218 BRAHMINICAL HUMANITY. and irritable in company of those which belong to their neighbours. We have spoken at a former page of Hindoo infirmaries for the lower animals, and may notice here that, singular as these establishments may be in their design, they would seem exceedingly like in their abuses to other charitable institutions. In what soil do not tares spring up among the wheat? if even the term "wheat" can be applied with any fitness to the distorted growths of Brahminical humanity. Of its chaffy quality we may form a tolerable estimate from the following relation of Bishop Heber:-"At Broach is a hospital for sick and infirm beasts, birds, and insects. It is a dirty and neglected place, which, though it has considerable endowments in land, only serves to enrich the Brahmins who manage it. They have not only those animals which the Hindoos account sacred, as monkeys, peacocks, &c., but horses, dogs, and cats; they have also, in boxes, an assortment of lice and fleas. It is not true, however, that they feed these on the flesh of beggars hired for the purpose. The Brahmins say that insects as well as the other inmates of their infirmary are fed with vegetables only, such as rice, &c. . How the insects thrive I did not hear; but the old horses and dogs, nay, the peacocks and apes, are allowed to starve, and the only creatures said to be in any tolerable plight are some milch-cows, which may be kept from other motives than charity."+ * A town two or three days' journey from Surat. Heber's 'Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India.' We have thus endeavoured briefly to biographize that redoubtable trio of blood-suckers, louse, bug, and flea,—those insect Eumenides which scourge both prince and peasant. Does either prince or peasant ask, complainingly, Wherefore am I subject to such vile tormentors? To the prince we would reply, When your highness finds a flea upon your purple, it comes to remind you that you are of ordinary flesh and blood, that you are nothing better than a man. To the peasant we would answer, When your lowness finds a flea, or something worse, upon your tatters, it comes to teach you that flesh and blood want soap and water, without which you will soon be nothing better than a brute! Steeds of metal and muscle for a steeple-chase in earuesk OVER a certain republic in the south of Europe there reigned, once upon a time, as cruel a tyrant as ever filled an absolute throne, or was ever hurled by his subjects from one of those cumbrous seats of a fashion now in course of explosion. This tyrant was that shadowy potentate called Fear; and inasmuch as the people over whom he had usurped dominion were located in the midst of various gigantic enemies, and COMMON DANGERS DESPISED. 221 were exposed at all times to many overwhelming dangers, it might have been thought, though quite erroneously, that they could hardly ever be exempt from the same uneasy rule. Daily and hourly were their lives in jeopardy from the jaws of reptiles and the beaks of carnivorous birds, large enough to swallow them by dozens at a meal. They were for ever liable to be exterminated by the tread of feet so gigantic, as to put in peril not only their persons, but their habitations. Fragments of rock often crushed them in their fall, and they were frequently borne away and drowned in rapids and cataracts produced by heavy rains. It was not, however, the fear of these, or of numerous other common dangers, which ever discouraged the labours, or broke the rest, or restrained the enjoyments of our busy republicans, who, with energies usually in full play, built and planned― loved and warred-gathered and feasted; and, in pursuance of all these varied objects, were accustomed to traverse their wide and open territory with feelings of security, just as comfortable as those, we may suppose, indulged in by certain insect hermits, sleek, white, and luxurious, who pass their lazy lives for days and months successive, "Shut Within the walled circumference of a nut." It was not, we repeat it, the fear of Death always at hand, under any one of his familiar shapes, that ever caused a moment's reflection, much less uneasiness, to a people so entirely occu OVER a certain republic in the south of Europe there reigned, once upon a time, as cruel a tyrant as ever filled an absolute throne, or was ever hurled by his subjects from one of those cumbrous seats of a fashion now in course of explosion. This tyrant was that shadowy potentate called Fear; and inasmuch as the people over whom he had usurped dominion were located in the midst of various gigantic enemies, and |