remember to have seen in Fraser's Magazine, " showing something of
the Anglo-Indian, the land he lives in, and the people among whom he lives." The book is interesting and amusing, and we should say likely to be decidedly useful. Page 17, for instance, giving in a tabular form the "seasons" as they exist in the Punjaub, Bengal, and Madras, presents about as practical a description of the climate
as we could wish to have. Here is a cheerful picture of "Madras," which we select for the sake of its brevity. The weather is divided Into "Cold Weather," which "does not commence at any time," and "Hot Weather :"—" Rains commence January 1, and end December 31." Perhaps the most interesting chapter in the volume is that entitled "India Eighty Years Ago : a Retrospect." One has been struck in reading such books as "The Life of Sir Philip Francis" with the ex- treme precariousness of English life in those days. Generations of officials, civil and military, were swept off with the most alarming rapidity. And in truth, Englishmen in those days seemed to have defied the climate with all the national stolidity. "Old red port" figures with a number of other strange articles in the advertisements of the period, and "old red port" in the hot season at Calcutta—for there were no "hills" in those days—must have been something very like poison. It is characteristic of changed manners that it was found necessary to warn the Anglo-Indian of those days in the pro- grammes of the public balls that "hookahs would not be allowed in the ball-room." He was consoled by the intimation that they would be admitted "to the supper-room, to the card-rooms, to the boxes in the theatre, and to each side of the assembly-room, between the large pillars and the walls." The India of those days seems to have rejoiced in oysters, not "preserved," but brought fresh from the Bay of Bengal. The mail was supposed to have done wonders if it reached Calcutta in something less than five months. The book is very pleasantly written, and we can recommend it.
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