over the deep cool well.  On the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes.  There are several groups.  With damp drapery clinging to their glistening skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies; they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours over head and shoulders.  They sit down while some young attendant or relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean their feet.  Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures, and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions.  Not unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil, which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it does, though it is not fragrant.  Round the well you get all the village news and scandal.  It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings, and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill, or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her hut, for the wants of her lord and master.

Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government, and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally for a schoolmaster in their villages.  Near the principal street then, in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the village school.  The little fellows have all discarded their upper clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books.  Other dusky urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces of wood to serve as copy-books.  The din increases as the stranger passes:  going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school.  The little Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his assiduity.  He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and character.

Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are preternaturally acute and observant.  You seldom see them playing together.  They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity.  They wear an air of the most winning candour and guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty scheme against you.  They are certainly far more precocious than English children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly.  The poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as they