e us to meet them on equal terms
at the bar, on the bench, and in the senate.[9] Perhaps two of the
best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and
operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their
relations with each other, are those of Imam-ud-din Ghazzali, and
Nasir-ud-din of Tus.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of
a more practical character than his, and less dry than those of
Aristotle.

I may here mention the following, among many instances that occur to
me, of the amusing mistakes into which Europeans are liable to fall
in their conversation with natives.

Mr. J. W------n, of the Bengal Civil Service, commonly known by the
name of Beau W------n,[11] was the Honourable Company's opium agent
at Patna, when I arrived at Dinapore to join my regiment in 1810.[12]
He had a splendid house, and lived in excellent style; and was never
so happy as when he had a dozen young men from the Dinapore
cantonments living with him. He complained that year, as I was told,
that he had not been able to save more than one hundred thousand
rupees that season out of his salary and commission upon the opium,
purchased by the Government from the cultivators.[13] The members of
the civil service, in the other branches of public service, were all
anxious to have it believed by their countrymen that they were well
acquainted with their duties, and able and willing to perform them;
but the Honourable Company's commercial agents were, on the contrary,
generally anxious to make their countrymen believe that they neither
knew nor cared anything about their duties, because they were ashamed
of them. They were sinecure posts for the drones of the service, or
for those who had great interest and no capacity.[14] Had any young
man made it appear that he really thought W------n knew or cared
anything about his duties, he would certainly never have been invited
to his house again; and if any one knew, certainly no one seemed to
know that he had any other duty than that of entertaining his guests.

No one ever spoke the native language so badly, because no man had
ever so little intercourse with the natives; and it was, I have been
told, to his ignorance of the native languages that his bosom friend,
Mr. P------st, owed his life on one occasion. W. sat by the sick-bed
of his friend with unwearied attention, for some days and nights,
after the doctors had declared his case entirely hopeless. He
proposed at l