people are necessarily confined, in a great measure,
to their outdoor habits; in which nothing appears to have surprised him
more than the small number of horsemen (as he considers) to be seen in
the streets of London; "the generality of these, too, are extremely bad
riders, though this, perhaps, may be owing to the uncouth and awkward
saddles they use:" a libel on our national character for horsemanship,
into which we must charitably hope that the Cockney cavaliers who crowd
the Regent's Park on Sundays, are responsible for having misled him. The
important point of the comparative deference paid to women, and the
amount of liberty and privileges enjoyed by them, in the social systems
of Mohammedan and Christian countries respectively, is taken up by the
Khan in behalf of the former, with as much warmth as in past years by
his compatriot Mirza Abu-Taleb,[19] and in much the same line of
argument--to the effect that the dowery which the eastern husband is
bound by law to pay over in money to his wife in the event of a
separation, is a far more effectual protection to the wife from the
fickleness and caprice of her partner, ("whose _interest_ it thus
becomes, setting affection wholly out of the question, to remain on good
terms with her,") than any remedy afforded by the laws of England; where
a wife, though bound by ties less easily dissolved than under the
Mohammedan system of divorces, may still be driven, without misconduct
on her part, from her husband's house, and left to seek redress by the
slow process of litigation. The Khan assures us that several ladies with
whom he conversed on these interesting topics, and who had passed many
years of their lives in India, were utterly unacquainted with these
protective rights of Hindustani wives; and were obliged to confess, that
if they were correctly stated, "the ladies in India are far better off
than ourselves. For (said they) the dowery we receive from our fathers
on our marriage goes to our husbands, who may squander it in one day if
they like; and even the dresses we wear are not our own property, but
are given us by our husbands." But if we allow the Khan all due credit
for the adroitness and success with which he maintained on this occasion
the cause of his fair countrywomen, we can scarcely acquit him of
something like disingenuousness in a discussion with "another lady,"
apparently one who had _not_ been in India, and who lamented the hard
fate (as she believed) of