which four other men were hooked up in the same manner, and swung round, not one of them exhibiting the slightest symptom of uneasiness. During the whole time, I detected nothing even like impatience, except once, when one of the men in the air appeared to fancy that the persons who were walking along with the lower end of the yard moved too slowly, he called out to them to quicken their pace, but with nothing angry in his tone, or any tremor in his voice, indicating suffering.

About four years after this time, I had another opportunity of witnessing, near Calcutta, a number of these swingings, and a great variety of other tortures, to which these victims exposed themselves, either in honour of their gods, or in pursuance of some idle vow.

The effect of such exhibitions as that just described, at Madras, when witnessed for the first time by a stranger from Europe, is that of unmixed wonder, and of curiosity, highly gratified; but when he sees the same things repeated on an extensive scale, together with many hundreds of other examples of voluntary bodily exposure to sword, scourge, and even to fire, the degree of melancholy which it inspires in the traveller is very great. If it were possible to suppose that many thousands of persons of all ages could be subjected, by the agency of tyrannical force, to these severe sufferings, such a scene would be inconceivably horrible; but when the people themselves not only invite these tortures, but press eagerly forward to claim the honour of being first cut to pieces, or pierced with irons, or burned with hot spikes, or swung round in the air by hooks, or, in the extremity of their zeal, leap from scaffolds upon the points of naked swords the sentiment of indignation is changed into

commiseration. For it is impossible not to feel grieved upon seeing a population so deplorably degraded; and surely there must mingle with this feeling a strong desire to ameliorate the condition of people sunk so low in the scale of human nature.

Yes! thy varying cheek hath caught
Hues too bright from troubled thought;
Far along the wandering stream,
Thou art followed by a dream,
In the woods and vallies lone
Music haunts thee not thine own;
Wherefore fall thy tears like rain?
Sister, thou hast loved in vain!

Tell me not the tale, my flower!
On my bosom pour that shower!
Tell me not of kind thoughts wasted;
Tell me not of young hopes blasted;
Wring not forth one burning word,
Let thy heart no more be stirred!
Home alone can give thee rest,

Weep, sweet sister, on my breast.

THE PARSEE DAUGHTER.

Every one who knows any thing of India, has heard of the beauty of morning there. Life seems to be called into joyful activity by the approach of day. You see the Hindoos hastening to bathe and pray; the Mahommedans on their knees looking towards Mecca; and at Bombay the Parsees standing on the Esplanade, with crossed arms, muttering hymns to the sea, and watching the first beam of the sun, You behold the women of all denominations going to the wells and tanks for water. You see the toddy-gatherers, or men who collect the juice of the palm - tree, climbing up the long stems, and hanging fearfully between earth and sky. Indeed, you see so many extraordinary sights, that I must withdraw my attention from a general review, to tho contemplation of one which as it affords me materials for a true story, I hope the reader will also turn to it with satisfaction,

In my researches after novelty I accompanied a friend to the Parsee cemetery on the seashore. The Parsees neither burn nor bury the bodies of their dead, but expose them in two receptacles, one for males and the other for females, made of solid masonry, and open only at the top for the admission of birds of prey. Having deposited the corpse in one of these sepulchres, through a door at the bottom, it is left, slightly covered with a muslin cloth, to be devoured. The bones are then carefully collected and buried in an urn, with certain ceremonies. This mode of sepulture was common in ancient times, in some parts of Persia. It excites surprise now, by its seeming barbarism; and that it

should be practised by such an enlightened and humane tribe as the Parsees of Bombay, who are very justly called the Quakers of the East, is strange. Precept and example will, however, school the human mind to any thing; and, therefore, we need not wonder at strange customs, when we reflect, that our own are considered surprising and ridiculous in their turn.

As we were nearing this curious golgotha, we beheld about forty men and women, whom we recognized as forming a Parsee funeral-procession. Amidst them

was a corpse, which we afterwards found to be the body of a young female, on a cot, or low bed, that served for her bier. They all seemed to be her near relations; and, instead of the solemn decency which I had before observed at such ceremonies, this exhibited hurry and secrecy: the hour was unusually early; the lamentations were not loud; there was no beating of the breast by the women; but, in long dresses smeared with ashes and paint, and with dishevelled hair streaming to the morning breeze, they were uttering low groans and impredations. Tears were flowing copiously down two of the women's cheeks, and we could hear them lament that ever they had been born, and utter wildly suppressed rejoicings, that she whom they bore along was dead. When they arrived at the receptacle, instead of unlocking the door, and placing the body on the platform with tenderness, it was thrown, with apparent detestation, from the parapet; and we heard the echo of its fall with a chill of horror.

All this naturally aroused my curiosity; and through the instrumentality of one of my attendants whom I bribed to divulge the secrets of his sect, I received the following particulars, which I have every reason to

believe perfectly true, and in strict accordance with

Parsee usage.

Limgee Dorabjee a respectable trader in jewels, had a daughter called Yamma, whose beauty equalled the lustre of the finest diamond. She appeared, among the virgins of her tribe, as a gem of Golconda amidst beads of glass. Her parents saw in her, as in a flattering mirror, their fondest wishes. They pearled her jet

black hair with many a costly transparent row; their rubies in burning glow were pendant from her delicate ears; their sapphires from her graceful nose; while many a far-famed mine glittered on her bosom, sparkled on her fingers and arms, and shed its light on her toes and ankles. Gold and silver gave splendour to her dress: in short, in the impassioned phrase of Lord Byron, and perhaps with less of poetical hyperbole

,,She was a form of life and light,

That seen became a part of sight."

This charming young Parsee, or Peri, was about fourteen years old, an age at which the female figure attains the sound perfection of beautiful ripeness in India. Indeed marriage takes place generally at a much earlier period of life; but in Yamma's case, the young man to whom she was affianced had been detained at Surat nearly two years, by important commercial affairs, in which he was deeply concerned; and the expensive ceremony, on solemnization of wedlock, had been postponed from time to time, in anxious expectation of his return.

Yamma's prospects were bright as the star of Venus. In her tribe women are treated with great conside