors, bishops, and judges, are yearly transported to that land of promise, few of them live to come back; and that of the small number who do return with improved fortunes and impaired constitutions, by far the greater part are content to renounce all the luxuries of the East' for the modified pleasures of drinking the waters of Cheltenham,-congregating at their club in Hanover-square,-or vainly endeavouring, in the remoter places of their nativity, to realise the dreams of happiness in their fatherland which had haunted one and all of them during their exile. But what they have been doing for the quarter or half century they have been absent,-how they have spent their time or saved their money,-how much of the habits and feelings of their native country are preserved in the distant community to which they have belonged, or how much has been lost, -these are matters into which few have thought of inquiring; while many able and industrious men have devoted labour to elucidate the native institutions, habits, and customs of India, no one has taken much trouble to make us acquainted with the condition of European society in that country;-yet the state of that society, intimately connected, as it must be, with the government of a great empire, and necessarily exerting a continual

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influence for good or for evil on a population five times as numerous as that of Great Britain and Ireland, is no trivial subject of consideration.

To the meagre catalogue of works containing authentic information on this subject, Miss Roberts has made a very valuable and acceptable addition. Though we took up the book, prepared by a previous knowledge of this lady's qualifications, to expect both instruction and amusement, we certainly had not ventured to anticipate anything so animated and interesting as these three volumes. They consist of a series of detached papers, which first appeared in the Asiatic Journal, and which their very favourable reception both in India and in England induced Miss Roberts to collect and publish in a separate form. There is, therefore, no connected narrative; but this, which at first sight might seem to be a disadvantage, constitutes one great merit of the work. We are conducted through no attenuated details, serving only to unite, by the slender thread of the author's personal identity, parts which have no necessary connexion, but are presented with a succession of vivid pictures, each of which is attractive throughout. They are all drawn with great spirit and accuracy, and remarkable for the truth of their colouring. Miss Roberts had peculiar advantages in the performance of the task she undertook. With an acute mind, matured and cultivated at home, she spent some years in Bengal, to which division of India her observations are confined, unencumbered by domestic duties; and having visited various parts of the country, and observed all the phases of the society in which she found herself, noted its peculiarities while the first impressions were still fresh, and returned home before long habit had obliterated the perception of novelty.

Several years before the East India Company possessed a foot of land in Bengal, they had acquired settlements and fortified places on the coast of Coromandel, and at Bombay. Their connexion with Bengal, which originated in the privileges granted to a medical gentleman, who had successfully prescribed for a female of the Imperial Mogul family, was long confined to their factory at Hooghly; and while the French, the Dutch, and Portuguese had fortified themselves on the Ganges, the English, in consequence of the insecurity of their original position, were forced to set out in quest of a new settlement, and after sailing from place to place, landed at the village of Calcutta, which they afterwards purchased, and where they built Fort William. Some years afterwards the soubedar or governor of Bengal attacked and took the fort, and plundered and destroyed Calcutta. That disaster was probably the remote cause of the rapid rise of this settlement to au importance far transcending that of the other presidencies,

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Madras and Bombay. To recover Fort William, re-establish the factory, and retrieve the Company's affairs on the Ganges, Clive was sent, in 1756, with a detachment from Madras. He found the wretched remnant of the Company's servants, who had fled during the siege, or escaped the more fatal horrors of the famous black hole' of Calcutta, on an unhealthy spot at the mouth of the river; and by a career, perhaps unparalleled, certainly not surpassed, in ability and daring, not only accomplished the objects of the expedition, but expelled the French from Bengal, asserted the supremacy of the English power, and, by the battle of Plassy, established the virtual sovereignty of the East India Company over a great kingdom.

Calcutta, now the capital of British India, though it contains about eight hundred thousand inhabitants, is, therefore, dating from its re-establishment, only eighty years old; and has grown up exclusively under the domination of the English. That part of it which is inhabited by the wealthier portion of the European community, boasts sufficient architectural magnificence to have obtained from the Anglo-Indians the imposing appellation of the City of Palaces.

The approach from the river is exceedingly fine; the Hooghly, at all periods of the year, presents a broad surface of sparkling water, and as it winds through a richly-wooded country, clothed with eternal verdure, and interspersed with stately buildings, the stranger feels that banishment may be endured amid scenes of so much picturesque beauty, attended by so many luxurious accompaniments. The usual landing-place, Champaul Ghaut, consists of a handsome stone esplanade, with a flight of broad steps leading to the water, which, on the land side, is entered through a sort of triumphal arch or gateway, supported upon pillars. Immediately in front of this edifice, a wide plain or meidan spreads over a spacious area, intersected by very broad roads, and on two sides of this superb quadrangle a part of the city and the fashionable suburb of Chowringee extend themselves. The claims to architectural beauty of the City of Palaces have been questioned, and possibly there may be numberless faults to call forth the strictures of connoisseurs, but these are lost upon less erudite judges, who remain rapt in admiration at the magnificence of the coup d'œil. The houses, for the most part, are either entirely detached from each other, or connected only by long ranges of terraces, surmounted, like the flat roofs of the houses, with balustrades. The greater number of these mansions have pillared verandahs extending the whole way up, sometimes to the height of three stories, besides a large portico in front; and these clusters of columns, long colonnades, and lofty gateways, have a very imposing effect, especially when intermingled with forest trees and flowering shrubs.

These are the characteristics of the fashionable part of Calcutta; but even here it must be acknowledged that a certain want of keeping

VOL. LV. NO. CIX.

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