ling off into Hinduism, and every day
committing greater and greater follies? These are the manifest signs
long ago pointed out by wise and holy men as indicating the approach
of the _last day_.'[33]

A man might make a curious book out of the indications of the end of
the world according to the notions of different people or different
individuals. The Hindoos have had many different worlds or ages; and
the change from the good to the bad, or the golden to the iron age,
is considered to have been indicated by a thousand curious
incidents.[34] I one day asked an old Hindoo priest, a very worthy
man, what made the five heroes of the Mahabharata, the demigod
brothers of Indian story, leave the plains and bury themselves no one
knew where, in the eternal snows of the Himalaya mountains. 'Why,
sir,' said he, 'there is no question about that. Yudhisthira, the
eldest, who reigned quietly at Delhi after the long war, one day sat
down to dinner with his four brothers and their single wife,
Draupadi; for you know, sir, they had only one among them all. The
king said grace and the covers were removed, when, to their utter
consternation, a full-grown fly was seen seated upon the dish of rice
that stood before his majesty. Yudhisthira rose in consternation.
'When flies begin to blow upon men's dinners,' said his majesty, 'you
may be sure, my brothers, that the end of the world is near--the
golden age is gone--the iron one has commenced, and we must all be
off; the plains of India are no longer a fit abode for gentlemen.'
Without taking one morsel of food,' added the priest, 'they set out,
and were never after seen or heard of. They were, however, traced by
manifest supernatural signs up through the valley of the Ganges to
the snow tops of the Himalaya, in which they no doubt left their
mortal coils.' They seem to feel a singular attachment for the
birthplace of their great progenitrix, for no place in the world is,
I suppose, more infested by them than Delhi, at present; and there a
dish of rice without a fly would, in the iron, be as rare a thing as
a dish with one in the golden, age.

Muhammadans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Muhammadan
regime, not from any particular attachment to the descendants of
Timur, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and Tories
sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England;
it would give them all the offices in a country where office is
everything. Among