CALCUTTA, April 17, 1863.

DEAR SIMKINS,-One morning, at the beginning of this month, as I lay between sleeping and waking, near the open window, I began to be aware of a hideous din in an adjacent street. At first the sound of discordant music, and a confused multitude of voices, impressed me with a vague idea that a battalion of volunteers were passing by in marching order, headed by their band. This notion, however, was dispelled by the appearance of my bearer with the teatray, who informed ine that this was the festival of Cali, the goddess of destruction, and that all the Hindoo people had turned out to make holiday. I immediately sallied forth in the direction of the noise, and soon found myself amidst a dense crowd in the principal thoroughfare leading to the shrine of the deity. During a few minutes I could not believe my eyes; for I seemed to have been transported in a moment over more than twenty centuries, to the Athens of Cratinus and Aristophanes. If it had not been for the colour of the faces around, I should have believed myself to be on the main road to Eleusis in the full tide of one of the Dionysiac festivals. The spirit of the scene was the same, and at each step some wellknown feature reminded one irresistibly that the Bacchic orgies sprung from the mysterious fanaticism of the far East. It was no unfounded tradition that pictured Dionysus returning from conquered India, leopards and tigers chained to his triumphal car, escorted from the Hyphasis to the Asopus by bands of votaries dancing in fantastic measure to the clang of cymbals. It was no chance resemblance this, between an Hindoo rite, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and those wild revels that stream along many a Grecian bas-relief, and wind round many an

ancient Italian vase; for every detail portrayed in those marvellous works of art was faithfully represented here. If one of the life-like black figures in the Etruscan chamber of the British Museum could have walked down off the back-ground of red pottery into the midst of the road conducting to Cali Ghaut, he would not have attracted the notice of the closest observer. Every half-minute poured by a troop of worshippers. First, came boys stark naked, and painted from head to foot in imitation of leopards and tigers, while others guided them with reins of thin cord. Then followed three or four strange classic figures, wearing the head-dress which is familiar to us from the existing representations of bacchanalian processions, dancing in an attitude which recalled, spontaneously and instantly, the associations of Smith's "Dictionary of Antiquities." The only circumstance which was not in common between Tolly's "Nullah" and the Cephisus, was the censer of live charcoal which these men carried before them, supported by wires passed through the flesh under their armpits. Into this, from time to time, they throw a powder, which produced a sudden flash and a most infernal smell. Behind them, his brows crowned profusely with foliage, was led in mimic bonds, the chief personage of the company, who was supposed to be under the direct influence of the god. All around him, musicians were beating tomtoms and clashing tambourines, like the satellites of Evius, on the day when he leapt from his car into the arms of the forsaken Ariadne : as he still leaps on the glowing canvas of Titian. All was headlong licence and drunken frenzy. After struggling through the throng for a mile and a half of dusty street, I came to a narrow slum which descended to the Ghaut, or

landing-place, of Cali, which lies on the nullah of the mythical hero Tolly, who, perhaps, was the Atys of this Oriental Cybele. From this lane, a passage a yard or two in breadth opened on to a dirty court in which stood the sanctuary, whence Calcutta derives its name; which was an object of awe and reverence to the surrounding population for ages before the first ship, laden with Feringhee wares, was warped up the neighbouring river. It seemed impossible to pierce the mob of devotees, and penetrate to the holy place; but not even religious madness, not even the inspiration of bang and toddy, could overcome the habitual respect paid to a white face and a pith helmet. A couple of policemen cleared a passage for me to within a few feet of the sacred image. It appeared to be a rude block, ornamented with huge glass beads; but I dare say the Palladium, which fell from heaven, was not a very elaborate device; and yet it saved the reputation of a young Roman lady, and gave a synonym to an English jury. I wonder what Mr. Edwin James conceived to be the origin of the expression, on the numerous occasions when he appealed to that institution, as the "Playdium of Brish Liberty." He probably supposed it to be the Latin for "bulwark," or "effective guarantee." Before I reached home, what with the jostling, and hubbub, and stench, I was very glad to get back to the society of clean, fragrant Christians. As I grew every moment more tired and hot, the exhibition seemed to savour less of the classical, and more of the diabolical. At last, I came to the ill-natured conclusion, that Satan was at the bottom of the whole business, and not the golden-haired Dionysus. The remarkably unpleasant Monads around me suggested the idea of perspiration rather than inspiration, and I felt inclined to exclaim,—

Dea, magna domina Tolli, Calië dea domina, Procul a meo sit omnis tuns ore, precor, odor! Alios age hinc olentes. Alios age putridos.

This singular system of idolatry, so perfect in organization, so venerable in

its extreme antiquity, already shows evident marks of decay. The study of the history of creeds teaches us, that the laws which govern the religious opinions. of mankind may be ascertained as surely as the laws which govern their political and social opinions. A rude nation is content with an absurd, irrational superstition; while a highly civilized community requires a logical and consistent faith. You might as soon expect, in the England of the nineteenth century, to find Ptolemy the great astronomical authority, and Galen the great medical authority, as to meet with tenets such as those of the Church of Rome in the dark ages. Men who are accustomed to examine with care the principles of constitutional government, of commercial policy, of international law, of personal rights; men who will not admit the existence of the most insignificant fact in geology or physiology, without a rigorous investigation, are not likely to be indifferent concerning truth or error in matters to which the interests of this world are as nothing in the balance. The same causes that set John Stuart Mill at work upon the questions of small holdings and limited liability, which led Maclure in quest of the North-west Passage, and Sir Charles Lyell in search of flint-knives and pre-historic menthese very causes incite adventurers of another class to seek a reason for the faith that is in them, amidst perils, to which polar bears and icebergs are a trifle. Yet, incredible as it may seem, instead of bidding them God-speed, we prosecute them, and sequester them and backbite them, and take away their good name and their fellowships. When a savant, after a faithful and diligent inquiry, arrives at a conclusion with which we disagree, we are none the less pleased that the subject has been sifted, and we buy his book, and tack some mystical letters to the end of his name. When a theological writer follows this example, we say that his number is six hundred threescore and six, and trounce him of about as many pounds a year. It is very easy for us to tell him to

believe and not to doubt; but it is not so easy to answer the plaintive question, "How shall I know what I am to believe?" If we bid him continue in the faith in which he was brought up, without doubt or cavil, he naturally suggests that on this principle the children of Papists will be Papists, the children of Buddhists, Buddhists, the children of Mormons, polygamists, the children of Mr. Prince, love-birds, and the children of Mr. Home, media, till the end of time.

There was some sense and consistency in the intolerance of Philip the Second and his spouse, who, as you observed in a prize declamation, attached the epithet of "bloody" to the loveliest of English names. They held that the Church which traced back an unbroken descent to the day when Peter received the keys from the hand of her Master and Founder, was infallible and omniscient. Whatever the Church ordained to be essential for salvation-prayer, penance, or indulgence-she must be obeyed, or the consequence would be eternal death. Men who acted under this impression really meant well by you when they screwed you up, and flayed you alive, and roasted you, and confiscated your property. But for Protestants, whose creed is founded upon freedom of thought-who, if thought be not free, are, one and all, in a state of reprobation-for Protestants, on account of honest difference of opinion, to ban, and browbeat, and mulct, and indite each other, and gratuitously forbid each other to preach in their respective dioceses, is an idea to the last degree monstrous and incongruous. Will any one pretend to say, that there exists no fault or blemish in our Church? If the institution is not perfect, if-like everything else in the construction of which man has borne a part-reformation is needed, from what quarter is the reforming movement to begin? When laymen take up the matter, the cry is, "Hands "off! the Church of England is not a public office, or a government dock"yard. In the name of Heaven, do not "allow our liturgy to get amidst the

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"godless House of Commons!" If clergymen step into the breach the cry rises to a shriek: "How dare you, who "eat the bread of the Church, revile "her service and impugn her belief? "Traitors! impostors! perjured swind"lers! ill birds! pack up and begone "from the nest you have fouled!"

But I have wandered far enough from Cali Ghaut. You may well imagine that such a scene of idolatrous barbarism as I have described must seem shocking and absurd to natives educated in European literature, and versed in European habits of thought and business. The schoolmaster has long been abroad, and the rationalist generally treads on the heels of that functionary. The introduction of Western learning and science has produced upon the Hindoo religion the same effect that was produced upon the ancient classical creeds by the progress of civilization. As Cicero said of the augurs of his day, it is hard to conceive how one Brahman can look another in the face without a smile. There are some who admire the great men of Greece and Rome, because they united philosophy to the conduct of public affairs. How beautiful to behold Pericles learning from Anaxagoras that the universe in general, and Aspasia in particular, was composed of homogeneous atoms! Cato, on the eve of death, assuring Plato that he reasoned well! Cicero, in the intervals of selfglorification, writing academic treatises, and receiving consolatory letters from people who had sailed from Ægina and Megara. There would be just as much sense in praising Bright for being a Protestant as well as a demagogue, or Pelissier for being a Roman Catholic as well as a Marshal. A man must have a belief, or disbelief, of some sort or kind; and when, as in the case of Jupiter and Vishnu, the national religion is too absurd for an enlightened man to swallow, he must profess himself something, if it were only an atheist. The earliest and most natural heresy is an attempt to rationalise the irrational, and extract from the follies of the old faith a consistent system of morality and divinity.

Towards the beginning of the present century, Ram Mohun Roy (no relation to Lord Stanhope), struck with the idea. of divine unity, which he had learnt from the Bible and the Koran, with much audacity and ingenuity undertook to trace out an underlying current of Monotheism in the four books of the Vedas, the most sacred of the Hindoo Scriptures. During a residence in England, he regularly attended a Unitarian place of worship. His sect went by the name of "Vedantists;" in fact, the Evangelicals" of the East The orthodox Pundits took alarm. and declared him a heretic, but not before they had most clearly shown that he had entirely failed to explain away the polytheist character of the Hindoo theology. It never occurred to them to assert that this pretended new idea had been exploded as far back as the reign of Shah Jehan.

When, however, European principles of criticism were applied to the Vedas, grave doubts began to spring up concerning their divine origin. One book was evidently the primary basis of the other three, which were little more than a confused liturgy. The Vedantists now began to talk about "natural religion." They refused any longer to acknowledge the high authority of the writings from which their sect received its first name, and professed to believe only in the pure and eternal God, or Brahma. By a strange inconsistency, they still use the old Vedic ritual, the hymns of which they sing to the best music that can be procured in Calcutta, which is not saying very much for it.

With such an element of discord as the proud and bigoted Mahommedan population scattered throughout the country, it is greatly to the credit of our Government that religious disturbances are of such rare occurrence. If you can conceive the Catholics and Orangemen of Ireland, each multiplied by

1 These speculative philosophers who stick to their old ritual, resemble Alcibiades, who, according to Mr. Grote, was "celebrated alike for his theories and his liturgy."-(Note by Mr. Simkins.)

twenty, and planted under a zone where the passions are at blood-heat, you will have an idea what the state of things out here would be if it were not for the heavy hand of English authority. In all sectarian squabbles, our magistrates behave with the same cold justice and magnificent indifference that was displayed by the provincial officers of old Rome in the days of Paul and Barnabas, and I have no doubt but what they get the same hard measure from the enthusiasts whom they prevent from tearing each other in pieces. In all probability, the records and traditions of the respective creeds preserve the name of more than one judge or collector, who was rewarded for having saved the life of some bold preacher, by being handed down to posterity as the impersonification of "carelessness." There are few personages in history who have been so unjustly used as these Roman deputies and chief captains. They seem to have borne themselves with rare courage and judgment, to have stood on every occasion between the persecutors and their prey, and to have given way only when nothing short of concession could avert a general uprising of a fierce and determined nation of fanatics. The conduct of Lycias and Festus seems to have been eminently just and prudent; and, after all, poor Gallio's fault simply consisted in this, that when he found no mention in the revised code, of the crime charged against Paul, he bundled both parties out of his cutcherry. And during the most awful and melancholy scene that the world has ever witnessed, -when the earth trembled with horror, and the kindly sun veiled his face before the cruelty of man-after the Divine victim, and those women whose perfect love cast out their fear, the character who most deserves our pity is the timid, feminine, compassionate ruler, who pleaded hard for that sacred life against the murderous and turbulent mob of Jerusalem; who yielded at last in an agony of remorse and shame; and who restored to His disciples the body of their Master in the teeth of those implacable bigots, who desired to pursue their revenge beyond

the limits of the grave. His cowardice seems far more venial than the dastardly desertion of those men who, after living in daily intercourse with our Saviour for the space of three years, hanging on His words, eating with Him at the same table, sleeping at His side, sharing His every toil and privation (made light, indeed, by so blessed a presence, and so deep an affection), at the first sight of sword or staff, "forsook Him and fled." The conduct of Judas, of Caiaphas, of Herod, of Pilate, may be explained by (alas!) ordinary human motives. But who can account for the conduct of Peter and James, Andrew and Philip? In the most stormy tumult, with outrage and massacre staring them in the face, a faithful band of followers and admirers always stuck by Paul to the last. On the day when "the best of men who knew not God" was mobbed by deadly enemies before a prejudiced tribunal, Plato and Crito, Apollodorus and Critobulus stood around their companion and teacher, pressed him with loving importunity to accept their money and their services, and, at the risk of their lives, schemed his escape from prison, loth to acquiesce in his fixed determination to submit to the laws of his country, however unjustly they might have been wrested by his adversaries to ensure his destruction. And yet Paul and Socrates, great and noble as they were, were nothing more than men. How then could those who had been permitted to call themselves the friends of a Divine and perfect being stoop to a baseness from which ordinary men of the world would be preserved by sentiments of honour and self-respect? It indeed required a life as long as that of John, and a fate as painful as the fate of James and Peter, to wipe out such a stain from their own conscience and from the memory of mankind.

You urge me, in all your letters, to tell you something about the aborigines of India. You write as if you were making inquiries about a set of savages, their bread-fruit, their canoes, their clubs, and the pahs from which they carry on a desultory Mars. I have not

hitherto gratified your wish, because I am one of those who think that the people of India deserve more than cursory observation, inasmuch as they are the most important class in India, for whose benefit we hold the country, and to whom we shall have one day to account for the manner in which we govern it. Extraordinary as this opinion may seem to some people, it is backed by the high authority of Sir Charles Wood and Lord Stanley, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Sir John Peter Grant, and the vast majority of the Civil Service. I hate the "damned nigger" style. One requires more than a few months to form a correct set of opinions and impressions concerning an ancient and wealthy society, with a singular and complicated organization; whose habits, instincts, and ways of thought, to a European eye, form "a mighty maze,” which, nevertheless, if it be closely examined, will be found to be "not without a plan."

In order to lay a foundation for a conception of the native character, it is essential first to clear away all our preconceived notions of what that character ought to be. It is impossible to judge a Hindoo by any other known standard. He is not, like the North American Indian, a barbarian with a few sound ideas about the bearings of the stars and the habits of deer, and a few crude ideas about the Great Spirit and the future condition of his faithful dog. He is not, like the European of the middle ages, the member of a community, rude indeed as yet, and undeveloped, but replete with the germs of a vigorous civilization. The institutions of his country, though grotesque enough in our point of view, are elaborate and mature as any recorded in history. He belongs to a social order, which dates far back into the depths of time, with innumerable well-defined grades and classes, with titles which were borne by his forefathers, when the ancestors of English dukes still paddled about in wicker canoes, when wild in woods the marquis ran, when the Williams of the period sported a suit of blue paint, on