say what may be the case as regards other parts of India; but, as regards my own district, each caste will eat of the food prepared by any of the castes higher, or at least purer, than its own.  For instance, a Gouda, who will not allow that the Lingayet caste is better than his own, will eat of food prepared by a Lingayet, while a Lingayet will not eat of food prepared by a Gouda.  And the explanation of this is, that the Lingayet is a vegetarian, and meat might have been boiled in the Gouda’s pots, while there would be nothing to offend the Gouda customs in the pots of a vegetarian host.  But in these matters I entirely agree with the good Bishop Heber, who said that we had no right to interfere in their private life, or to meddle in any way with their social customs, as long as there was no idolatry in them.

Turning now to the third point I proposed to consider, I have a few remarks to make regarding the only (from a Christian point of view) solid objection that can, I conceive, be made to the institution of separate orders of men; namely, that the tendency of caste is to shut up the bowels of compassion towards all the world outside of a man’s particular class.  And here I confess that I am very much in want of information, and can think of no unprejudiced individuals to whom to apply for the facts as really existing in other parts of India.  As for books, when I look into them for any information, I am at once met by quantities of unlimited condemnations, or a host of contradictory statements.  And, as an instance of the latter, I may mention that in Kerr’s “Domestic Life of the Natives of India” we are informed, at page 31, that “alms are given to the poor without distinction of caste,” while at page 343 of the same volume we are told that “to extend kindness and hospitality to one of a different caste is regarded as sinful.”  But in matters of this sort we want the experience of individuals who have actually lived amongst the people, as much as anyone can who is not actually one of them.  As for my own part of the country, I can answer for it that caste has no such effect as has been alleged to arise from it regarding the extension of hospitality and kindness to people of various castes; and, as a confirmatory illustration, may mention that I have found members of every caste assembled at the house of a toddy man to inquire how he was, and to see whether they could do anything for him.  These toddy-drawers rank at least third amongst the castes in Manjarabad, and though none of the members of the farmer castes above them would eat of food prepared in a toddy-drawer’s house, yet there were numbers of both these castes present.  This feeling would not, that I am aware of, go as far as one of the carrion-eating Pariahs, but I am quite certain that it would extend to any other caste but theirs in the country.  But on this point I do not offer any decided opinion, as, for what I know to the contrary, acts of kindness and hospitality may, no doubt, often have been extended