3. In the Professor's last talk with us while in Calcutta, he gave us much information about the priestly Hindoo caste the Brahmins. Their whole life, he tells us, is spent in the study of the sacred Hindoo writings; and our missionaries have found them very shrewd disputants. But Brahminism, he says, has of late years grown into a great number of sects, that are constantly disputing with one another upon abstruse metaphysical dogmas that none can comprehend, and disputation seems to have become the chief occupation of the learned among the Hindoos.

4. Then the Professor read to us, from an American poet, the following humorous piece, which, he said, is an excellent satire upon much of the disputation that people engage in, even in countries more enlightened than Hindostan.

III.-The Blind Men and the Elephant.

1. It was six men of Hindostan,
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant,
(Though all of them were blind,)

That each, by observation,

Might satisfy his mind.

2. The first approached the elephant,
And, happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl,

"Oh, bless me! but the elephant
Is very like a wall!"

3. The second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here,

So very round, and smooth, and sharp?
To me 'tis very clear,

This wonder of an elephant

Is very like a spear!"

4. The third approached the animal,
And, happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:

"I see," quoth he, "the elephant

Is very like a snake!"

5. The fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like,
Is mighty plain," quoth he:
""Tis clear enough the elephant
Is very like a tree!"

6. The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said, "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most:

Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
Is very like a fan!"

8. And so these men of Hindostan

Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

MORAL.

9. So, often in the logic wars,
The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each man may mean,

And prate about an elephant

Not one of them has seen.-John G. Saxe.

IV. Onward to Rangoon.

1. Having already seen much of the Mohammedans of India, and the Hindoos, we were now desirous to learn something about that other great division of the people of Asia, known as Buddhists, whose religion, we were told, is an important offshoot from that of the Brahmins. We therefore decided to make our next stop at Rangoon, across the Bay of Bengal, eight hundred miles south-east from Calcutta, but directly on our homeward route.

2. So, bidding adieu to Calcutta, on the last day of December we took our departure down the Hoogly channel of the Ganges. We found that the great sacred river of the Hindoos-the Ganges-has very numerous channels, like the lagoons of Venice; and that between its extreme eastern and western mouths is a low coast region of more than seven thousand square miles, cut up into thousands of islands, known as the Sunderbunds, that are overgrown with dense jungles of woody thickets and tall reedy vegetation, the home of tigers and other wild beasts, of serpents, and crocodiles, and various slimy and deadly creatures, the monsters of land and sea.

3. It was not an inviting passage to make; but we passed safely through, and then across the broad waters of the Bay. On the third day of our voyage we entered the eastern channel of the river Irrawaddy, and, twentyfive miles from the sea, came in sight of the spires and turrets of Rangoon, the capital of British Burmah.

CHAP. XXXIV.-MORE OF MR. BARDOU'S PHILOSOPHY.

I.—Life and its Duties.

1. It is time for us to recur to the old gentleman, Mr. Bardou, whose visits to the Hall, notwithstanding his great age, were still frequent. These visits were welcome, not only to those of us who, having already attained life's meridian, could catch glimpses of the valley into which we were so soon to descend, but to the young people of our household, also, who were still ascending the mountains, hoping to behold, from the summits thereof, golden visions of the great world before them.

2. Mr. Bardou's reflections upon life and its duties were not only imbued with the deepest spirit of Christian philosophy, but they were cheerful in the extreme; and if they seemed, at times, to throw a cloud over the bright anticipations of the young, it was a cloud that had its silver lining. As we have already stated, he was not one of those who, wedded to the past, saw no good in the present, and bemoaned the future of humanity.

3. "The worshippers of past ideas," said he, "who crouch beside tombs instead of smiling over cradles, who refuse to believe that youth has still its sunshine and its illusions, should not complain that their latter years are cold and cheerless. Let us, who, on the contrary, do not mourn over all that has been, and is no longer, but who look cheerfully upon the present good, and hopefully to the promises of the future,-let us stop, to the last, upon the deck of life's vessel, sympathizing in the hopes and fears of the sailors, and not go below to sleep, predicting shipwreck. When life begins to ebb within us, let us not shrink from any of its duties and responsibilities, but let

us borrow life from others, be strong in their strength, and happy in their joys."

4. In speaking of those people who claim that they are the wise of the earth, and that "wisdom shall die with them," he remarked that this is the philosophy of the worldly wise, who distrust God's providence and care over his people. "In the evening of a declining day," said he, "when the daylight is nearly gone, those who do not look beyond themselves might declare that the sun has set forever; but the man who reflects a moment knows that, when the night descends upon his own eyes, other eyes have already caught sight of the dawn. So, God's bounty never ends; the sun of his righteousness never sets."

5. Some allusion having been made to Mr. Bardou's very long life, he remarked that, in youth, the days, months, and years, do, indeed, seem to be long; and we picture to ourselves a life journey that stretches far-very far away, into an almost illimitable future; but that, the longer we live, the more rapidly time passes, until, in old age, as Job says, our days are "swifter than a weaver's shuttle ;"-and the Psalmist says, they are "as an hand-breadth," they are consumed like smoke;" they are like a shadow that declineth."

6. And yet it does not grieve me," he remarked, "that my days now seem to flee-as one of your English poets has said-on wheels swifter than eagles' wings."

Lulu whispered to Mr. Agnew that she knew what poet wrote the line that Mr. Bardou had quoted, and that the book was in the library.

7. When Lulu's remark was repeated to Mr. Bardou, he said he should be pleased if she would get the book and read the piece; "for," he continued, "it is one of the most agreeable things of the kind in the English language."

Lulu then brought the book-one of the volumes of the English Poets,—and, at Mr. Bardou's renewed request, read the following: