Knowledge of daily life in India wanted.

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purify; for there, if he will, he may wreath light graceful fancies around his soul, which shall be to him sweet companionship and solace. Englishmen will sigh to be exiled from the country of their birth, but they will look forward hopefully to the home of their maturity; and now that India may become the scene of their future labours and contemplations, the general interest in our daily life and occupations must necessarily be enhanced.

t

Well may such men eagerly enquire, pausing in vain for a reply, "What is daily life in India? Tell us what we may expect from the commencement of our career? What are to be our trials, our enjoyments, our duties, our hopes and responsibi-. lities? Pourtray for us Indian society as it really is, in its integrity-if possible, with tigers and howdahs in the background. Let us know how we shall dress, dine, sleep, court, and entertain. Who are to be our friends and companions? Assure us; that we may determine whether India shall be our future home. Hide nothing, and spare no vanities; especially, conceal no good you may observe. Satisfy a dawning curiosity among us, and be sure of your reward."

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But where shall we find the work thus loudly called for? The idea of searching for any literature in India not more or less connected with melancholy Red-tape, Mess expenses, Sir Charles Napier, the Main Drain, or Superintendents of Police, appears at first sight a quixotic undertaking. Yet why should it be so? The monotony of Indian life, it is contended, precludes the possibility of founding a light literature on its daily incidents. The life of the soldier or civilian, the minister or merchant, is one sad system of routine, each morning being pregnant with the same lugubrious events. We all land in the country, it is said, more or less provided for. Circumstances combine to hide our lights beneath bushels, and there is little stimulus to exertion. Can an author weave events out of dry professional duties, only occasionally varied by the excitements of the gun or of the chase? Can his genius invest with interest a country where the mind collapses for want of attrition, and where there exists no poetry or patriotism but such as a hatter may compose, or an Association claim?

Much sound, signifying nothing! A revolution in the light literature of England begins already to develope itself. Dramatic effect is making room for candid and forcible simplicity. Romance is laid within her shrouds, only waiting for a decent. burial. Alonzo and Somerville have retired before the less pretend

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ing Brown, Jones, and Robinson. The "solitary horseman who wended his way" has been long since detected by the public, and 'utterly repudiated. Even the great artistic genius of Dickens, wonderful though it be, sometimes pales before the genuine manly fire of Thackeray, which speaks to the heart more, if it stimulates the mind less. What has Thackeray beyond acute observation, kindly honest nature, and intense literary application? Has he any of the dramatic or poetic genius of his great rival? If not, to what shall we attribute his wonderful success, but to the very absence of the struggle for effect, and the constant presence in his characters of nature unadorned? Had Thackeray, with his obvious hankering after Indian scenes and people, possessed any great local experience, we may doubt whether the Adventures of Joe Sedley would have been confined to England and the Continent. We might have observed him in all the dignity and terror of his position as Collector of Boggly-wallah, and as we gazed in admiration, wondered that the enormous mass of sheepish vanity before us should be called on by Providence to rule a zillah, and perhaps positively to inspire among a simple population some feeling akin to veneration! The contrast between Joe in England, the large laughing-stock, and Joe in his kutcherry, surrounded by flowing beards, silver sticks, and native chieftains "in joyous array" crouching obsequiously at his feet, might have afforded a fine field for the satire of our English humourists. But we venture to assert that wherever we find men of one country thrown together in a foreign land, with customs, habits, modes of thought, slang expressions, and eccentric prejudices peculiar to themselves, there also shall we find considerable scope for the exercise of a writer's talents.

Those who can recall their first impressions of India as they glided into the harbour of Bombay, will perhaps remember the enthusiasm with which they viewed the scenery around.

To us,

in our innocence, it appeared the paradise of the poet and romancer. A narrow but dense forest of masts lay before the eyes, stretching far away into interminable perspectives, and causing the brow to flush with emotion at the tokens of slumbering power and commercial genius which the whole scene suggested. That radiant land, we thought, has had restored to her the energy of early youth, by the unselfish policy of her Saxon conquerors. We and those around us were to share in the government of teeming millions, who would regard us as the fountains of British justice. Surely that bright land was the chosen seat of poetry

Delusions on first arrival.

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and song! Vessels of strange build, manned by wild half-naked savages, flew ever and anon athwart our bows, their enormous sails tinged with the gold of the early sun. The lofty hills that

surrounded us, crowned with the densest jungle, were bathed and dancing in that pure gold. The waves sparkled like the moist eye of beauty, and sported merrily to give us welcome, laughing to meet the transient rays dashed from the prow of the gay pleasure-boat, as she bounded before the morning breeze. The lofty palm gazed from the deep blue sky above on his reflection in the lucid sea below, as a lover beholds his image dwelling in the glance of woman's eye, and he toyed with the sighing air as it struggled to escape from his gigantic foliage. Bright birds raised their cheerful tones, and song of hope and happiness to youth, while the hoarse war of human voices arose with imposing solemnity from the bright shining city that basked in a flood of gold before us!

Soon-within one month-the delusion had fled. The vessels of strange build became pattamars and bunder-boats, which experience had already taught us smelt horribly of fish, and were curiosities of discomfort. The wild half-naked savage tried the temper sorely with his impudence and apathy. The clear pure gold of the early sun had suggested a hat from Kobs, and an umbrella from Messrs. Watson & Co. The amorous palm had degenerated into the practical toddy-tree. The bright birds with their hymns of hope dwindled into crows of monstrous self-possession and impertinence, and the bright shining city basked on monotonously from day to day, gloomily discussing Police Superintendentships and the Law of Storms; leaving one fact patent to all men-namely, that she possessed no local literature or poetry, and would rather be without them.

Men in India who aspire to literary eminence had better go elsewhere. Eminence in literature, as in every other calling of life, can only be attained by practice and application, added of course to natural taste for the pursuit. As in other professions, too, the literary aspirant should commence with the rudiments, not break forth suddenly into the dignity of a fullfledged author. So it happens, that though many of us publish to the world our Poems, our Romances, our Travels, and our dismal" Bird's-Eye Views," we fail ignominiously, but naturally, to interest the mass. The melancholy state of literature in India compels us to mount at once the highest rung in the ladder of letters, and there cry forth distractedly to the world,

"Behold how I stand without succour or support!" Who shall wonder that the public eye has hardly found leisure to rest upon that rash adventurer in his giddy elevation, ere he falls, crushed and motionless, and with a new relish for the pleasures of oblivion ? The Anglo-Indian, therefore, who seriously aspires to eminence in literature, would do well, we repeat, to devote himself wholly in England to that calling. He will find scanty encouragement in this peninsula. Magazines here occasionally crawl forth diffidently, to retire precipitately; but we put the question earnestly to the public, Does it not behove every man amongst us who aspires to the exercise of other than digestive faculties, to encourage, and aid, and cheer those who would remove from Anglo-Indians the stigma of unutterable stupidity? A healthy publication scarcely crows joyously in one of the three Presidencies, before we knock it on the head, or murder it, with neglect. "What good can come out of Nazareth?" exclaims, curiously enough, the Nazarene; and the literature which is local we tread under foot, and proceed on our way rejoicing!

Let us rest assured of one thing. The absence of any light Anglo-Indian literature popular at home, is not to be attributed to the barrenness of the subject matter. Give us a man of ordinary genius, and with the requisite literary experience, and ere long we shall be employed in perusing works that will bring their author at once riches and reputation. To possess the requisite literary experience is, in this country, almost an impossibility. All our great authors are professional ones in the widest acceptation of the term. The barrister without a brief, the doctor without a patient, the clergyman without a living, the poor and needy in every trade and calling, turn desperately to literature as a means of livelihood. The majority of course fail,—these remain poor and nameless. The happy few succeed, and literature becomes their profession,-no bed of roses, but stern, steady, often sleepless, labour. They have, however, the greatest of all incentives to exertion,-bread to live, and literary reputation : a fame the most difficult of any to achieve, and perhaps the most gratifying to human vanity when attained. Some of our successful authors were, it is true, men of fortune when they entered the lists; but let us bear in mind that they were also men of leisure, and equally made authorship a profession.

We have said there are two incentives to literary exertion,bread and ambition; but success must depend upon leisure and a sound preparatory training. Considering these things, may

Want of a local literature.

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we not in bitterness exclaim, "Alas! how hardly shall we exiles enter into the ranks of eminent literary men?" The military officer in India has leisure in abundance; he may not be without ambition too: but his bread is served up to him in electro-plate, and he eats it to the sound of soft music. Nevertheless, he aspires to literary fame, and meditates light literature. Where shall he train himself for the task, and in what school shall he acquire experience? To the credit of the Presidency be it said, she offers a Quarterly Review to the anxious candidate; but he shrinks in dismay from the imposing title. What has ho (whose forte is light literature) to do with a serious Quarterly? He fears it will cramp his style, and chain his ideas. In so solemn and learned a publication he will be compelled to curb his light fancies and buoyant aspirations. Moreover, it will be time for him, he thinks, to review the works of other men when he has achieved a publication of his own. He looks around for some humbler Magazine. Bombay has none. Madras declines having anything for the present. Bengal has "Saunders," and he feels that the seat of Anglo-Indian genius is in the NorthWest Provinces, with its Keenes and Sherers, men of true sterling literary merit, labouring only under the combined effects of too much bread and too little leisure. So, finding no suitable local training grounds, he prepares a thrilling article" The Indian Maiden, or the Sepoy's Home; a Tale, by Ajax,”—which he completes with a quotation from Longfellow just in time to find that his last hope is no more. Saunders's Magazine has gone the way of all Indian periodicals, and our young author reverts with melancholy resignation to luncheon or to billiards. His early ambition soon wears out, or loses itself in the stimulus of sticking pigs on horseback: "Ut sæpe summa ingenia in occulto latent!"

The Reverend Charles Acland, the title of whose little book heads this paper, reached Calcutta with his wife in July A. D. 1842, and the letters which he addressed in the country to his young family at home, were subsequently collected and published in the form of a Journal. The composition is easy and familiar, and the work abounds with evidences of the author's extreme simplicity and goodness of heart. He fell a victim to the climate within three years of his arrival; and he displays throughout such a simple, buoyant, healthy delight in all the novelties around him, that the sudden fate which the reader knows awaits the author, renders this little unpretending volume doubly impressive and instructive.