_The public worship._ In every Hindoo country, a party of young men tax each family once a year and dispose of the money thus realized in the “worship of twelve friends.” They charge also all the bridegrooms who come to marry the girls in their village. A splendid image is erected in the public place of the town, and music and theatrical performances are held before it. This, taken on the whole, is the worst of the Hindoo institutions. It corrupts the young, who, taking this opportunity, do all sorts of immoral acts which they never dreamt of before. You ask the boys when they learned to smoke, steal, or quarrel, and they will point out these holidays to you. I remember distinctly having stolen tobacco and a smoking-pipe (hooka) from my uncle’s room, to help the smoking party in the garden. Almost all of us were beginners in this filthy and unhealthy habit. Fearing our parents would know it, we used to chew a piece of green banana-leaf, which in some measure takes away the dirty smell from the mouth. Again, as the musical performances are performed through the whole night, these boys and young men go round the place, climb up the cocoa-nut-trees and steal their fruits. As the cocoa-nut-trees are very tall and the fall of the fruit on the ground makes a loud noise, some seven boys were once climbing up a tree one after the other that they might pass down the fruits noiselessly from hand to hand; the most cunning of them did something to make his successor laugh, and he doing the same, there wont a peal of laughter from the head to the foot of the tree, which apprised the owner of his loss. One of the boys attempting to come down quickly, fell upon some broken glass and was badly injured. Fortunately I was not with them. To enumerate the evils that rise from the Hindoo worship and holidays would occupy a book. Coming out disfigured and bruised from the dark caves of Brahminism, I hoped the British government would stretch forth its hand at least against the most immoral, and ruinous institutions of the Hindoos, because their own eyes are not bright enough yet to notice the defects thereof. But my “Hopes that were angels in their birth, Perished young, like things on earth.” The late Sepoy mutiny has, as I see, given a lesson which the government must mind. However there is yet a hope of India’s regeneration. The influence of the Missionary as well as the government schools will open the eyes of the rising generation, and thus bring the matter to a slow but happy close. Father of lights! let Thy knowledge shine in every creek and corner of the world; and bring it to the recognition of Thee, who art its Creator, and loving Father! Let India worship Thee as her God and Father! MISCELLANEOUS.