CHAPTER VII.

MEN AND MANNERS IN THE CITY OF PALACES.

CALCUTTA, Ike most other oriental towns, contains two quarters the well-built, cleanlykept, broad-streeted European quarter, and the ill-built, filthy, narrow-passaged native town. Even the palaces of the native princes, many of them magnificent in outward show, and built, of course, for the most part, in imitation of the Parthenon, or, at all events, with Grecian porticos, must be approached through long filthy streets, so narrow, that between the ditches on both sides, it is only by assiduous care and watchful edging that two carriages can be induced to pass each other, without one or both finding their way into the open drains on either side.

In these native palaces we see the effect of John Bull's one idea on art, thrust everywhere but where it ought to be. He has assiduously taught his Hindoo fellow-subjects that Grecian art is sublime and perfect, and therefore, argues logical John, for he does not stick at consequences, every other kind of art must be ridiculous and imperfect. Anxious to be in the mode, and to accommodate himself to circumstances, the native prince orders a front to his house, something like one of the wings of the British Museum, and when he has paid his ten or twelve thousand pounds for it, hates it and praises it amazingly. There may be a high wall within thirty yards of it right in front, or thousands of miserable mud huts, thatched with leaves, in its immediate vicinity, but it is Grecian, and that suffices; John Bull says it is all right, and that is enough.

The Governor-General's palace is Grecian too; the Town-Hall, the churches, the bank, all Grecian. He is certainly in the mode, and if not contented, he will pretend to be so. A Hindoo structure, sobered by the withdrawal of a few extravagancies, would have been far more picturesque, and to him infi

nitely more convenient, but John Bull would not have it so. Amid the narrow streets of the native quarter of Calcutta, are situated the principal bazars. Like many other Eastern words, the word bazar has been adopted into our language, to mean, however, a very different object from the original. A genuine Eastern bazar differs even more from its European imitation than the turban which Dowager Lady Littlewit wore at the rout the other night from the turban of an orthodox Mussulman.

In Calcutta, a bazar is simply a collection. of shops, generally in a narrow street, and for the most part of shops containing similar articles, the one to the other. Thus, in one bazar, the prudent housewife, who shuns the exorbitant prices of the European shopkeepers, will purchase linen, silk, woollen cloth; in another, her supplies of tea, sugar, spices; in a third, her furniture or ornaments for her rooms, and so on. A lane full of small shops, with open fronts, where the shopmen sit extolling their wares and inviting the passers-by to make a trial of them, is, in fact, a native bazar.

The shops appear small, from the confined frontage, but enter one of them, and you dis

cover, as in some of the dingy shops of Wardour Street, in London, room after room behind, filled with goods. You go up stairs and down stairs, to the right hand and to the left, goods, goods, goods, still goods, and a native sycophant your mentor, who is ready to take his oath on the

Gunga-pawnee" (Ganges water),* that the worst article in his shop is the best of its kind. To get you in is the sole object of the man seated in the shop window.

His elo

quence is made use of as a decoy. "You not go that man's shop, sare," he shouts, when he sees you irresolute as to which you will enter, calculating by your flushed cheek that you are a new-comer, and therefore to be addressed in English; "you not go that man's shop, sare; that man plenty bad man; him d- cheat! You go that shop, you get plenty cheat. Ebery ting plenty good this shop, sare; you come in here, sare. Me show you what you want, maʼam; silk, satins, ribbons, ebery ting got you want.'

When he has succeeded in enticing you to

*The Hindoos are sworn by the water of the Ganges, as the Christians on the Bible, and the Muhammadans on the Koran.

enter, he coolly hands over you and the lady to other men within, whilst he takes his place at the door to laugh and chat with the “plenty bad man" opposite, the "d cheat," whom

he abused so roundly a minute before. The compliments were returned, of course, for every one of the six shopmen in your vicinity were vociferating exactly the same words, making altogether a Babel from which you were glad to escape by rushing into any shop.

Of native articles, the best may be obtained in these native bazars, but of European by no means the best; rather, indeed, as a general rule, the inferior goods, made, not to give satisfaction or be economical to the purchaser, but to sell at a cheap rate. In the shops of the Europeans, generally speaking, really good articles are sold, but at enormous prices. Take tea as a sample; in Calcutta there is no duty on that import, the freight from China is by no means a matter of importance, yet tea in an European shop in Calcutta is absolutely dearer than in the first London houses.

The European confectioners' coffee-houses are the great resorts of the idle Anglo-Indians during the heat of the day. They are situated