sitting still, or, as is often the case, sleeping, with the cord tied round their waist, to prevent the dogs from running away. About eleven o'clock the sea-breeze sets in; and, though out of doors, this breeze is hot and furnace-like, the temperature of your apartments, as the blessed current passes into them, is lowered considerably; and, about one o'clock, you can sit down, and enjoy your luncheon or tiffin. Tiffin, in India, is a most agreeable repast; seeing that it does not take place till all formal visiting is over for the day. The talkative and the inquisitive visitors have, before this happy hour, gone through their various and well-known evolutions, and have mercifully left you once more alone with your family, or with the really valued friend; a treasure often difficult to be found in any country; and the remainder of the day is at your own disposal. The English in Bombay dine usually at seven o'clock. This gives them an hour or two's drive before dinner; but eight o'clock is the hour for fashionable parties, and you are fortunate if you get anything to eat before half-past. Coffee is handed round soon after the cloth is drawn, and but little wine is drunk; a great change in this respect having taken place during the last fifteen or twenty years. Formerly, drinking was one of the crying evils of our countrymen in the East; and, together with gambling and other seductive vices, was the ruin of our young officers there; but now, a man who either drinks or games, is cut as a public nuisance, and shunned

by every one who has the least pretensions to respectability. Gentlemen who pay visits, are expected to do so in dress cloth coats, or full regimentals, as the case may be. This regulation may not appear very remarkable to English readers; but the fact is, that to wear a woollen coat in India during the hot season for three or four hours together in a crowded room, is an amount of misery rather difficult for a person at home to conceive. So ridiculous a custom cannot be too much condemned; for pleasure is thus in a great measure destroyed, and, in some cases, even apoplexy is induced by this stupid fashion, which all sober-thinking people abhor. At parties where ladies are not present, the host (if a reasonable being) will sometimes request his guests to put on their white linen jackets, which they generally take good care to bring with them in the drawer of their palanquin in case they should be wanted. The fair sex, in consequence of their style of dress, do not suffer half so much as the gentlemen. With them the hoop, and horse-hair jupe, are in great request, and balloon out the thin muslin, or China satin, in a manner which, as I could fancy, must be very agreeable; but these spreading garments have their disadvantages; they fill up a room; and if waltzing, &c., be introduced, (for such things are verily done in India, in spite of the thermometer indicating 100 degrees,) none but a gentleman with a very long arm has the slightest chance of reaching gracefully the narrow zone of his Elizabethan partner. I am not surprised

that the Asiatics laugh at us for taking the trouble, as they say, to dance, when, for a few rupees, we could hire pretty nautch-girls to do the whole for us; but Englishmen are fond of keeping up English customs, and may be forgiven for thus amusing themselves in a foreign land. Whenever you dine out, you must take your own servant to wait upon you at table, or you have a very poor chance of procuring anything like a satisfactory dinner. This is another nuisance; for should your room be small, you have as many servants as friends in it; for the servants attend to none but their own employers. These people quite delight in the bustle and stir of a large party; and all come dressed up in a nondescript-kind of livery, according to the fancy, humour, or pride of their masters. The only articles they retain of their own, are the turban and turned-up slippers; the latter of which often give rise to some ludicrous scenes of confusion. Should two or three guests take a fancy to the same dish at the same time, a race to the carver is not very unusual; for the native attendants are always anxious to appear sharp and active on such occasions; and they not unfrequently hook one another with the aforesaid turned up slippers, and come floundering to the ground. They keep up a perpetual jabbering in Hindostanee, behind your chairs; and as they chew betel-nut, garlic, and some other horrible compounds, they do not add much to the comfort of your dinner table on a sultry evening. Yet there is something

very picturesque and pretty in the dress of these Hindoo servants. One man will have on a splendid orange-coloured robe, another a crimson one, another a purple, and so on; and their turbans are snowy white, and often fringed with a drooping gold-lace border, or have silver-thread woven into them.

The lower orders of the Portuguese are much employed by English families, as cooks and butlers; for the Hindoos are useless as culinary servants, from their peculiar religious feelings about food. Nothing could persuade a Hindoo to touch ham, bacon, or butchers' meat. Without exception, I should say, that the Portuguese cooks are the most troublesome people you have to deal with in India. They are constantly intoxicated; and many of them are monstrous thieves. They think nothing of going away on some excursion of pleasure, for three or four days, and leaving you to get your dinners cooked as you best can, or go without any; for none of your other dozen servants will render you the least assistance, and would rather quit your service than touch anything connected with the cook's department. Servants are the pests of India, for you live in constant danger of being robbed; and, I should fancy, that a day seldom elapses in which you are not robbed in one way or another. The only way you can possibly get on with them is, by constantly threatening to send them to the bazaar master, and have them punished; or by withholding their pay. Their wages vary from ten shillings to thirty shillings per month, in Bombay, according

to their duties and stations; but one great blessing is, you have no trouble in supplying them with food, and their wages cover all demands. They sleep outside, in the verandah, or in some passage or lobby during the rainy season; and, with all their faults and imperfections, it is astonishing how soon you get attached to them. Many of them are married; and when that is the case, you allow them to erect a hut in your compound to live in; and, as they set forth their meals upon the floor, simply spreading out a piece of matting, they require very little furniture. A bedstead, a box or two, and half a dozen different sized brass and earthen chatties, or cooking-pots; and half a cocoanut filled with oil, and a cottton wick, lights up their simple room at night. They make a fire in a corner, between two or three stones, to boil their rice and curry, which is the principal food they live upon. Of course, the cook and his Portuguese assistants have nothing to do with them. He lives and sleeps in the bobbergy-house, or kitchen; but he is always on good terms with the other servants; and it is very seldom that your domestic comfort is broken in upon by fights or quarrels amongst them. Each man has his particular duty to perform in your house. The lady of the establishment never interferes with anything. Your cook is called in after breakfast, and told what to purchase for the day, and what to prepare for dinner, which he cooks to perfection; for they are celebrated for their made-dishes and curries.— You seldom see what he has purchased, till it is on