wilfully false, or cruel, or unjust, in matters
which do not affect themselves, and where no
interests are at stake and no passions are
aroused. And though it may be embarrassing
for one government to declare the decrees
of another government mistaken and unjust,
thereby damaging its own pretensions to
infallibility and opening the door to many perplexing
retrospections, yet it will come in time, if the
advocates are calm and persistent, and keep up
the agitation with energy, without making it
an official sore, or a public nuisance.

NIL DARPAN.

For the last few months the overland mails
from India, after giving us the customary budget
of news—to the effect that it has been very hot
somewhere, and hotter than ever somewhere
else; that pacification, reorganisation, regeneration,
irrigation, and irritation, are going on as
usual in different parts of the country; that
there has been a "row" at Simla between two
officers of such high position as not to be
revealed to the naked eye of the public; that an
ensign has been dismissed the service for
conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and
a gentleman towards his colonel's wife's poodle;
that the Hindoos and Mahomedans, in some
place with an unpronounceable name, have been
at open hostilities in consequence of a religious
dispute: the Mahomedans having polluted a
temple, and the Hindoos retaliated by defiling
a mosque; that there has been another case of
Suttee, the authorities saying that they couldn't
help it, and the usual investigation in which
nothing is investigated having been set on foot;
that cotton is tranquil, corahs in a state of
much anxiety, and mule twist in an undecided
condition;—after the customary budget of news,
in fact, the mail generally tells us that Nil
Darpan is still exciting a great deal of public
attention.

What is Nil Darpan?

This is a question now being asked by a large
proportion of the public who have been goaded
by frequent repetition into an unwilling curiosity.
Is it a place, or a person, or something
to eat? They have not the slightest idea, and
the discussion has been going on for so long that
it now seems hopeless to begin to read it up.
Be it known that Nil Darpan is a play written
by a native of Bengal, in the Bengalee language,
and that the meaning of the title is "The Mirror
of Indigo Planting:" the declared object of the
author being to hold the mirror up to nature,
and to give a reflexion of the system of indigo
planting as now practised in Bengal. With the
political quarrel, to which the circulation of this
play by certain local authorities has given rise,
we have nothing here to do; but the reader
may find some account of the circumstances
which have led to the dispute, in an article called
Cotton and India, in a previous number; and it
is right to state, in order that we may not be
supposed to endorse the grave charges which
the work contains, that not even the persons
who gave it circulation pretend to justify those
charges, which have some dim reference to a
state of things which existed fifty years ago, but
which, it has been declared by a recent official
inquiry, has no foundation in the present day.
That the satire is a malicious one, and written
for a political object, there can be no doubt. And
when it is remembered that the drama is a
favourite medium among the Hindoos for the
expression of public feeling, it becomes apparent
that it is calculated not a little to mislead. Our
object in noticing it here, however, is a literary
rather than a political one; and the reader who
follows our description should remember that
Hindoo statements, even when not inspired by
political prejudice, must always be taken with
a great many grains of salt.

The Nil Darpan, we must give warning in the
beginning, is not a very lively performance. It
would have no chance of being listened to in
any London theatre. We doubt, indeed, if all the
art and knowledge of stage effect which have
been spent on the Colleen Bawn could dress it
up to the point of endurance. Nevertheless, it
is quite of an airy character; it is as used up as
The Stranger, compared with the majority of
pieces on the Bengalee stage, which belong
decidedly to the elephantine walks of the drama.
The Nil Darpan is elephantine to be sure;
but the elephant it resembles, is a sportive
animal; it can dance, and stand on its head,
and would have no objection to take wine with
the clown.

Those of our readers who have ever lived in
India have probably seen a native play performed
at a native gentleman's house. In Calcutta, if
the visitor be a person of any note, he will
receive more invitations to representations of
the kind than he cares to accept. Let us
suppose that he avails himself of the invitation of,
say, Baboo Mukhanauth Lalshrab Ghose, the
great merchant and banker. The invitation is
for eight o'clock, and, at about that hour, having
dined at seven, and being already in evening
dress, he sets out. His destination is sure to
be a long way off, as the European gentleman
would infallibly live in the best quarter of the
town, and the native gentleman would as
infallibly live in the worst—which is the native
gentleman's fault, by the way, as he came to the
place first, and had first choice. The house of
the guest is situated in a street very much like
what Park-lane in London is; that of the host
in a street very like what Field-lane in London
was; the thoroughfare between the two is of
course characterised by a gradual declension
from bad to worse, until it becomes as bad as
the worst can be. The approach to the house
is indicated by a horrible odour of oil and
natives: the two scents being the more
associated through the fact of the latter having a
habit of rubbing the former over their skins.

The effluvium of oil, however, proceeds mainly
from large earthen pans with floating lights in
them, placed along the road to mark the way,
and from coloured lamps of the Vauxhall
kind, neatly arranged wherever they can be