2. Despatch from the Supreme Government to the Go- vernment of Bombay, No. 110, dated 26th January 3. Statement of new Projects of Works submitted for II. THE NATIVE POOR OF BOMBAY ......................................... 235 1. Reports of the Committee of the District Bene- volent Society, for the years 1854 and 1855. 2. Annual Exhibition of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejee- Usurers and Ryots: being an Answer to the Ques- tions, Why does not India produce more Cotton?" By an Indian Civil Servant. London : V. GOVERNMENT EDUCATION IN THE BOM- BAY PRESIDENCY.................. 1. Copy of a Despatch from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to the Governor- General of India in Council, dated July 19th, VI. SETTLEMENT OF LAND REVENUE, AND THE FUTURE OF THE AGRICULTURAL 1. The Deccan Ryots and their Land Tenure. By H. Green, Professor of Literature at Poonah 2. Official Correspondence on the System of Revenue Survey and Assessment of the Bombay Presi- 3. The Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act; with practical directions for the conversion of leases for lives renewable for ever into fee simple THE BOMBAY QUARTERLY REVIEW. JULY, 1856. ART. I.-MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ANGLOINDIANS. A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of India. By the Rev. CHARLES ACLAND, late Chaplain at Rooree, Cuttack, and Midnapore. A WRITER who aspires to literary success in the delineation of Anglo-Indian manners, must be gifted with a greater degree of originality, genius, and, above all, leisure, than most of us can bring to bear upon our subject. The author who shall command the steady interest of his reader, and direct the public attention at home to our domestic habits, peculiarities, and prejudices, has yet to arise among us. Hitherto we have been content to introduce ourselves chiefly in the character of sportsmen. We have thrust ourselves upon the reading public as occupied for the most part in mortal struggles with royal tigers, reckless pursuit of jungle hog, mad marches after wounded bear, and insatiable assaults on Bass' ale. We are a pallid obese people, languishing under the effects of heat, transacting public business in straw hats, surrounded by the densest jungle, aggravated by the beasts of the field, and travelling in howdahs. Our dwellings are haunted with venomous cobra and creeping things, whose instincts, as a general rule, lead them into the recesses of our pillows, or the privacy of our boots. Our wives and daughters are startling specimens of ghastly pallor, clad in flowing garments of purest white, who feed at two, and sleep till five P. M. diurnally, VOL. IV. NO. I. 1 preparatory to dining on fowl-curry at seven. Ascetics encouraging the growth of finger-nails on religious grounds, or obtruding their limbs on society in startling positions, line our ordinary carriage roads, and shock our feelings and sense of decency. Youthful officers, called Griffins, perpetrate impossible absurdities, and young civilians lisp, wear eye-glasses, and exhibit other stereotyped evidences of conceited imbecility. Thus men become weary of so much exaggeration; and one book being the index of half a dozen, the majority fall still-born from the press, and as yet the English world knoweth us not. Yet the time seems fast approaching when a demand will be inade for information more satisfying, on Indian subjects, than anything people newly interested in this country can glean from the journal of the sportsman or the traveller. The young spirits of England have been invited to compete for the honour of assisting in the government of her Eastern possessions; and how many, we would ask, whose reflections would otherwise have been engrossed by their ordinary occupations at home, will now turn a curious eye to the new and (so-called) splendid field thrown open to their ambition? Naturalists, we believe, admit freely that cobras are replete with interest. The abstract importance of the usual howdah is sternly recognised. Fakirs, viewed as religious enthusiasts without clothes, are doubtless singular and touching objects of contemplation. But English readers will no longer be content with snakes, elephant trappings, or holy mendicants, however graphically described. The laws, languages, institutions, and past history of a peculiar race, whose origin seems lost in the mists of antiquity, will claim the research subjects so engrossing to the student call for; but there will be yet a vacuum unoccu→ pied in the English heart. "Home" sounds very sweet and sacred to the English ear. The memory of it, and of the dear familiar faces that smiled upon our boyhood, with all its cherished aspirations, its hopes and fears, and tender fresh emotions, touch the heart, and quicken the pulse of every true son of Britain. When he journeys, he strives to establish in foreign lands a semblance of distant home. The walls, however bare, that shelter him and those he loves from the fierce rays and scorching winds, he continues to designate his home; for within them, as of yore, all that is tender, pure, and holy in his nature, blooms. There, if anywhere, reflection dwells, and thither he may retire from conventionality and show, to be welcomed by the smile of sincerity and truth. There, even loneliness and isolation may |