The scene is well described by a recent writer thus: "Every afternoon, a little before sunset, the native and European gentry of Calcutta meet there on horseback or in carriages, to air their dignity and survey each other, according to Indian custom. That strange gathering of the lieges in circulating motion altogether eclipses in sparkle and variety such displays as those of Hyde Park or the Champs Elysées. The preponderance of military decorations on the one side, and of native tinsel on the other, convert the meeting into a gilded spectacle. Here, radiant with gold-broidered skull-cap, silken pantaloons, dashing cummerbund, and woof of chains, appear Bengal fashionables astride welltrained chargers or lolling in elegant equipages. Many handsome vehicles, with attendants in a variety of liveries, perambulate the 'Course,' bearing English groups of

'City ladies, pale and splendid, By moustachioed youth attended; ' or wealthy Mohammedan or Hindu families, arrayed in silk and velvet, far transcending in fashionable exterior our nearer kinsmen, the Eurasians, who go the round seated in their humbler buggie, or packed in family parties within the cover of a one-horse gharry." The races do not mingle; ex-ministers or deposed princes roll past in their barouches, the pride of state unextinguished by defeat and misfortune. Among such notabilities are to be seen the Sikh Sirdars, seated in their carriages, each drawn by four splendid horses,

and gracefully attired in white and pink dresses of fine muslin, their broad intelligent faces, adorned with trim black beards and whiskers, contrasting forcibly with their somewhat effeminate costume.

Adjoining the Maidan is the European quarter of Chowringhee, with its broad, handsome streets, and elegant buildings. These buildings are for the most part low, detached, and abounding in pillared colonnades, verandahs, and porches, and are clustered among shrubs and flowers and shaded by forest trees, so as to give the appearance of summer-houses in some vast park.

Upon the Maidan, and near the river-bank, stands the mighty citadel of Fort William. The old fortress of that name, in which the "Black Hole" tragedy was enacted, stood farther

west, its site being occupied by the Custom House. The present fortress was constructed by Clive, and was commenced soon after the battle of Plassy-that is to say, in 1757—and completed in 1773 at a cost of two millions sterling. It is octagonal in form; five of the sides which are towards the land are regular, and three which front the river have their lines varied according to local circumstances. It requires for defence over 600 pieces of cannon and an army of 10,000 men; its principal batteries are towards the river, from which side only an attack is to be apprehended; it contains accommodation for 15,000 persons; and it is the most regularly constructed fortress in India. It was here that for two years the ex-King of Oude was imprisoned after the rebellion of 1857.

On the northern side of the Maidan stands Government House, the residence of the Governor-General of India. It was erected by the Marquis of Wellesley, designed by Mr. Wyatt, and cost £150,000. It occupies a fine site, and has an imposing elevation and approaches. A flight of thirty steps from the carriage-drive leads up to the noble portico; thence the vestibule leads to a magnificent hall, divided into centre and aisles by two rows each of twelve massive columns. The walls of this magnificent room and the pillars are covered with layers of the peculiar Indian cement called chunam, which, when well polished, is whiter than the finest marble; the ceilings are richly decorated; the floors are of marble; and the general effect is particularly grand and striking, especially on great state occasions, and probably never before nor since was it seen to greater advantage than on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales. Government House is, without doubt, the finest building in Calcutta, but opinion is much divided as to the good taste in which it is built and adorned. One writer, who knows India well, speaks of it as a "large, rambling edifice, adorned inside with some bad pictures, having a marble hall which looks as if intended for a dancing academy, and famous chiefly for the inconvenience of its arrangements." To the majority of people the most interesting thing in Government House is the famous Council Room, adorned with portraits of Hastings and other Indian heroes—a room in which the "welfare or fate of millions of souls has often hung in the balance."

Close by Government House there are other remarkably handsome public buildings, forming fine architectural masses as seen from the Maidan. Amongst them are the Law Courts, with towers and fretted roof, the Bengal Club House, the Post Office, with a noble dome, and the Town Hall.

concourse.

Along the shore of the river, from the Maidan northward, stretches for almost three miles the busy thoroughfare known as the Strand-a fashionable resort at certain hours of the day, but where all sorts and conditions of men and women mingle in the motley "Every inhabitant of the city, rich or poor," says an American writer, describing his experiences of India, "seemed to have rigged up some kind of a turnout, and taken his place with his fellows. Some of the groups we passed on the road were very picturesque, and sometimes irresistibly comic: the coachmen in their native costumes, their long beards streaming in the wind; the ladies in their gay dresses, only outshone by the picturesque attire of some native prince dashing along at full speed, accompanied by fleet-footed syces. These syces, or Mussulman grooms, accompany every carriage, and, it is said, will often surpass the horses they accompany in endurance. The natives vie with the Europeans in displaying neat turn-outs, some of the Baboos, or

native merchants, expending fortunes on their stable appointments and equipages." The scene is frequently varied by the introduction of rude bullock-carts with creaking wheels, or by some hired native coach swaying on immense swings and crammed with half-drunken sailors from the port.

Beside the Strand are situated the Custom House and the Mint, both immense buildings; the latter, erected in 1829 at a cost of £300,000, is a handsome edifice, with extensive premises fitted up with all the latest improvements for stamping coin. In the Strand also are several of the minor landing-places and the approach to the pontoon bridge, which since 1875 has given Calcutta a direct communication with the railway station at Howrah, on the opposite bank of the Hooghly.

The main streets of Calcutta are broad and clean, with pleasant squares and avenues. of trees delighting the eye with their refreshing greenness. A large staff of bheesties, or water-carriers, keep down the dust by dispensing water from their leathern mussacks. The business streets are lined with the shops of European traders, and mostly run directly down to the river, or along its banks. Here auction marts, warehouses, shops and offices, crowding carriers and porters, and bustling merchants may remind the Englishman of scenes nearer home; but a large portion of the extensive area covered by Calcutta presents scenes such as have no counterpart in European cities. The native city, or Black Town, as it is termed, consists chiefly of narrow, dirty, and unpaved streets, crowded and stifling with dust and heat, with long rows of low brick buildings used as shops and warehouses, huts built of mud, or of cane and matting, wooden cottages raised on piles, all mixed in motley confusion. Here and there rises the stately mansion of some wealthy Baboo, although as a rule this class settle in the European quarter.

The bazaars are a characteristic feature of most Indian cities, but those of Calcutta are for the most part wretched congeries of mean shops, without the covered walks usually met with elsewhere. The Tirheta Bazaar, covering four square acres in the very heart of the city, displays an abundance of almost every kind of food to be met with in India. Each class of vendors is separated with minute precision; the mutton stalls and beef stalls are away from each other. Vendors of pork and veal form another class. The poultry bazaar, with its thousands of live geese, turkeys, ducks, and pigeons, presents a curious scene. In the wild-fowl bazaar are snipe, moor-hens, and plovers, and almost every species of live duck and teal. The various departments for fish, vegetables, fruit, butter, milk, rice, sweetmeats, and various other classes of food are all well supplied. Before sunrise thousands of natives may be seen coming along the streets from all parts of Calcutta to the Tirheta Bazaar. Rich and poor, some in fine robes and turbans, others in almost nothing at all, gossiping servants in livery, Englishmen, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Chinese, and men of numerous other nationalities, in their varied costumes, and Hindus of every caste, all help to make up an incongruous and interesting scene. Hundreds of coolies stand waiting with broad baskets on their heads to take home goods for any one, and beside the avenues leading to the market are the money-changers, with piles of pice, who for a slight consideration supply intending purchasers with small change for their silver money. By 9 a.m. all is over, the avenues are deserted, and the gates closed, and traffic practically ceases, until next morning again rouses the district into life and animation.

But there are numerous bazaars of another kind, with their "long rows of confined shops packed closely together like the cells of a beehive, and filled with all the handiwork of Europe and Asia, where prosperous traders, squatting patiently throughout the day on earthen floors in dusty dens, live and die without a thought of turning their means to those purposes in life which are to the world at large the grand stimulus to industry-the golden future of toil."

Calcutta possesses an Anglican Cathedral, numerous Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, one Greek church, one Armenian church, a Jewish synagogue, about 160 Hindu temples and pagodas, and 74 Mohammedan mosques. "But," as Bishop Heber remarks, "there is absolutely not a single minaret in Calcutta. None of the mosques are seen in any general view of Calcutta, being too small, too low, and built in too obscure corners to be visible till one is close upon them. They rather resemble, indeed, the tombs of saints than places of public worship, such as are seen in Persia, Turkey, and the south of Russia. Though diminutive, however, many of them are pretty; and the sort of EasternGothic style in which they are built is to my eye, though trained up to the reverence of the pure English style, extremely pleasing." Calcutta also contains a Parsee “Agiaree,” or "Temple of the Sacred Fire," and one or two Chinese temples.

There are cemeteries used by the Europeans and Jews, and also a Parsee "Temple of Silence," but the Hindus still adhere to their ancient practice of cremation. For this purpose there are "Burning Ghâts" on the river-side, walled in on three sides nearest the town; here the bodies of the dead are burnt to ashes. At one time the poor threw their dead into the river, but in order to stop this practice Government was compelled to provide gratuitous accommodation for cremation, for the benefit of those who could not otherwise afford to secure the rite for their dead, and who had considered the committal of the dead (and sometimes of the dying) to the sacred river as a satisfactory equivalent.

On the western bank of the Hooghly, opposite the citadel of Fort William, is the splendid Botanic Garden, covering 300 acres, and containing beautiful specimens of the Mauritius, the talipot, the sago, and other palms, a large variety of crotons, an enormous banyan-tree with a girth of eighteen yards, whose branches and descending roots extend to a circumference of 300 yards, besides a collection of nearly all the vegetable products of India, as well as a vast number of plants from Europe, Africa, and America. Of the spread and progress of Christianity in India it is not necessary that we should speak here; but no visitor to Calcutta can pass through the city without being struck with the number of institutions, charitable, educational, and religious, which owe their origin to the labours of eminent Christian men. St. John's Church remains as a memorial of the life and labours of Bishop Wilson. In Cornwallis Street is the Scottish Church, where the zealous Dr. Duff laboured; in Cornwallis Square is the College which he first founded, now in the hands of the Scottish Established Church; near it is the Free Church College, afterwards built by Dr. Duff, in which he taught for many years. Dr. Alexander Duff was the greatest Christian reformer of his age in India; he adopted a different method of instruction from that of any of his predecessors, his object being to "lay the foundation of a system of education which might ultimately embrace all the branches ordinarily taught in the higher schools and colleges of Christian Europe, but in inseparable

combination with the Christian faith, and its doctrines, precepts, and evidences, with a view to the practical regulation of life and conduct." In 1863, when leaving India for the third and last time, he wrote in his diary, "I began my labours in 1830, literally with nothing. I leave behind me the largest and, in a Christian point of view, the most successful Christian institution in India, a native church nearly self-sustaining, with a native pastor,

three ordained native missionaries, besides-with catechists and native teachers-flourishing branch missions at Chinsurah, Bansbaria, Culna, Mahanad, &c." And the good work goes on. A thousand young men and boys assemble daily in Dr. Duff's College for religious and secular education. It is an immense building, and in the centre hall, where the school assembles every morning to hear the Scriptures read, there is a bust of the founder.

A visit to the large college and compound of the London Mission; to the library and statue of Bishop Heber in the Cathedral of St. Paul; or to any of the numerous mission stations in and around Calcutta, will recall the names and deeds of hero-missionaries who lived, laboured, and died in the cause they had at heart.