and believe that she plants this her favourite flower in the moon, whenever she loses a votary.  The priesthood encourage this superstition, as they have grafted on it some mystical rites, which add to their power and profit, and which one of our Pundits thinks has a great resemblance to the Eleusinian mysteries.  There is, however, my dear Atterley, little satisfaction in tracing the origin of vulgar superstitions.  They grow up like a strange plant in a forest, without our being able to tell how the seed found its way there.  It is generally believed in the east, that the moon, at particular periods of her revolution round the earth, has a great influence in causing rain; though every one must see, that, notwithstanding such influence must be the same in every part of the earth, it is invariably fair in one place, at the very time that it is rainy in another.  Nay, we may safely aver that there is not a day, nor an hour, in the year, in which it is not dry and rainy, cloudy and clear, windy and calm, in hundreds of places at once.”

I told the Brahmin that the same opinion prevailed in my country.  That the vulgar also believe the moon, according to its age, to have particular effects on the flesh of slaughtered animals; and that all sailors distinguish between a wet and a dry day, according to the position of the crescent.

We then inquired of the warden of this flowery plain, if he had ever remarked any difference in the number of roses which sprung up in a given period of time.  He said he thought they were more numerous about five and twenty or thirty years ago, than he had ever seen them before or since.  With that exception, he said, the number appeared to be nearly the same every year.

The Brahmin happening to be in one of those pleasant moods which are occasionally experienced by amiable tempers, even when under the pressure of sorrow and age, now amused himself in pointing out the flowers which probably represented the different nations of the earth; and when he saw any one remarkably small, pale and delicate, he insisted that it belonged to his own country; which point, however, I, not yielding to him in nationality, warmly contested.  I would here remark, that as the rose is called gul in the Persian language and the ancient Sanscrit, the name of this field furnished another argument in support of the Brahmin’s hypothesis of the origin of the moon.

While thus oblivious of the past, and reckless of the future, we were enjoying the present moment in this badinage, and I was extolling the odour of the rose, as beyond every other grateful to the olfactory nerves of man, a lively, flippant little personage came up, and accosted the Brahmin with the familiarity of an acquaintance.  My companion immediately introduced me to him, and at the same time gave me to understand that this was the great Reffei, one of the most distinguished literati of the country.  Although his eye was remarkably piercing, I perceived