These interlopers are now the Brahmins, who monopolize the most honourable offices among this people, being both their public teachers and the priests of their idol-temples.

The ancient Hindoos and their incorporated acquaintances the Brahmins were not, however, allowed to retain possession of Hindostan many ages after the birth of Christ; for about one thousand years ago, another race, descended from Japhet, poured in upon them from the north. These conquerors were Moguls, or Tartars. They ravaged the country with fire and sword, and brought with them another religion, which was little better than that of the idolaters. This religion is that which was taught by Mahomet, an Arabian impostor, falsely called the Prophet. The Mahometans, or Mussulmans, are not idolaters, that is, they do not profess to make images of God, but they deny the divinity of Christ, and reject the Scriptures of the Christians, receiving the Koran in its place,--a book composed by their prophet, and abounding with distorted truths and wicked inventions. These followers of Mahomet are now intermixed in every town and village among the old Hindoos, though they never eat nor intermarry with them; and it is hard to say which are the most wicked of these two denominations. At present, the English, having conquered nearly the whole of Hindostan, rule over both these discordant parties, subjecting them to the law of kindness, and preventing them from tearing each other to pieces like tigers of the desert.

Having thus given a little outline of the history of the country in which I have placed the scene of my narrative, I shall proceed, without further delay, to the narrative itself, which, I trust, will be read with greater interest, when I inform my reader that many of the characters and events were found in real life, and are now represented without any colouring of fancy.

In the district of Almora, which lies between the first and second range of the Himmalaya, or Snowy Mountains, in the north of Hindostan, is a little village, occupied by natives. Its only ornament, at the time my narrative begins, was a mosque, or place of worship belonging to the Mussulmans, which had been built some centuries before. This mosque was falling into decay for want of repair; nevertheless, its light and beautiful

turrets, its horns, or minarets, mounted with the Mahometan half-moon, formed altogether a beautiful object, half visible as it was among the tamarind and pepultrees with which the lowly houses of the natives were encompassed. The village itself stood on a shelf of a rocky hill, on such an elevation that it not only commanded a view of the whole plain to the south as far as the mountains, but also a long reach of the mountains themselves, whose summits, covered with eternal snow, exhibited the semblance of pyramids, towers, and battlements of adamant, their brilliant outlines being strongly marked upon the dark-blue ether of the southern sky, and their bases undistinguishable by the eye of the beholder.

But in vain were these glories of creation spread before the inhabitants of Dira (such being the name of the little village before spoken of), for it requires an awakened intellect to admire the glories of creation, and these poor villagers were so besotted by their idolatries and the delusions of their false religions, that they had no other cares but the providing themselves with food, and no other pleasures than the enjoyment of that ease of body and indolence of mind which are considered as the sum of human felicity by the majority of the natives of India.

One of the most opulent persons of Dira, about the year 1770, was a Hindoo carpenter of the name of Mockdoom, who chiefly subsisted by making those charpoies, or coarse bedsteads, which are used by the lower classes in India, and which are so light as to be easily removed from place to place at the pleasure of the owner. This man had a brother, residing in the village, and an only son, of whom he was very fond, and to whom he looked forward as one who was to be the support of his old age. This young man, whom we shall call Alfoo, did not, however, prove to be the comfort his father had expected, for in proportion as he grew in years he grew in wickedness. For a length of time he spent his nights in all kinds of excesses, and his days in sleep; and, at length, on his father expostulating with him, he took occasion to dig into a hole in the corner of a wall, where he knew that his father was in the habit of concealing the few rupees which he had treasured up against his old age, and made off one fine moonlight night towards the south.

We do not mean to follow Alfoo through all his wanderings, for some years elapsed, after he had left his father in the manner I have described, before he could obtain any thing like a place of rest. After some years, however, he came to Merut, a station not very far distant from the river Ganges, about twelve hundred miles by water above Calcutta; and as the Europeans had just taken possession of the place, and were building their cantonments, not very far distant from the old native city, he presently obtained a good living by going from house to house selling tapes and thread, perfumes and essences, bangles* and brooches, combs and pins, and such other articles as commonly make up the pack of a pedler in India. A new bazar, or native village, had grown up near the European cantonments long before the barracks and officers' houses were finished; and here Alfoo provided himself with a house, which, as it consisted of only four outer mud walls, with a centre partition, by which two chambers were formed, and a chopper, or portable roof of thatch, was soon completed, and nearly as soon furnished,-a few mats, some brass pans, and a bedstead forming the whole garniture of the household. Here Alfoo carried on so brisk a trade that he soon found himself in a condition to bear the expenses of a marriage feast. He accordingly bargained with a creditable neighbour for his daughter; and, having brought his wife home, began to consider himself a man of some consequence. It may be asked, whether he had not now and then some uneasy feelings respecting his father; but it is not my present intention to give any answer to this inquiry, as this matter will be explained in the sequel.

In the mean time, every thing went on smoothly with Alfoo. Within a year after his marriage he had a son, to whom he gave the name of Arzoomund, and he was now so rich as to be able to hire a man to assist him in carrying his boxes. He also now provided himself with very respectable clothes, appearing in the warm weather with broad borders of silk upon his muslin garments, and in the colder season with a lined tunic of Benares chintz. He was a tall, well-featured man, with dark and sparkling eyes, and, had the expression of his countenance been open and his smile agreeable, he

* Bangles are rings of silver, worn around the ankles.

might have passed for very handsome. As it was, however, there was much in his manner and appearance which promoted the sale of his goods; and as he always seemed to be obliging and ready to serve his customers, even in things not directly within his line of business, his trade went on successfully, and it was supposed that he had a private stock of rupees, though he took good care that no one should know in what place-a precaution which you may say was all right, inasmuch as Alfoo's neighbours were probably not more honest than himself. Alfoo's traffic was thus carried on with success till his son, Arzoomund, was more than twelve years old, at which time his wife died, and was buried and forgotten, at least by her husband and neighbours ; for she had been a purdah wallee, that is, she had sat all her lifetime behind a curtain, and had no more ideas than those she could gather from a certain wrinkled old hag, who, after Alfoo began to get forward in the world, was employed by him to wait upon his wife and prepare his meals. Arzoomund, however, shed some tears at the funeral pile of his mother, and whenever he afterward mentioned her name in discourse, he always spoke of her with tenderness. And, indeed, he was likely to remember her, for his father's treatment of him was always harsh, while in his indulgent mother he found a ready attention to the voice of his complaints.

It was about this time that Alfoo, being now a man of consequence in the market-place, bethought himself of giving his son some education, and for this purpose he placed him under the charge of a certain old pedagogue, who kept a school under a shed at that end of the village which opened towards a great sandy plain at the east of the cantonments. This old schoolmaster was a man of a venerable aspect, having a noble gray beard, a thin attenuated set of features, a fine set eye, and a smooth tongue; nevertheless, there was not, perhaps, many worse old men, in point of morals, throughout the wide extent of the plain of the Ganges than the wellspoken old gentleman in question.

As Alfoo was considered one of the chief men of the market-place, Mootee Ram, the above-mentioned schoolmaster, was not a little pleased when he saw him enter the court of the school, and present his son as a scholar, informing the schoolmaster at the same time that he must initiate him in the mysteries of reading and writing

his own language in the Naugree character, with the art of arithmetic, &c. Many were the compliments which the old man poured forth on the occasion, and many the bows which he bestowed upon the tape-merchant, assuring him that he should have no difficulty in making his son an excellent scholar, although the venerable pedagogue could not be otherwise than aware that no pupil had ever returned from his school with ability to read even his native language with propriety. The father, however, being no great judge of these matters, was very well satisfied, and saw his son with considerable pleasure ranged in a line with the rest of the boys, on the sand, in the middle of the yard, in a way to commence that course of study which was to fit him for the same situation in life in which his father had obtained more rupees than he dared to acknowledge.

Now, inasmuch as many of my readers are never likely to see an Hindostanee school conducted according to the old order of things, I feel myself inclined in this place to afford them as clear a prospect of the scene as it is possible to do in the cold colouring of words.

In the first place, I would have my reader depict a dusty yard, on which a broiling sun is pouring its utmost fury, being flanked with a shed, into which the master and his scholars may retreat in rainy or windy weather. Let him further figure to himself a number of little black boys, some of whom may have fine countenances, although among them specimens may not be wanting of much natural and moral deformity, sitting in a row in the dust, being for the most part nearly without clothes, and squatting on the ground in a manner much resembling that of a frog in the most direct attitude ever assumed by that creature. Directly opposite this row of boys will generally be found the schoolmaster, who, for the most part, occupies himself with his cocoanut pipe, or in hearing the gossip of the market-place, from any chance passenger who may take the trouble of visiting his premises: being, nevertheless, able on occasions to rouse himself into activity, and to give out the letters and syllables which the boys are to repeat or to write on the sand before them, with an energy which does him honour through the whole bazar, and makes its poor inhabitants marvel at his deep and noisy erudition; and on these occasions, when the master gives the word, and the multitudes of his pupils take it up, it is incon