ng hound from the Dogs' Home, I shall be
forewarned and forearmed _cap a pie_ for the perils and pleasures of the
chase.

Miss WEE-WEE did earnestly advise me, inasmuch as I was about to go
amongst the savage hill tribes of canny Scotians, to previously make
myself acquainted with their idioms, &c., for which purpose she lent me
some romances written entirely in Caledonian dialects, also the
compositions of Hon. Poet BURNS.

But hoity-toity! after much diligent perusal, I arrived at the
conclusion that such works were sealed books to the most intelligent
foreigner, unless he is furnished with a good Scotch grammar and
dictionary.

And _mirabile dictu!_ though I have made diligent inquiries of various
London booksellers, I have found it utterly impossible to obtain such
works in England--a haughty and arrogantly dispositioned country, more
inclined to teach than to learn!

How many of your boasted British Cabinet, supposed to rule our countless
millions of so-called Indian subjects, would be capable to sit down and
read and translate--_correctly_--a single sentence from the Mahabharat
in the original?

Not more, I shrewdly suspect, than half a dozen at most!

So it is not to be expected that any more interest would be displayed in
the language and literature of a country like Scotland, which is
notoriously wild and barren and less densely populated and productive
than the most ordinary districts of Bengal.

Oh, you pusillanimous Highland chiefs and other misters! how long will
you tamely submit to such offhanded treatment? Will the day never come
when, with whirling sporrans and flashing pibrochs you will rise against
the alien oppressor, and demand Home Rule, together with the total
abolition of present disdainful British _insouciance_?

When that day dawns--if ever--please note this piece of private
intelligence from an authorised source: _Young Bengal will be with you
in your struggle for Autonomy._ If not in body, assuredly in spirit.
Possibly in _both_.

I say no more, in case I should be accused of trying to stir up
seditious feelings; but, as a patriotic Baboo gentleman, my blood will
boil occasionally at instances of stuck-up English self-sufficiency, and
the worm in the bud, if nipped too severely, may blossom into a rather
formidable serpent!

[Illustration: "I AM ADDRESSED BY AN UNDERBRED STREET-URCHIN AS A
'BLOOMING BLACKY!'"]

As, for instance, when, in the course of an inoffensive promenade,