kept up. One of them is in the fastening of the outer garment. On meeting either party, though the dress is much the same, you at once distinguish the Mohammedan from the Hindoo by the universal fact that the latter has his tunic made to button on the right side, while the Mohammedan hooks his on the left. There is about the Mohammedan a fierce, haughty aspect, which he takes no trouble to conceal. He cannot forget that he had ruled in India for seven hundred years, until the hated English came and broke the rod of his strength, and he is all the more disposed to show his bitterness of spirit because the Hindoo race, with the exception of a few Brahmins, hailed the change with sincere gladness, and can now set him at defiance. It was on this fact that Englishmen relied for the perpetuity of their rule; and on it they might have depended for long centuries to come, had it not been for a combination of peculiar circumstances which existed in 1857, and which will be detailed in their place.
Taking individual portraits, for the sake of more distinctness, I here present a Brahmin, as the acknowledged head of Hindoo society, and an associate of the most exclusive and singular of all earthly orders.
The man here introduced holds himself to be a member of the most ancient aristocracy upon the earth. His dignity is one entirely independent of landed possessions, wealth, or manorial halls. Indeed, these have nothing whatever to do with it. The man may have literally no home, and not be worth five dollars of worldly property; he may have to solicit his next meal of food from those who respect his order; but he is a Brahmin, and is prouder of that simple string over his shoulder and across his naked breast than any English Earl is of his coronet. These men laugh at such a mushroom aristocracy as that of Britain or France, created merely by the breath of a human Sovereign, whose word raises the plebeian to the noble order; for the Brahmin holds that his nobility is not an accident, but is in the highest sense “by the grace of God.” It is in his nature, in his blood, by the original intention and act of his Creator. He was made and designed by
