Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE

GONG:

OR,

REMINISCENCES OF INDIA.

BY

MAJOR VETCH,

AUTHOR OF "DARA, ETC.

Every one has their own mode of selfishness, and I feel mine to be that of running away
to my solitary.pleasures."-Mrs Grant's Letters from the Mountains.

EDINBURGH: JAMES HOGG.
LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS.

MDCCCLII.

203.d. 193.

TO

MAJOR HAMILTON VETCH.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

I expected about this time to have welcomed you back, after a long exile, to the summer fields of your native land, and to have presented you in person with the accompanying gleanings from the sultry plains of India; but the Burmese war having detained you among the wilds of Asam, I can only hope that the "Gong" may tend to enliven an hour of your solitary wanderings, and wishing you a happy and speedy termination to the war, and a joyful restoration to the scenes of your youth,

I remain

Your affectionate Brother,

HAWTHORNBANK, August, 1852.

GEORGE A. VETCH.

THE GON G.

Call the First.

THE man who hides himself in the shades of the country, thinks, no doubt, that he is quite in the proper place for enacting the eremite. He may be so, but he is certainly quite out of place for the real enjoyment of that character; he may indeed be "Hermit hoar in mossy cell,"

but he will only be verifying the next line of the

same verse

"Wearing out life's evening grey."

The country, to be sure, is all consenting to his love of retirement-too much so-for that retirement loses its best charm-contrast; his life is mere vegetation. He that would enjoy the hermit's life in perfection, and in all its luxury, let him, like Gregory, fix his hermitage in the very heart of the enemy's camp— the centre of a metropolis, such as dear "Auld Reekie." There, after having bustled and jostled (just so long as he finds it good) with

"The crowd, the hum, the shock of men,"

[ocr errors]

he plunges at once into the silent solemn shade of his

B

« PreviousContinue »