taining justice, or of enforcing a petition, founded, I suspect, on the fear of drawing down punishment by injuring a Brahmin, by whom this species of importunity is chiefly practised. When a person wishes to gain a point that he has no other means of carrying, and therefore resolves to sit in dherna, he places himself at the door of the person of whom it is to be obtained with a dagger or poison in his hand, which he threatens to use if the master of the house goes out, or attempts to molest him; and as no sin is comparable to that of causing the death of a Brahmin, the unfortunate person is thereby completely arrested. The Brahmin continues to sit fasting; and it is customary for the person arrested to fast also; so that it generally happens that the prosecutor obtains his wish, partly by the dread of his death, and partly by his importunity. I believe this custom properly belongs to the Brahmins; but I recollect a curious instance of it among a lower tribe in Bombay. Shortly after I went there, my tailor brought me a letter, intreating me to beg the magistrates to take away a man who sate in dherna at his door. On inquiring into the case, I found that it was to recover a wife. It seems the prosecutor having a wife whom he was unable to support, during a time of scarcity, had made her over to the tailor, who having a good business, was not only able to maintain her, but to dress her so well, that in time of

plenty she never thought of returning to her former husband; who nevertheless, as she was able to do a good deal of work, wished to have her back again. Not being able to obtain her by intreaty, he had recourse to the method by dherna, which I believe did not succeed, the tailor rather choosing to give him a sum of money than to part with the lady.

Many Brahmins obtain a subsistence from other Hindoos by sitting in dherna before their houses; but their demands in this case are so moderate, as to be readily complied with. Some of the Pundits admit the validity of an obligation extorted by dherna, while others reject it.

There is another kind of extrajudicial method of extorting justice, called the koor. A circular pile of wood is erected, and on it is placed a cow, or an old woman, when the whole is set fire to at once. The object of this is to intimidate the officers of government or others from importunate demands, the whole guilt of the sacrifice being supposed to fall on those who force the constructor of the koor to adopt the cruel expedient.

These two barbarous methods of obtaining justice, mark a greater degree of insecurity than the general tenor of the Indian laws and police would induce us to attribute to the state of society in ancient India. It is probable, therefore, that they had their origin during the civil wars,

which desolated that country for some time previous to the Mussulman invasion, or were borrowed from some of the savage tribes who occasionally made their inroads from the North. Some other circumstances seem to give colour to such a supposition-such as the murder of innocent persons, in order that their ghosts may haunt an enemy. Of this crime, you will find several instances detailed in the twenty-second article of the ninth volume of the Asiatic Researches, but which are too shocking to dwell upon however, I cannot help noticing the custom which prevailed in some of the Rajpoot tribes, of putting to death their female infants.

It was only in the year 1789 that this custom was known to prevail; and shortly afterwards, measures were taken to induce them by arguments sanctioned not only by natural feeling and humanity, but also by the religion they profess, to enter into an agreement to bring up their female children. Happily, this measure was productive of the best effects, and it is probable, that at present the custom scarcely exists.

Here is a very long letter; I only hope it may entertain, or rather interest you, and that my endeavours to shew the Hindûs, upon the whole, in a more favourable light than you allow them to deserve, or that I confess I once thought

them worthy of, will not have entirely failed: at the same time we see them men, and men fallen from a high state of civilization to one the most humiliating, with all the train of vices which that humiliation is calculated to produce.

But we must not forget what they were once. Athens herself, alas! groans under the sway of a Turkish Janissary; and the "mother of arts and eloquence"-she who was "native to famous wits, or hospitable"-now languishes in her ruins; and instead of the voice of commerce in her streets, and of the Muses in her groves, echoes only the pitying sigh of the traveller. If indeed her genius still survives, and watches over her august ruins, she has been soothed by one bright gleam, which has shone upon her from our North, though it has been but to gild her tomb.

'Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start ;-for soul is wanting there.

Hers is the loveliness in death

That parts not quite with parting breath:

But beauty with that fearful bloom,

That hue which haunts it to the tomb

Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of feeling past away!

Spark of that flame-perchance of heav'nly birth

Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth!

GIAOUR.

LETTER VII.

You will think me very presumptuous when I tell you I am going to mention the Indian astronomy in this Letter: but I measure my endeavours to give you the little information I have myself, by the curiosity I know you to possess, rather than by my abilities.

Of all the sciences cultivated by man, astronomy is that which seems to raise him highest in the scale of beings. Sublime as the heavens in which it is conversant, it seems to detach him from earth, and to place him in the midst of beauty, order, and harmony. The magnificent vault of heaven, studded with its brilliant gems, revolving in ceaseless and silent course, must naturally have attracted the earliest regards of man; and to trace the progress of astronomy from its first rude observations, would be to follow the history of human progress from the beginning of the world.

It was natural that the remains of a profound knowledge of the laws of the heavenly bodies, with exact and perspicuous rules for calculating their phænomena, when first discovered in India,