some middle-aged baronet, or banker, or wealthy esquire, into a matrimonial promise, and setting in motion their whole train of artillery to carry their point! And what is the destination of a young girl of fashion in London, from the first flutter of her heart at the sight of a beau? What is taught her by the counsels of mamma, or the examples of elder sisters? What are the aims that engross her whole being, all her waking, all her sleeping thoughts? What is the goal which her young imagination pants to arrive at ? Is it the simple union of the affections-the unadulterated choice of the mind, with no dowry, no worldly wealth, but that of love-the gratuitous dedication of her whole soul, the unbought devotion of her heart, to one beloved and beloving object? No; she has been too well tutored not to discard all this nonsense with contempt, as the idle dream of thoughtlessness and folly.

The females, sent out to India to try their chance for an establishment, are for the most part nurtured to the hopes of a competent rather than a splendid union. To this end they are educated, modestly indeed, but sufficiently to qualify them for the duties of wives and mothers. They are taught the art of pleasing by means of those accomplishments, which are no more than a neces

sary part of female education, instead of the fas cinations which glare and dazzle rather than delight, and are more fitted for the stare and gaze of public admiration, than for the chaste and sober ornaments of domestic life. Having probably some friendly connexions in India, they arrive there generally under the protection of kind and matronlike residents, with whom they become domiciled, and who, from their experience of the characters and morals of the male society at their respective presidencies, are enabled to give them the most salutary advice as to the important choice on which depends the woe or the weal of their afterlives. What is there mercenary or venal in this? It is an egregious blunder to imagine that there can be no real affection in these marriages. I never heard that the little god of love could make no use of his wings for being encumbered with rupees, or that his arrows were less efficacious because they were tipped with gold.

But let those who sneer at English marriages in India, look to the unbroken constancy of the union: I mean in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Can there be a more conclusive proof that the affections of the young spinsters, so invidiously ridiculed as forming part of the ship's cargo, find there a secure and honourable asylum? A crim. con., which in

London is served up every morning at breakfast to your wives and daughters, is of such rare occur rence in India, that all the affairs of that nature, which have broken out in English families from the first moment of our having so much as a factory there to the present day, when what were once factories have become populous capitals, put together, would not amount to thirty-three, which, to speak with statistical precision, is not so much as half a one per annum. This has the appearance of a problem, inasmuch as the female heart there, as well as at home, is beset with frailties and exposed to temptation. But the solution of it will be found in those exterior circumstances to which I have before adverted, as disciplining and fashioning dispositions and characters. It may, perhaps, diminish the value of the compliment, but it is almost an obvious truth, that in India our wives are better guarded by one little circumstance in their domestic economy, than if they were secluded with Turkish jealousy from every eye, or secured from contact by ramparts of brass. Conjugal infidelity is next to impracticable; and what do you think it is which renders it impracticable?

In the first place (do not smile, reader), in every house, through every apartment, the doors of which, from the necessity of the climate, are always open,

there are constantly gliding along, with noiseless and inaudible rtead, a variety of domestics, with various names, and acting in various offices. They are eternally at the elbow of their mistress. If she shakes off Ramasawmy, Vencatah is sure to succeed him. The moment the kansumar leaves the saloon, the kitmugar steals into it. So unheard and unperceived is their foot-fall, that they are like flies with respect to their exits and entrances. He who does not perceive the influence that so perpetual an exposure to observation will have upon the female conduct, must needs have the dullest apprehension in the world. The force of such a restraint is almost incalculable. It acts upon the wife as a supernumerary conscience, and it has all the efficacy of the severest penalties which law could inflict. In truth, your black servants, whose eyes are those of lynxes, and who are endued with a kind of invisible ubiquity, may be relied upon by the most jealous husband as so many walking statutes against adultery. Nor are there in your houses in India any of those snug receptacles of intrigue, those petits boudoirs, which in England are considered by every lady to be inviolable-her castellum, her sanctuary, into which none but a few foolishly indulgent wives will permit even their husbands to intrude. The eye may command at

once every apartment of the mansion, which is seldom of more than one story, as distinctly as Don Cleofas inspected the interior of the houses of Madrid which his friend the lame devil had unroofed to his curiosity. Consider, again, I beseech you, the necessary effect of this one circumstance, in the formation as well as the preservation of chaste and guarded habits, and the bridling irregular and licentious passions, by the almost entire impossibility of indulging them, and you will set a proper value on a moral restraint at once so gentle and so effectual.

Another most invaluable restraint, which keeps down in India this worst of domestic scourges in English society,-that pernicious crime which, in our world of fashion, is so often snapping asunder the golden cord of wedded affection-is a restraint of a physical rather than moral kind; but it operates with equal force on the seducer and the victim. What I mean is, the almost absolute impracticability of eloping. There are no posthorses to carry off the erring couple, as it were, on the wings of love, or at least with the degree of velocity which their escape from shame and retribution requires. Palanquins are out of the question. As for running away on horseback, it is quite impossible. No lady in that torrid climate could endure