Dear Simkins,–On my return from a visit to Chandernagore, I found two letters full of your reflections on the questions of the advisability of our keeping India. One had come through Bombay, and the other by Point de Galle, and I am anxiously expecting another round the Cape. The problems which you select for discussion are certainly rather antiquated. Some three months ago you gave me your opinion about the annexation of Oude, in a treatise that displayed profound political wisdom, which more than compensated for a slight want of familiarity with the details of your subject. At first I was surprised and gratified to find that you had turned your attention to an event so recent; but it gradually began to dawn upon me that the annexation of Oude, which you had undertaken to justify in the sight of God and man, was not that accomplished by Lord Dalhousie, in 1856, but the arrangement which was effected by Lord Wellesley, as far back as 1801. While reading your letters I seem to resemble the traveller, who, during a tour in Southern Russia, in the year 1819, came to a Cossack village, somewhere between the Don and the Volga. He found the population in a state of wild excitement and exhilaration. Bonfires were blazing, and oxen roasting whole. The gutters ran with raki and train-oil. Peasants who had never tasted anything daintier than a rushlight now had their fill of long sixes.

Bankipore, alias Patna, Feb. 7, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–A man gains more new ideas, or, which comes to the same, gets rid of more old ones, within his first month on Indian soil than during any equal period of his life. It is consequently very hard for him to realize that many things, which are familiar to himself, are strange to his English correspondents. A dashing comedy by Mr. Tom Taylor, with life in an up-country station for its subject, in the style of “the Overland Route,” would do more to unite the sympathies of England and India than the Red Sea Telegraph, or the Army Amalgamation Scheme. A few days before my departure a youth of that class which you persist in alluding to as “our mutual friends,” who had already undergone the rite of ordination, and might therefore be considered qualified to impart instruction to his fellow-men, asked whether I should not be a full fortnight on the voyage between England and Calcutta! On the same occasion, a gentleman much distinguished in the University Curriculum was speaking of a friend in Bengal who had been pushed forward by “a man called Grant.” I inquired, “Do you refer to Sir John Peter?” “I don't know about that,” he replied, “but I am sure that the man's name was Grant.”

Those who read these letters with attention cannot fail to perceive that my most earnest desire and most cherished ambition is to induce Englishmen at home to take a lively and effective interest in the native population of their Eastern dominions; and with that view to lay before them a plain statement of the feeling which is entertained towards that population by the European settlers in India. This is a task which cannot be undertaken by an anonymous writer. On a matter so momentous evidence will not be received from a witness whose character and antecedents are unknown. On all the great questions which now agitate Anglo-Indian society the civilians and the settlers are at odds: so that men naturally reject the testimony of an author whom the larger half of his readers and reviewers believe to be a civilian. The admiration expressed in the fourth letter for the gallantry of Macdonell and Mangles, and the recital of the advantages of a public career in India contained in the fifth, were successively attributed to the predilection of the author for his own Service. This was of little consequence: but not so with the ninth letter, which exposes at length the horrible tone adopted by a certain class of Anglo-Indians regarding the murder of natives by Europeans. This exposition consists almost entirely of extracts from the Anglo-Indian journals themselves: and yet it was styled “a burst of civilian hatred against the Independent Settler” by no less a journal than the Spectator, which had noticed the previous letters most favourably and courteously.

Mofussilpore, July 20, 1863.

Dear Simkins,– You will be glad to hear that I passed my second examination some three weeks ago, and have since been settled here as an assistant to Tom Goddard. He set me to work at first upon the Government School, which was not in a satisfactory state; and I have gained some valuable experience about the operation of our system of public instruction. The natives of India do not seem willing to adopt Christianity as a compensation for the loss of national independence; but there can be no question whether or not they appreciate the blessings of a sound European education. That we have been enabled to offer to our subjects in the East a boon so acceptable, is due mainly to the exertions of a great man, who, for the space of more than three years, laboured to direct the whole course of instruction into the channels which it at present occupies. To describe with my feeble pen the nature of the change which he introduced would be vain and presumptuous indeed, when he has left a monument of that change in his own immortal words. Strange it is, while rummaging among the dusty records of the Public Offices at Calcutta, to light upon a yellow bundle of foolscap, tied up with frayed and faded tape, and honeycombed by the ravages of generations of white ants.

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 tea-tray, who informed me 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 well-known feature reminded one irresistibly that the Bacchic orgies sprung from the mysterious fanaticism of the far East.

March 28, 1863

My dear Simpkins,–For some time past, “my mind has been divided within my shaggy breast,” as to whether I should send you an account of our tiger-party in Nepaul. I was deterred by doubts of my ability to hit off that peculiar vein of dullness which seems the single qualification requisite for a sporting author. Why a pursuit of such absorbing interest should lose all its charms in the recital it is hard to say. Perhaps men are misled by the delights of a hard run or a successful stalk, and imagine that a bare unadorned narrative will best convey the idea of those delights to their readers. But this can hardly be the cause; for accounts of sport, for the most part, are characterised by carefully elaborated jocosity of a singularly insipid flavour. Sometimes the writer aspires to poetry; in which case he invariably talks about his Pegasus, and is mildly mythological, calling all ladies “Dianas,” and speaking of the sun as “Phoebus.” After describing the breakfast at the house of “Amphitryon,” the meet on the lawn, and the scene at coverside, he proceeds somewhat in this strain:–

May 24, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–You gentlemen of England who stay at home in ease and a temperature of 45°, how little do you appreciate the full weight of the words, “contract law.” You may have heard some bilious old gentleman in the warm corner of a railway-carriage descanting on the increased necessity for a contract law in India, with a vehemence and acrimony which appeared to you excessive and uncalled for. Perhaps at the time you imagined that some personal motive induced him to advocate a more stringent act of breach of promise, in order to bind those young ladies who come out to Calcutta under the express understanding that they are to marry one man, but with the secret intention of marrying another. To us, however, who live and move in the valley of the shadow of the Development of the Resources of India, these baleful syllables have a far other significance. When the passions of men are stirred and their interests at stake, they are seldom long about finding a subject on which to quarrel. The Anglo-Saxon party, who consider it essentially English to oppress the native, and the Anglo-Indian party, who consider it essentially English to protect him, have discovered a most convenient battleground in the question of a criminal contract law. The matter in dispute may be summed up in a few words.

Mofussilpore, Feb. 12, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–I libelled Patna somewhat in my last letter. Ratcliffe drove me in on two different occasions, and we spent one long day in poking about the town, and another in the opium factory, which is second only in importance to that of Benares. There is a mile or two of very singular street architecture. The Mahommedans live here in great numbers, and everything belonging to them is picturesque all the world over. We visited a Mahommedan foundation, something between a college and a monastery, which boasted a good deal of shabby magnificence. It is very richly endowed, and the loaves and fishes are kept strictly among the founder's kin. The head of the family for the time being is ipso facto President, and he had apparently distributed the college offices with great impartiality among his brothers. The Fellows were certainly bene nati, and may have been mediocriter docti for all I knew. There was no doubt that they fell short of the All Souls' standard in the other particular.

We were led through a long series of quadrangles built of white stone, with the shrine of some devotee of ancient days standing in the centre of each, on the brink of a pretty little ornamental tank. Some of the courts were used as hospitia for pilgrims, others as schools for the younger members of the institution, others again as combination-rooms and studies for the Fellows.

Calcutta, April 12, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–The hot weather has set in. These words may convey to you no very definite idea, beyond the general one, of punkahs and iced champagne; but to us they are the earnest of miseries which are unutterable. The amenities of life are over for the year. The last waltz has been danced in the assembly-rooms; the last wicket has been pitched on the cricket ground; the last tiffin eaten in the Botanical gardens; the last couple married in the cathedral, at the very sensible and uncanonical hour of half-past five in the afternoon. People have settled themselves down to be clammy, and gloomy, and hepatic for six grilling months. The younger and more vigorous effloresce with a singularly unpleasant erruption, known as “prickly heat”–a condition which is supposed to be a sort of safety-valve for feverish tendencies, and which, therefore, excites the envy of all who are not so blessed. Conceive a climate such that an exquisitely painful cutaneous disorder is allowed to be a fair subject of congratulation! And in such a plight, amidst a temperature of 97° in the shade and anything from headache to apoplexy in the sun, men are supposed to transact official work from morn till stewy eve. Is it fair to expect high efficiency under such circumstances? Are enlarged views compatible with enlarged livers? No strain is put upon the reflective powers of Strasbourg geese.

Calcutta, May 11, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–I lately read through a file of the Friend of India, for 1836, with great pleasure, not unmingled with regret. The value of such a paper in these days would be incalculable. The tone of the articles indicated the existence in Anglo-Indian society of a spirit which has passed away and left but faint traces. In those times the well-being of the Hindoo was the first and dearest care of our leading civilians. Their successors honestly do their duty by the native population; but that duty is no longer a labour of love. Thirty years ago the education of the people of the country was the favourite subject of conversation in the best circles, and occupied the spare time of men who had little enough of that commodity. Hindoo history, Hindoo literature, Hindoo social life, were discussed with inexhaustible ardour; and the hopes entertained concerning the future of the race were proportionate to the interest which it excited. Of course this feeling, like all that is noble and unselfish in the mind of man, partook of a strong dash of illusion. But the same may be said of every successive stage in the progress of knowledge and civilization. Philanthropists are a sanguine class; and it is well for them that they are so.

Dear Sir,–Though feeling some hesitation in approaching (metaphorically) the editorial sanctum, there are occasions when diffidence is out of place; and I think that you will allow that this comes under that category. But, without any further preface, I will plunge at once in medias res, and tell you my whole story from the very beginning.

The gentleman (and scholar), whom I wish to introduce to your notice, is Mr. Henry Broughton, my earliest and most attached friend. Throughout our school career–which we passed together in the classic groves and along the banks of Radley–to call us Damon and Pylades would have been to “damn with faint praise.” Together we chased the bounding ball; together we cleft the yielding wave; together we studied; together we attended Divine worship; together we should have passed the hours of the night, had not the regulations of that excellent institution confined us to our separate cubicles. Our characters were admirably fitted to supply what was wanting in the other. My mind was of the class which developes late, and which, while it gives abundant promise to the observant eye, too often fails to be appreciated by those immediately around. His reached its maturity early. I was the more thoughtful and the intellectualler of the two; he the more practical and the quick-sighteder.

Calcutta, March 12.

Dear Simkins,–I have lately witnessed some phases of life in India which have little in common with Calcutta grandeur and civilization. To begin with the travelling: I spent sixteen hours on the four hundred miles between the capital and Patna, and seventeen hours on the forty odd miles between Patna and Mofussilpore. And uncommonly odd ones they were. I started at ten P.M. on the 9th of last month in the time-honoured palanquin. My suite comprised sixteen bearers, two fellows with torches and four banghywallahs, who convey luggage in something resembling the received idea of the Scales in the zodiac. The performances of these thin-legged, miserable, rice-fed “missing links” are perfectly inexplicable according to our notions of muscular development. Four picked readers of Kingsley would find it hard work to bring along an empty palanquin at their own pace; whereas a set of sixteen bearers will carry you and your traps at the rate of four and four and a half miles an hour for twenty leagues on end. The powers of the banghywallahs are something portentous. Two of them took to Mofussilpore, turn and turn about, a gun-case and a carpet-bag containing, among other things, twenty-eight pounds of shot and three hundred and fifty bullets, going the whole way at a swing trot. And yet the physical conformation of these men is so frail, that a blow on the body is liable to cause instant death.

Calcutta, Jan. 24, 1863.

Dear Simkins,–Indian travellers usually commence their first letter by describing their earliest impression upon landing in Calcutta. With some it is musquitoes; with others, Warren Hastings; while others, again, seem divided between an oppressive consciousness of heathendom and hot tiffins. My prevailing feeling was negative: it was the absence of Dundreary. The sense of relief at being able to ask a question without being told that it was “one of those things that no fellah could understand,” was at first delightfully soothing. On the whole, the current English slang is at a discount in the market here.

I did not write during the first fortnight, as I was in very low spirits, and nothing encourages that state of mind so much as trying to communicate it to others. There is no doubt that the situation of a young civilian has much in it that is very trying. His position is precisely that of a new boy at school. I was continually expecting to hear the familiar question, “What's your name, you fellow?” Nobody, however, seemed to care enough about me to ask. There are so many young civilians that older residents cannot afford to show them attentions until they have earned themselves an individuality. Every one has been a “student” in his day, with the same hopes, the same aspirations, the same anxiety about passing in Persian.

Mofussilpore, Feb. 17.

Dear Simkins,–Before leaving Patna I ran over to Arrah, and spent an evening and morning in visiting the scene of the most complete episode of the great troubles. The collector entertained me very hospitably, and I passed the night in “The House” in a more unbroken repose than others of my countrymen have enjoyed in the same room. I was rather ashamed of having slept so well. Would a Spartan have slumbered soundly on the tomb of the Three Hundred?–or a Roman, think you, beneath what Niebuhr does not believe to be the sepulchre of the Horatii, with no thought “on those strong limbs” which, according to that acute and able scholar, do not “moulder deep below”? For Arrah is emphatically the Thermopylae of our race–hallowed, no less than those world-famed straits, by superhuman courage and by memorable disaster.

All the associations there are concentrated within a small well-defined locality, which vastly increases the emotion that they excite. It is this, even more than the importance of the conflict, which draws so many tourists to Hougoumont. There is the farm-yard gate which the assailants forced open, and which four English officers and a sergeant shut in their faces by dint of hard shoving.