Then the Hindus. To think of a whole
nation slaughtering its rulers because a
few cartridges were greased with bullocks'
fat. To think, too, of their tamely submitting
to all manner of national indignities—to be
Pariahs, Sudras, and what not, because of
the virtues and ordinances of a fabulous
caste. Caste here and caste there, above,
below, and on one side—caste everywhere,
and humanity and helping love nowhere.
The whole framework of Hindu society is
built up of division, distrust, and enmity.
The subdivisions, even of the two or three
great nominal divisions, follow the rule of the
rest; and the most trifling distinctions in
manners or customs, are sufficient to break
down brotherhood and establish small
communities of enemies instead. The Brahmins
of Bengal, divided into two great classes, are
split up into one hundred and sixty-eight
subdivisions, not one of which will eat, drink,
or intermarry with the rest. This is purity
of caste carried out to its ideal, if you will!
It makes the Spaniard's sangue azul (pure
blood) a mere mud-pool by its side. Again,
a certain tribe of wise oil-makers in Telingaua,
who use two oxen in the mill when pressing
out their oil, will hold no communication with
another tribe which uses only one. They will
follow neither the same gods nor the same
leaders; they will not marry nor give in
marriage, they will not eat nor pray with them, for
the two-oxen men hold their one-ox brother
a being accursed, degraded, and outcast,
And both together would think themselves
lost for ever, if they were to eat bread with
a Christian or drink water with a Jew. As
for the roast beef of Old England, that would
seem to them a crime scarcely to be expiated
by the infidel butcher's death, and the cook's,
and the feaster's. Indeed, had he been a
Hindu who had so sinned, death would have
been only a slight punishment for time, and
eternal condemnation a need of infinitely
smaller dimensions than his guilt. For a
cow's life is of greater value than a man's, in
the Brahminical scale of worth; and he who
kills one accidentally, must be excommunicated,
but if with intent, then must he die.
On the other hand the Abyssinians—Christians
like ourselves, receiving the sacraments,
making monks, and performing other Christian
offices—hew out cutlets of flesh from the
quivering sides of a live ox; and, making a
sandwich of the slice by putting it between
two teff cakes, devour it raw and palpitating:
as we would not devour the wing of a chicken
or the breast of a partridge. Humanity
presents some fine contrasts. Careful of the
life of his sacred cow, even over that of his
unblessed brother, as is the Brahminical
Hindu, he recognises the divine right of
Thuggee, and holds that Devi might be more
shabbily worshipped than by the offering of an
oblation of human lives. For Thuggee is a
religion, and the Thug a high priest; and it
is only an exemplification of the old axiom—
doing evil that good may come. The
assassins of the mountain, too, hold swine's flesh
in abhorrence, and most of their brother men
accursed; but they smoke nachish till they
are mad, then rush to paradise and the
houris, bathed in their own blood or their
neighbour's: it mattering little to them
whether they kill themselves or any one else,
provided only they kill some one. If all
these follies, and others as wild and pernicious,
were driven out of men's heads, what a much
braver and happier world it would be!

Opposite in the scale to the caste of the
Hindu, is the idea of the phalanstery; on the
left hand of the way of life stands Thuggee,
on the right, the Peace Society. Then again,
look at absolute monarchies and socialistic
communities, as theories of polity emanating
from the same race of beings; look at the
courtier with his breast glittering with orders,
and the Friend in dull drab, who will not so
much as say "sir," nor remove his hat, while
the Siamese crawls on the ground like a dog,
and the Chinaman ko-taus like an ape. See
what contrasts we have even in Europe itself,
where one would most look for likeness.

Who knows anything about that severe,
primitive, model little republic of Andorre,
in the Pyrenees, a republic dating as far back
as Charlemagne, lying between France and
Spain, but respected by both, and annexed
by neither? There the Andorrians live—an
almost stationary handful of some eight or
nine thousand republicans; stern as the
Spartans, simple as the Romans; a quiet,
patriarchal, immovable set, without one
overweeningly wealthy member among them,
and with no paupers—all possessing enough,
no one lacking, yet none with much
superfluity. What a strange little nest to be
perched on the mountains in the midst of
luxurious, flaunting Europe,—where vice and
virtue, wealth and starvation, jostle each
other in the streets, and whirl side by side
down the great mill-race of society,—without
vices, without ambition, fearing the great
world rather than hating it, and caring only
to keep their customs intact and their primitive
simplicity unsullied, changing in nothing,
and adopting none of the fashions which
flutter past them on the highway. They live
in as complete isolation as the Chinaman of
the interior, or as the Circassian in her
hareem. They are more like the old stories
of the Moravian households than anything
else we know of; as pious and as primitive,
governing the state according to the model
of the family, and making indeed of the
whole community one great family, simply
divided into younger and elder branches.
Andorre and Paris—Andorre and Madrid—
the sheepskin of the republican and the
gants jaunes and crinoline of the Parisian—
the severe morals of the Andorrian matron
and those of the Spanish señora. Can you
wish for a more striking contrast of human
life, or can you find one more complete?