is a
greater variety of feature and shape of skull than in an average
multitude, as far as I have seen, of any European nation. Caste,
the physiognomist soon sees, began in a natural fact. It meant
difference, not of rank, but of tribe and language; and India is
not, as we are apt to fancy, a nation: it is a world. One must
therefore regard this emigration of the Coolies, like anything else
which tends to break down caste, as a probable step forward in their
civilisation. For it must tend to undermine in them, and still more
in their children, the petty superstitions of old tribal
distinctions; and must force them to take their stand on wider and
sounder ground, and see that 'a man's a man for a' that.'

The third thing noteworthy in the crowd which cooked, chatted,
lounged, sauntered idly to and fro under the Matapalos--the pillared
air-roots of which must have put them in mind of their own Banyans
at home--was their good manners. One saw in a moment that one was
among gentlemen and ladies. The dress of many of the men was nought
but a scarf wrapped round the loins; that of most of the women
nought but the longer scarf which the Hindoo woman contrives to
arrange in a most graceful, as well as a perfectly modest covering,
even for her feet and head. These garments, and perhaps a brass
pot, were probably all the worldly goods of most of them just then.
But every attitude, gesture, tone, was full of grace; of ease,
courtesy, self-restraint, dignity--of that 'sweetness and light,' at
least in externals, which Mr. Matthew Arnold desiderates. I am well
aware that these people are not perfect; that, like most heathen
folk and some Christian, their morals are by no means spotless,
their passions by no means trampled out. But they have acquired--
let Hindoo scholars tell how and where--a civilisation which shows
in them all day long; which draws the European to them and them to
the European, whenever the latter is worthy of the name of a
civilised man, instinctively, and by the mere interchange of
glances; a civilisation which must make it easy for the Englishman,
if he will but do his duty, not only to make use of these people,
but to purify and ennoble them.

Another thing was noteworthy about the Coolies, at the very first
glance, and all we saw afterwards proved that that first glance was
correct; I mean their fondness for children. If you took notice of
a child, not only t