d English poetry, very superior indeed to Rousseau's
epitaph on Shenstone; at the same time that he is much respected by the
English officers in his neighbourhood, as a real good judge of a horse,
and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. The truth is, that he is
an extraordinary man, who, having in early youth received such an
education as old Schwartz, the celebrated missionary, could give him, has
ever since continued, in the midst of many disadvantages, to preserve his
taste for, and extend his knowledge of, European literature: while he has
never neglected the active exercises and frank, soldierly bearing which
become the descendant of the old Mahratta conquerors; and by which only,
in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the
prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he
lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or
enemy; for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, frugal,
bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an
English nobleman, he holds his head high, and appears contented; and the
print of Buonaparte, which hangs in his library, is so neutralized by
that of Lord Hastings in full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody.
. . . To finish the portrait of Maha Raja Sarbojee, I should tell you
that he is a strong-built and very handsome middle-aged man, with eyes
and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy grey mustachios, generally
splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and
talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than
any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son, Raja
Seroojee (so named after their great ancestor), is a pale, sickly-looking
lad of seventeen, who also speaks English, but imperfectly, and on whose
account his father lamented, with much apparent concern, the
impossibility which he found of obtaining any tolerable instruction in
Tanjore. I was moved at this, and offered to take him on my tour, and
afterwards to Calcutta, where he might have apartments in my house, and
be introduced into good English society; at the same time that I would
superintend his studies, and procure for him the best masters which India
affords. The father and son, in different ways,--the one catching at the
idea with great eagerness, the other as if he were afraid to say all he
wished,--seemed both well pleased with the proposal. Both, h