the esteem and confidence of a native member of the examining body. Another unfailing characteristic of him is that he requires a monstrous monthly stipend and the promise of a handsome _douceur_ if you pass; but then you have the satisfaction of knowing that, if you fulfil the conditions, that happy result is certain. His system leaves no room for failure. Some people regard this man as a myth, but I have had authentic accounts of him from numerous young gentlemen who had failed in their examinations simply, as they themselves assured me, because they did not employ him. The third class consists of young men, aspirants to University honours and others, with some knowledge of English and a laudable desire to improve it by conversation with Englishmen. I do not know for what purpose this sort of Pundit is useful. Old Ragunath Rao belonged to the first of these three classes. He knew no English, and he desired to know none, neither English words nor English thoughts. He was an undiluted Brahmin. He had taught a former generation of Anglo-Indians, long since retired, or in their graves, and one or two of these, who were very religious men, had impressed him by their characters so deeply that he always spoke of them with reverence, as not men but divinities. The tide had ebbed away from him, and no one employed him now: he was very poor. His face was heavy, his ears like beef-steaks, with a fringe of long bristles round the edge and a bushy tuft of the same sprouting from the inside. His features were not pleasing, but strongly expressive of character, stubborn Hindoo character, self-disciplined, self-satisfied, and in a set attitude of defence against the invasions of novelty. His athletic intellect was exercised in all manner of curious questions. The only matter about which it never concerned itself was reality, the existence of which he probably doubted. At any rate, he considered truth, right, wrong, to be subjects for speculative philosophy. As a practical man, he had minutely acquainted himself with all the things that behoved to be believed by an orthodox Brahmin, and he was not the man to give way to mere facts. This frame of mind begot in him a large tolerance, for what possible connection could there be between what it became him to believe and what it became you to believe? If his son had turned a Christian, he could have swung him from a tree by his thumbs and toes and flagellated him from below with acute pleasure; but if you expounded Christian doctrines and morals to him, he would listen with profound admiration. A Christian who lived up to his creed he respected unfeignedly. Strange old man! like one of his own idols, not modelled upon anything that is in heaven or on earth. Are they not, he and the idol, the fruit of the same tree?