with men of a different stamp from themselves; or depart, taking with them men and women worn out by the tropical climate, and pining for the fresh breezes of their native land, and who will return invigorated and improved, not only bodily but mentally.
Ah! people at home little know the greatness of the blessings they enjoy! A few years’ exile would make them see in a new light what they now regard with the indifference produced by familiarity. Those who look on the Anglo-Indian as a being who has but few thoughts apart from the country in which he is doomed to spend the greater part of his life, little imagine with what ardent yearning he looks towards home, and how precious is everything that reminds him of its pleasures. How often does one of those passages that crop out so frequently in our literature, breathing a rural sweetness and domestic tenderness, so peculiarly English, recall to mind happy days spent in our “ain countrie,” when life seemed a bright vista, and we were surrounded by all we loved. None but those who have experienced it can tell what delight a description of Nature in her most charming aspect, as beheld in some country parts at home, gives to those who never see her but in extremes, either endued with a brilliant gorgeousness that palls from its very splendour, or presenting a dreary monotony that inevitably saddens a mind at all susceptive of her influence. Those at home see the defects as well as the beauties of those scenes we recall so fondly; we have no such drawbacks, for memory tinged by imagination leaves in the background all that would detract from, and brings into strong relief all that enhances, our enjoyment. Often has the writer of these pages sat in his tent in the midst of a jungle spreading apparently illimitably around, with an Idyll of Tennyson’s, a hawthorn breathing poem of Herrick’s, an essay by Kingsley, or the “Country Parson,” open before him, bringing before his mental vision the verdant fields and heather-covered hills of his own green island, and recalling vividly to his mind the beauty of those “summer days” concerning which one of the above-mentioned authors discourses so charmingly—one of those days when there is an exquisite, ineffable happiness in the mere sense of existence, when the birds sing their blithest lays, and the skies look their brightest. Often has he been awakened from such a reverie—
That sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind,
by the howl of the jackal or the mournful boom[1] of the monkey. Never did he realise so thoroughly the exquisite beauty of that sweet poem of Marlowe’s—
Come live with me, and be my love,
as when in the midst of forests whose hills were the habitation of bears, and in whose thickets lurked the snake and the wolf, the hyena and the tiger. Not that the poem and the works alluded to would not delight at any time, but in the position described the sharp contrast between the ideal and actual scenery lent a new beauty to the former, whilst the reminiscences excited of “days that are no more” gave a pleasure with which pain was strangely intermingled. Just as the untravelled heart of the Indian exile is over turning towards home, and even those who are supposed to be most devoted to the country and its pleasures (such as they are) never cease to look forward with impatient longing to the day when they may sit at the fondly-remembered hearth with those whom absence has but made dearer.
The views of politics taken in India are generally broader and more liberal than those one hears in England. Here we stand at a distance from the scene of conflict, and can discern the faults and merits of both sides far more clearly than those who are mixed up in the scuffle. An uncompromising advocate of any particular party is very rarely found in this country; for as there is no inducement to gain one side in preference to another, an independent stand is taken, and a measure is never condemned out of sheer opposition to the party in power. General politics are thus surveyed with a calmness that almost wears the appearance of indifference, though, in fact, it is far removed from it; but every measure relating to India. and every word spoken about that country in Parliament, is discussed and commented upon with the utmost keenness. Indeed the tendency is to judge of a Ministry by the Secretary of State for India. If he is popular and respected, the Ministry is thought much of; but if he is disliked, its speedy downfall is longed for. Great will be the exultation when Lord Palmerston's Government falls, for a more unpopular minister than the present Secretary of State for India never held a portfolio.[2] His name is never mentioned without an execration, and all classes unite in looking on him as the deadly enemy of themselves and the country. Even the natives on this point agree cordially with the Europeans.
A notice of the character of the English in India would be incomplete without some reference to their relations with the natives, with regard to which there has been an immense amount of misrepresentation. As a rule, Anglo-Indians (we speak more particularly of those in the service of Government) are kind to their servants and to those natives with whom they are thrown into contact. Intimacy there cannot be: the difference of race, colour, religion, character, and last, not least, the omnipresent system of caste forbid that. Even where Europeans make advances, the natives for the most part draw back, partly from innate dislike, and partly perhaps from a vague suspicion, which is widely spread, that we wish to destroy their caste by underhand means. Add to this the fact, that it is impossible for an ordinary native to understand the motives and springs of action of an English gentleman, and it will be seen how impossible it is for the two to be on intimate friendly relations. We acknowledge candidly that the manner of Europeans towards- ↑ This is perhaps the best word that can be used to convey an idea of the cry of the monkey in its wild state. The cry consists of a single note, repeated at intervals, and somewhat resembles the sound produced by striking sonorous wood.
- ↑ We have no wish to animadvert upon the conduct of Sir C. Wood. We are simply storing a fact to illustrate our position.
