return home to enjoy his cup of tea in the bosom of his family the same evening. It would also seem extravagant to them when we say, that a resident of London can accept an invitation to take tea at a friend's at Liverpool on a Sunday evening, he may leave town for the latter place in the morning, enjoy the company of his friends there for four hours, and by seating himself in a railway carriage he would have his breakfast at home next morning and attend his duty. In that time he will have gone over four hundred and twelve miles of ground, one hundred miles more than twice the distance between Bombay and Surat !!!

No country, therefore, can be considered to possess so much talent, and means calculated to increase and extend commerce, and the physical comforts of its inhabitants, as Great Britain. Surely it is a great country; nay, the greatest on earth at the present period.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CUSTOMS, MANNERS, EDUCATION, &C.

We have during our visit to England had an opportunity of seeing a good deal of English society of several sorts, and if any of our observations upon manners and customs so dissimilar to our own should appear to be of a personal nature, we would here wish to say it is far from our intentions; as our only object is to convey to our countrymen such things as appeared singular to us, and we should consider ourselves very ungrateful and undeserving, received as we have been into families with perfect confidence, if we violated that confidence by making any remarks, disrespectful to our good and kind friends.

Our customs of having our food prepared by one of our own sect, prevented us from accepting very many kind invitations, it has only been

at the houses of such of our friends who have allowed our servants to occupy their kitchens in preparing our meals for us, that we have been

able to spend the day with them; we have however had the honour to spend several evenings at the house of our kind and worthy patron Sir Charles Forbes in Fitzroy Square, and here we would beg to express how deeply we feel the numerous kind acts of friendship that we have received from him and all the members of the family. We were from youth told or rather taught to regard him as a most attached friend to the natives of Bombay, and more particularly so to our own family, and it has been our good fortune to know by our visit to England that his kindness and zeal for the natives of the east was not fully communicated to us, as we found and saw him much more devoted to their cause than the idea that was conveyed to us of him by words. For our own selves whenever we wanted advice he kindly gave it, whenever we asked for information it was immediately afforded us, and whilst life and reason continue with us, we shall recollect him and all his acts of patronage, friendship and kindness. At Sir Charles's we often met our good and warm friend Mr. John Forbes, and how shall we tell our grief, that during our stay in England, he was taken away from earth? Death laid his cold hand upon him and his heart ceased to beat, and oh! what a heart was that!!! yes, we felt that we had indeed lost, a friend. We knew that our countrymen were by his death deprived of one of their warmest advocates, and England, of one of her noblest citizens. In

private life he was a moral, virtuous, polite and philanthropic man, indeed he must be considered as it were a citizen of the world for he loved every human being. We lament that a father should be deprived of a son who was a perfect model of filial duty. We feel sorrow that he should have been taken away from his wife and his dear young children. As private individuals, we deeply regret losing a kind personal friend. But as Parsees we grieved! we grieved!!! most deeply, that so honest, so warm hearted, so talented, so distinguished a man should be taken away from a sphere were with his energies, and his abilities, he might have made known to the world the estimation in which he, from his knowledge, held many of the natives of Bombay particularly, and of India generally. God's will, however, we must not repine at, and we beg and pray of Him who made us to shower down blessings on the worthy father of our lamented friend and his family; may health and peace attend them. And that his children may tread in the steps of their father and grandfather is our fervent prayer.

We also met at Sir Charles Forbes's, Montgomery Martin Esq., a gentleman who has by his writings and by his exertions represented the people of India in a more favourable light than any previous writers, who from their limited knowledge of the customs and manners of the people of India, published statements completely

at variance with facts. They wrote no doubt what they were told, and what they believed to be true, like a modern writer upon Bombay, who, in describing the sect to which we belong, has in her volume totally misrepresented from want of knowing better the Parsees and Parsee customs. She seems to write from her own knowledge, and yet half what she says about Parsees is inaccurate; she is made to say,—that when houses are burning in Bombay the Parsees look quietly on, and do not make the slightest endeavour to check the progress of the flames in consequence of their religious scruples. Now this is notoriously at variance with the fact, as in many cases Parsees have been the most instrumental, and useful in putting out fires when they have occurred. We can assert this without the fear of contradiction for we have seen Parsees running to the scenes of destruction when they unfortunately happen. A fire took place a few years since at the residence of one of our family, and the inmates (all Parsees) were the very first who endeavoured to overpower the destructive element. It is true that we pay a certain religious reverence to fire, but not so much, as to suffer a house to be burnt to the ground rather than extinguish it.

It is not necessary to enumerate all the erroneous statements published by many writers, and our knowledge of the English character forbids our attributing wilful misrepresentation to any ; yet