g round me in all
directions. One poor fellow in particular looks so miserably cold that,
unless the sun comes out, I am likely soon to see under my own roof
the spectacle which, according to Shakespeare, is so interesting to the
English,--a dead Indian. [The Tempest, act ii. scene 2.]

I travelled the whole four hundred miles between this and Madras on
men's shoulders. I had an agreeable journey on the whole. I was honoured
by an interview with the Rajah of Mysore, who insisted on showing me
all his wardrobe, and his picture gallery. He has six or seven coloured
English prints, not much inferior to those which I have seen in the
sanded parlour of a country inn; "Going to Cover," "The Death of the
Fox," and so forth. But the bijou of his gallery, of which he is as vain
as the Grand Duke can be of the Venus, or Lord Carlisle of the Three
Maries, is a head of the Duke of Wellington, which has, most certainly,
been on a sign-post in England.

Yet, after all, the Rajah was by no means the greatest fool whom I
found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow appertaining to the British
Residency. There I found an Englishman who, without any preface,
accosted me thus: "Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do not you think that Buonaparte
was the Beast?" "No, Sir, I cannot say that I do." "Sir, he was the
Beast. I can prove it. I have found the number 666 in his name. Why,
Sir, if he was not the Beast, who was?" This was a puzzling question,
and I am not a little vain of my answer. "Sir," said I, "the House of
Commons is the Beast. There are 658 members of the House; and these,
with their chief officers,--the three clerks, the Sergeant and his
deputy, the Chaplain, the doorkeeper, and the librarian,--make 666."
"Well, Sir, that is strange. But I can assure you that, if you write
Napoleon Buonaparte in Arabic, leaving out only two letters, it will
give 666." "And pray, Sir, what right have you to leave out two letters?
And, as St. John was writing Greek, and to Greeks, is it not likely that
he would use the Greek rather than the Arabic notation?" "But, Sir,"
said this learned divine, "everybody knows that the Greek letters were
never used to mark numbers." I answered with the meekest look and voice
possible: "I do not think that everybody knows that. Indeed I have
reason to believe that a different opinion,--erroneous no doubt,--is
universally embraced by all the small minority who happen to know any
Greek." So ended the controversy. The man looked a