never dreamed of speculating in stocks, the rich with his hundreds of thousands and the poor with hardly a few rupees to his name, master and servant, were alike seized with the distemper called by the few who looked calmly on "Rupea-Dewana," "the rupee-mad." How changed was the once happy population! What anxious faces, revealing lines of thought and care, of midnight toil, of mingled fear and hope! Still, the great drama went on, and for a short period immense fortunes were made in a day. But no sooner had the whole island gained sufficient encouragement to set on foot her gigantic schemes and rash enterprises, no sooner had she at one final throw staked all on the ruin of the Northern States, than came the appalling intelligence of General Lee's defeat. A fearful revulsion followed: sudden panic seized the busy world enclosed in the small compass of the Bombay "Commercial Square." Like a flock of birds, the business population took wing and vanished out of sight. The banks were closed, flourishing houses collapsed, firms disappeared, and an almost universal ruin stared every one in the face. The very atmosphere was filled with the despair of men who had so rashly staked all and lost all. Painful as the lesson has been, it was a wholesome one, not only for all classes of merchants in British India, but for Old England herself. The merchants of Bombay are once more in their counting-rooms and warehouses, the banks are as firmly established as ever, with a richer experience and a more profound insight into the laws which govern the moral as well as the business world; they yet bid fair to render the beautiful island of Bambâ Dèvi the heart and centre of all the commerce of the East, even as she is now, owing to her remarkable sanitary conditions, the healthiest city in India. She is the second city in the British empire in point of numbers, having a population of six hundred thousand, and an average to the square mile exceeding that of London; nevertheless, the average death-rate for the past five years has been the same as that of London. [Illustration: BOMBAY--UNIVERSITY AND ESPLANADE.] FOOTNOTES: