The cat was now out of the bag. The coach was full inside. The morning was so wet, a passenger who had intended to travel outside took possession of my seat. He was either a friend of the driver, or had bribed him. I had some difficulty in getting him ejected. This is no uncommon occurrence. The fact of previous contract is nothing in Ireland. Possession is the main point. Rows are often the consequence. The printed receipt you get for your fare advises you of this in plain terms "There having been many disputes about sates, the proprietor will not be answerable for the engaged places, unless the passengers be at the office at laste ten minutes before the coach laves the office!" These words I transcribe from an Irish receipt now before me.

I insisted upon my right, however, and the culprit having surrendered, off we galloped through the "Liberties," as the suburbs here are called, at a race-horse pace; the rain still pouring down, and the wind blowing a gale. No November summer for me! thought I. However, I congratulated myself that I was not at sea; and drawing my travelling-cap over my eyes, I endeavoured to recover the balance of sleep which was due to me.

About ten o'clock we stopped at a place called Moorfields, to breakfast. We drove into the avenue of a pretty country-house, which had no appearance of a hotel about it. I rather think it is a private residence belonging to the coach-proprietor. We entered a handsome well-furnished parlour, where we beheld a large table, well filled with all the usual implements for the matin meal. There was an excellent stove in the room, but no fire; though, on such a morning, a fire would have been particularly agreeable. There was an abundance of fresh bread-excellent bread-but no stale bread, no toast. Some twenty eggs were already on the table; but the coach, in consequence of the heaviness of the roads, being ten minutes after its time, and the eggs having been boiled at the time the coach ought to have been there, they were of course all cold. I asked for a cup of coffee; it was immediately poured out for me, but it was scarcely even tepid. The tea was also excellent, but cold as the morning itself. A beef-steak was brought in, which looked well, and was really good; but it was brought in on a cold dish, without gravy, and served on cold plates. I gave back my coffee to the waiter, who appeared in the morning jacket of a private gentleman's servant, and requested that he would get it warmed for me. He brought it back to me boiling, and before I could cool it the coachman shouted that our time (twenty-five minutes) was expired. We could not have been in the room fifteen minutes; but he was on the box, reins and whip in hand, and so away we were obliged to go, without anything like a breakfast, for which we had to pay 2s. or 18d.-I forget which.

Now, here were all the elements of the most complete comfort utterly spoiled, merely by want of system. It would have cost little to have afforded the passengers a good fire; nothing to have had the eggs, tea, and coffee, served hot; nothing to have had the beef-steak brought in on a warm covered dish, with plenty of gravy around it; nothing to have prepared toast, or at least bread a day old, for it is not everybody who can digest hot rolls, and for any body they are unwholesome, Neither could any human being have suffered the slightest damage, if we had been allowed to remain our full time at the breakfast table. It is this want of method, which makes everything in the way of domestic arrangement in Ireland look to foreigners to such great disadvantage.

The door of the parlour where we were at breakfast none of us could prevail on the waiter to keep shut. It was near the front door, which was also perpetually open. The cold wind, that was blowing strongly the whole morning, rushed constantly into our apartment; and yet no entreaty could prevail to secure us even the comfort of shutting out the blast. It is very strange, but perfectly true, that the Irish in general, of every degree, seem to consider that a door is intended not to be shut, but always to be open -and this, too, in all weathers! I had once an Irish female servant, who looked quite astonished, one summer morning, when I desired her to close the door after her, on coming in or going out of the dining-room. "Dear me, sir!" she exclaimed, "I never knew a doore to be shut this time of the year!"

By the way, let me not forget the breakfast I had once at Mrs. M'Cormack's, on a former occasion, when I travelled the same road. We were a large party of inside and outside passengers, and well prepared were we for a good meal. Better beef-steaks I hever ate: they were hot, well cooked, served with abundance of gravy, and fresh dishes of them were coming in every five minutes.

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21

Everybody has heard of the beggar-nuisances in Ireland. However you travel-in post-chaise, private carriage, on horseback, in stage-coach, cab, or jingle, you are sure of being mobbed by them wherever you stop, in almost every town. You always see the same faces, the same number of them, and hear the same tale of woe. "Nothing to eat, your honour, this cold morning-my poor children starving, your honour, and I haven't a haepeney (halfpenny) to get them a bit of bread. God Almighty bless your honour, and send you safe home. Ah, then, may your honour be nearer to heaven!" addressing a passenger on the top of the coach; "throw us a sixpence to divide amongst us, your honour, and may you have a very long life!" These are but a few of the entreaties with which you are saluted in the same tone of voice, which soon becomes so painful from its monotony, that to get rid of it you comply at last, and send them away to share the sixpence. But before you can get off, you have plenty of complaints of unfair dealing in the distribution; the woman with a child at the breast always demanding a double share as her right.

I am always amused by one woman-a well-built, red-faced, harum-scarum sort of being-who appears at Athy with a great club in her hand, which she brandishes about her without much caring whom she strikes. You may see at once that she has just been visiting the whiskey-shop. "Get away, ye low paupers," she cries out, as she enters the scene of action; "lave the jintlemen alone. Plase your honour, throw me a shillin-nothin less would do me any good. The shillin, your honour," she repeats, capering about, and whirling her shilela with an independent air. "But you would spend it in whiskey, if I gave it to you." "Upon my honour, and that I will, just to drink your honour's health, Get away, ye low paupers! What do ye know about the lion and the unicorn there," pointing to the royal arms on the mail-coach door, "fighting for the crown? Now, then, your honour, where's the shillin you promised me for keepin these beggars away? I know it to be wrong, and yet I cannot help giving this sturdy-looking woman-not indeed her full demand, but a sixpence by way of compromise.

There is one other mendicant upon this road, who is generally sure to rob me of the same amount. He goes by the name of Jack, and so long as I have known him (some four or five years), he has always made his appearance in the same old red coat-if, indeed, the same that can be called, which, though it looked respectable enough when he originally bought it second-hand, for three shillings and sixpence, as he states, is now composed of shreds and patches of every colour and quality, bits of cloth, fragments of old shirts and petticoats, darns of worsted, and cords to keep the fugitive pieces together. He mounts the coach, usually between Athy and Maryborough-a privilege which he has long enjoyed, and climbs around to both the windows, tells over the same old stories to the passengers, of his having served in the army, and of having been engaged in many actions. I entertain some doubts as to this part of his tale; the more especially as he speaks of having fought at Waterloo, and of having been compel

He

led, by the wants of a large family, to dispose of his medal. carries with him, slung in a belt, a broken old bugle, upon which he sounds most deplorable caricatures of "Patrick's Day," the 'Meeting of the Waters," and "Rory O'More." The limits of his daily journey in the coach do not extend beyond a certain turnpike-gate. As soon as the gate is in view, his stories and his music are heard no more; he presses hard for his reward; his wife and his childer are all his theme, and his good-humoured face and merry eloquence become so persuasive, that he seldom descends from his station without pocketing, or at least collecting,-for, I fear, a pocket he no longer has,-half-a-crown_or three shillings. Everybody gives something, more or less, to Jack. On arriving at the gate, down he jumps, in performance of the condition upon which his invasion is permitted by the coachman, and away he scampers to the childer.

I should be sorry to hear that Jack was shut up in a workhouse. I doubt if the poor fellow could live long under any kind of confinement or restraint. He is no fool, nor indeed much of a knave: whatever there is of the latter about him is rather pleasant than otherwise. Speaking of the workhouse, I question much whether it will be very generally resorted to in Ireland. The new PoorLaw has met, and probably will meet, with no resistance from the lower classes in Ireland; but I question whether they will avail themselves of it, unless in seasons of famine, to any great extent. The Irish poor, down even to the most destitute, have a strong latent pride about them, which foreigners seldom discern or understand. It is not talked of; nobody would suspect its existence in the heart of a beggar who approaches you with a tone and address of the most extreme humiliation. But under that outward manner there are feelings that will render the Poor Law, I think, in many instances a dead letter-at least, for several years yet to come.

The heavy and continued rains by which the late autumn was characterised in Ireland so completely saturated the bogs, that the prospects of the poor for the winter, so far as firing was concerned, were miserable indeed. The bogs are usually in that country humid enough, but this year they looked, for the most part, thoroughly rotten. The corn-harvest was but indifferent in many places, but sanguine hopes were indulged that the potato-crop would turn out an ample one.

This root is, I regret to observe, becoming every year more deteriorated in Ireland. I well remember, that when a boy, many a time I went into the peasant's cabin, at their dinner-hour, and sat down with great glee to share with them their immense pile of potatoes, all laughing at you through their burst jackets, and when peeled by the hand, almost crumbling in it like a mass of flour, but nevertheless sufficiently tenacious to preserve their spherical form, until the operation of eating made deep gaps in it. If I could get a little salt butter, well; if not, salt itself gave a sufficient relish to the meal; and notwithstanding all the talk of the politicoeconomists, a good meal one might make from such materials. But I have seldom seen in latter years a good potato, except in some few houses of the higher classes. At the hotels they are usually bad, pasty, bluish, often black at the core, and utterly

flavourless.

But for some dense mists which arose from the earth-the natural result of the recent inundations,-I should have caught good views of a celebrated mountain near Thurles, called the "Devil's Bit." It is so denominated from a narrow semicircular valley, which interrupts the ridge-line of the summit of the mountain. The legends say that his infernal highness, when upon his travels through this part of Ireland, took a fancy to some herbs on this eminence, on which he intended to make a luncheon; but that, having been somewhat voracious, he took in with the herbs a whole mouthful of the rock, which he could not swallow. Resuming his flight, some of the authorities allege that he deposited his burden near Cashel. It is upon this rock the well-known Pagan and Christian temples were erected, which are now the most interesting and the least weather or time-injured ruins in Ireland. The storms and the rains of ages have but blanched their roofs and walls, and proved their power to resist all the ordinary instruments of destruction. Other authorities teach that the ejected morsel is no other than the rock of Dunamace. It is gravely affirmed that several skilful men have accurately measured the vacancy in the mountain, and the isolated mass of stone in question; and the conclusion at which they arrived was this, that if the latter could be removed to the mountain, it would exactly fill up the hollow, and perfect the ridge. As I have never had an opportunity of following the labours of these old engineers, I must leave the matter as I find it, undetermined.

[To be continued.]

WOMAN IN INDIA,

WITH A DESCRIPTION OF A SUTTEE.

WERE We to draw an inference from the number of new books on India, we should conclude that our vast Indian possessions are beginning to assume something like a proportionate interest in the public mind. In No. 51 of THE LONDON SAturday Journal, we made some extracts from Mrs. Postans' "Western India," and we have now before us two larger volumes, under the title of "Continental India*." The author observes, "Hindostan is better known to-day than the Hebrides were in the time of Johnson, or than the Shetland Isles were at the beginning of the present century; while the aggressions and acquisitions of our English nabobs in oriental countries, the subversion of Asiatic despotism, and the substitution of British rule among the nations of the East, of every inquirer after knowledge.” are the records of our cabinet libraries, and form the vade-mecums

A chapter in Mr. Massie's work is entitled "Woman in India," from which we extract some passages, giving the author's opinions of the condition and character of the females of Hindostan, with a description of a "Suttee," at which he was present :-

"The influence of the wife and the mother upon society is so palpable and resistless in the most advanced stages of improvement, that the philanthropist will demand with anxious solicitude, after the recital of some scenes in these volumes, What is the character of woman in India? Let her history be developed to us; give us no exaggerated delineation, no distorted or extravagant caricature, no picture which may be regarded as an exception arising from peculiar circumstances.

"Treated as beings of an inferior order; kept back from the enjoyed by their sisters in western countries; excluded from the commonest means of information and mental improvement, diffusive influence of expanding principle, and taught to look upon the present as the only moment of gratification; they are occupied in domestic toils without any cheering and heart-exciting affections, while they are denied all participation at the social board. Thrown too upon the resources of animal nature merely for any portion of enjoyment, they are accustomed to regard themselves as only the instruments of slavery or passion. In addition to which, the very objects of their worship-to the external symbols of which, as the profanum vulgus, their intercourse is solely limited-are presented in the scenes of idolatrous festivity, as immersed in criminal indulgence. Would it be wondered that their character should be blindly selfish, and the motives of their conduct exclusively, and to the extreme, epicurean? The arrangement and the economy of the domestic circle cherish still more the luxuriant growth of these rank weeds in the feminine breast in India.

"The remains of the patriarchal state are perceptible in their internal management and government of social life, and to this the present condition of India may be ascribed. The patriarch's authority is even more jealously enforced now, and carried into the ramifications of the family, than in ancient society. It is here systematised and secured by the sanctions of religion, as well as by the custom of ages. Every house presents the remote, as also the most subordinate division of genealogical relationship. There seems, too, the closest intercourse between the affiliated branches, so that the father of the last or preceding generation exerts an authoritative influence, even more arbitrary than the power of an adviser. His sons, and their wives, their children also-and it may be, their destined brides too-live within the same inclosure, and often under the same roof; so that sometimes it assumes more the appearance of a clan than a single family. And hence, except among those whose habits have been changed, and whose origin or connexions have been interrupted, by the invasion or policy of foreigners, there is an internal policy paramount

* "Continental India. Travelling Sketches and Historical Recollections,

illustrating the Antiquity, Religion, and Manners of the Hindoos, the Extent of British Conquests, and the Progress of Missionary Operations. By J. W. Massie, M.R.I.A. In Two Volumes. London, Ward & Co. 1840."

in herself, while it professed to regard those who approached her. A red line was drawn straight from the root of her hair to the ridge of her nose: it seemed to me the mark of suicide. She had bunches of flowers made up and ready to bestow; cloths, cocoanuts, pounded spices and seeds, and money lay beside her, which she distributed to the females who came soliciting her favours. She was attended by two principal brahmins; one of them held an ollah or cadjan book in his hand, from which he read sentences apparently for direction, or that he might suggest consolation to her in this trial; occasionally he would join his coadjutor for counsel, or to share in the rewards of the sacrifice. The fees of the brahmins at this ceremony usually amount to forty or fifty pounds. Sometimes I observed these priests quarrelling with each other, and exhibiting passions depicted in their countenances truly demoniac; the controversy regarded the money which should fall to the share of each: they were old men, their hair grey, and their features hardened and callous. I never contemplated man so far removed from the aspect of humanity. An extremely correct similitude of their appearance is given in the representation of a suttee in Ackerman's Hindostan." "Whilst the poor woman and the priests were thus engaged, she was indifferent to any attempted interference by some Euro. peans who sought to rescue her from destruction. The crowds of natives were all busied ; few contemplative, many showed the greatest levity, while others employed themselves in preparing the pile. It was constructed of dried wood, in the shape of an oblong square; the faggots were heaped upon each other, so as to be most easily combustible, to the height of four feet from the base. A stout branch of a tree was fixed in the earth at each corner; suspended by these, another pile, as a canopy, was formed at about three feet elevation, and plentifully supplied with large billets of wood. The whole material of the pile was carried on the heads of many men, who actively. ran backward and forward during the preparation; some straw, also, and cakes of cowdung were provided. The chief magistrate of the district, called the Fouzdar, was present with his peons, or constabulary force, armed. There were two European gentlemen, holding situations of trust, officially present. We could not secure the attention of the poor woman, but I made my appeal to the magistrate, to his authority, his influence, and his responsibility to God. He said he was there as the representative of the king, admitted his responsibility, but replied it was according to their religion. I urged him to offer her permission to retire if she would. He directed a brahmin (he himself was one) to ask if she were still inclined for it; she answered, she was. Hollee was conducted round the pile after the corpse had been placed upon it; a priest accompanied her the first time; she walked twice by herself, kneeled by the right side a few seconds, and mounted the pile to the left of the deceased. Deliberately she composed herself; her infant child was placed in her arms for an instant and embraced; she saluted her mother, and called her sister, to whom she delivered her jewels: then, having ungirded her loins and loosed her garments, she drew her cloth over her head, and laid herself down behind her husband with such calmness as if it had been for a few hours' repose. They covered her with straw, and poured oil and melted butter over all parts of the pile, the extremities of which were now lighted. The straw, fanned by the wind, was at first suffered only to roll the thick volume of its smoke over her; and, before any fire could have reached her, the heavy suspended billets were, by the swords of the peons, cut down, and fell upon her with their whole weight. O! it was a cruel apathy that could stand and witness such a monstrous perversion of human power and religious tole ration!-the more I muse on it, my accusations become the more poignant. I stood by the pile while the gloomy tragedy was performed, and never can I banish the screams which pierced the ears of the spectators, while the blue and lurid flame rose from the bodies already consuming in the fire! It was a moment of terror, of deep crime, and dark delusion! Why the attendants were allowed to cut down the mass of faggots which hung over her, and fel with unbroken violence upon her devoted head, I cannot tell; and how the victim was not totally stupified by the load which crushed her, appeared next to a miracle: it had stunned her for a time, as it also checked the progress of the flame, whose violence raged around the exterior of the pile for five or six minutes before it reached the bodies. A brahmin stood at the head, seemingly ready to direct the acclamations of the people. The poor woman had hitherto remained silent, but when the flames had reached her, the misery of her restraint appeared in its utmost severity; when the scorching fury of the fire had begun to prey upon her, she could not move a limb or turn from her

cruel woe for a moment; she shrieked and screamed for help with piteous and heart-rending exclamations. The brahmin attempted to assure the people that she was now in communion with her god, and called them to rejoice, while her tones were those of the bitterest agony, while her forlorn mother, heart-broken and overwhelmed with grief, stood rolling herself, tearing her hair, and beating her breast, and leaping with frantic bursts of passionan affecting spectacle of distracted woe and extreme wretchedness; she seemed unwilling to survive the hour of separation, and longed to throw her convulsive frame upon the funeral ashes, the altar of her daughter's sacrifice and destruction: the multitude joined in the exhibition of joy by clapping their hands, and repeating the song of triumph. The scene was closed by the fierceness of the flame, which drove the bystanders to a distance, and forced even the priests to retire, while the victim was still uttering the moan of helpless suffering. I waited at a distance, lingering to witness the last obsequies of the infatuated Hollee; they were offered in the blue flame and funeral smoke of her consuming remains, and in the receding murmurs of the dispersing multitude. It was an appalling exhibition of self-devotedness. The wretchedness of the desolate parent, the forlorn condition of the twice-bereaved children, and the apathy of thousands who could so unmovedly contemplate the transaction, may be imagined; but ah! who can describe the guilt of the perpetrators, the displeasure of a holy and merciful God; and the infatuation of nominally christian authorities who could prescribe for it rules, grant their permission to its performers, and superintend the accomplishment of such a criminal, violent, and bloody sacrifice? It was surely an hour of the power of darkness. I take shame and guilt to myself, and feel assured that if every observer of such delusion had protested against it on the spot, it would sooner have terminated, and the six hundred lives in British India annually immolated, might have been saved to the community, their friends, and their children, and preserved from the crime of suicide, and the horrors of a premature and excruciating death.

"Another well-authenticated and brutal instance of this sacrifice occurred about the same time in a more northern province of India: The unfortunate brahminee, of her own accord, had ascended the funeral pile of her husband's bones, but finding the torture of the fire more than she could bear, by a violent struggle, she threw herself from the flames, and tottering to a short distance, fell down. Some gentlemen, who were spectators, immediately plunged her into the river, which was close by, and thereby saved her from being much burned. She retained her senses completely, and complained of the badness of the pile, which, she said, consumed her so slowly that she could not bear it, but expressed her willingness again to try it, if they would improve it: they would not do so, and the poor creature shrank with dread from the flames, which were now burning most intensely, and refused to go on. When the inhuman relations saw this, they took her by the head and heels, and threw her into the fire, and held her there till they were driven away by the heat; they also took up large blocks of wood with which they struck her, in order to deprive her of her senses; but she again made her escape, and without any help, ran directly into the river. The people of her house followed her here, and tried to drown her by pressing her under the water, but a European gentleman rescued her from them, and she immediately ran into his arms and cried to him to save her. I arrived at the ground as they were bringing her the second time from the river, and I cannot describe to you the horror I felt on seeing the mangled condition she was in: almost every inch of skin on her body had been burned off: her legs and thighs, her arms and back were completely raw, her breasts were dreadfully torn, and the skin hanging from them in threads; the skin and nails of her fingers had peeled wholly off, and were hanging to the back of her hands. In fact I never saw and never read of so entire a picture of misery as this poor woman displayed. She seemed to dread being again taken to the fire, and called out to "the Ocha Sahib" to save her. Her friends seemed no longer inclined to force, and one of her relations, at our instigation, sat down beside her, and gave her some clothes, and told her they would not. We had her sent to the hospital, where every medical assistance was immediately given her, but without hope of recovery. She lingered in the most excruciating pain for about twenty hours, and then died.'

"This sacrifice, so abhorrent to Christian feeling, though prohibited first by Lord W. Bentinck, in the Bengal provinces, and then in the other British territories, is still offered in other parts of India. Six months ago, four wives and seven slave concr bines of Runjeet Singh, perished in the flames of his funeral pile, at Lahore."