surely better trained for soldiership than the
lazy ryot of Bengal.

Most hill-men and junglewallahs are
excellent shots with bow and matchlock. The
hardiest Shikarees that ever tracked a buffalo
or a tiger, belong to these neglected clans,
and every Indian sportsman is glad to
procure such guides on a hunting expedition. It
is no slight recommendation, also, that these
people are in no way particular as to food
or work. Mangs, Meeturs, and Palankeen
bearers, are never so happy as when some
English master rewards them with a sheep,
and are, in fact, almost omnivorous.

No task degrades them, no toil is too
much for them, and their constitutions
are seasoned to the effects of a poisonous
jungle climate that would be the death
of a common Sepoy. It is worth sacrificing
a few inches in the standard of height
to get rid of caste with all its dangers and
troubles. Of this we have ample proof even
now. The stumpy Sipahis of the Bombay
and Madras armies remain faithful while
Hindostan is in a blaze; the Ghoorkas and
the Sikhs, too, whom the Bengalees deem
almost as unclean as ourselves, are kept
steady for want of high caste sympathies,
and the mere sympathy of colour goes for
little. How, indeed, should it? The Brahmins
are the lightest complexioned of the
Hindoo race, and while the olive-skinned
man is the bitterest foe of the white, the
latter finds an ally in the poor despised black
fellow, whose interests he has for years been
sacrificing to the high caste grandee. An
extraordinary belief seems to have gained
ground in England to the effect that the
Sikhs are heterodox Mahommedans. Their
tenets and their Grunth are little known;
but that they are Hindoo heretics, and not
Moslems at all, is certain enough. The
founder of their sect mixed with his doctrines
just enough of Islam to turn his followers
away from Brahminism, and there seems
little chance that Sikh and Hindoo will ever
be reconciled. The Goorkhas, an Indo-
Chinese race, have behaved capitally; and,
no doubt, from Nepaul and Thibet might be
drawn numbers of sturdy recruits whose
Buddhist faith will for ever render them
aliens from the Hindoo sympathies. It is a
pity for our purposes that Brahminism has
been able thoroughly to conquer Buddhism
in India. The former faith must ever be
hostile, actively or passively, to our rule and
the progress of European ideas, while Buddhism
has no caste to guard, and is emphatically
a religion of proselytes. But in the
morose exclusiveness of the Brahmin religion
is one of our greatest safeguards. If a Bombay
or Madras regiment were to mutiny
tomorrow, and by mutinying give over India
for ever to native rule, the successful rebels
could never be accepted among the haughty
Rajpoot and Brahmin aristocracy. No one
can become a Brahmin, no one can become a
pure Hindoo. Brahminism wishes for no
converts, and can receive none, or it would
cease to be Brahminism. Whatever services
may be rendered to this strange religion,
there is no place for a neophyte in its system.
The clean may be defiled, but all Ganges
cannot purify the unclean. Therefore, while
four-fifths of Asia may be reckoned Buddhist,
Hindooism remains in its old limits. But as
for the Bheels, Gonds, Todahs, and hill-men
in general, I am sure that in six months a
hundred regiments of excellent light infantry
might be raised among them, who might be
relied on, for why should they prefer their
old contemptuous oppressors, the high caste
Hindoos, to a race equally vile in Hindoo
sight, but placed in the van of civilisation,
and masters of all the arts of Europe. Any
longer to defer to the insane prejudices of
caste, any longer to hesitate about
enfranchising and employing the hundred tribes
from whom an inexhaustible supply of
recruits can be drawn, would be worse than
foolish—it would be a crime and a blunder.
With an irregular cavalry mostly raised
north of the Sutlege, with plenty of
battalions, composed not only of Sikhs and
Ghoorkas but of the disinherited races of
India, we may afford to laugh at the
prospect of another Bengal mutiny.

INDIAN ENGLISH.

IT is curious, and must be sorely
perplexing to that "intelligent foreigner" who
goes about observing everything, and is
always appealed to, in and out of Parliament,
whenever any question of national manners
arises, to see, or rather to hear, with what
avidity John Bull displays any scraps of a
foreign tongue that he may have picked up
in his travels. Probably the consciousness
of our national deficiency as linguists has
something to do with this display of
knowledge on the part of those who consider
themselves more learned than their neighbours.
I do not now allude to our well-known
partiality for Gallicisms. I do not
pretend to argue that the French papers
never tell us that "Hier soir S. A. J.
le Prince Jerome donnait un 'jolly shine,'"
or that "Demain aura lieu le 'hop' de
Madame de Rondpoint," or that "II est
question d'un 'match' entre M. de Morny et
une 'heiress' Russe." Nor do I insist that
none but the fastest section of Young France
make "des bet sur le stiplechase," or go
down to that amusement "dans mon dogue-
car avec un jocki." I really must protest
against the bi-monthly irruption of barbaric
words from dialects spoken by those hundred
and eighty millions who eat rice and worship
idols between the Himalayas and Cape
Comorin. The evil, we all know, on a small
scale, is not a new one. Everybody has met
old Indians who were always bringing strange
words neck and crop into their conversation;
but, then, it did not so much matter, because