“Who is the gentleman?” said Miss Belfield, as we sat at tea in the evening, “from whom you had the letter this morning, and to whom we are indebted for all this fine fruit?” “Why, Colonel Bluff,” said her brother, “an old fellow-campaigner of mine, a very rough subject; ‘and though he is my friend,’ as Mr. Dangle, in ‘The Critic,’ says, I must acknowledge, a very eccentric and far from agreeable character.” “Oh! pray describe him fully,” said his sister: “I like much to have an eccentric character delineated, for, in this age of refinement, men have become so very much like one another, that a person marked by any peculiarity is as enlivening as a rock, or other bold feature, to the sight, after having been long wearied by the monotony of a low and level landscape: do, pray, give us a sketch of him.” “Well, then, the colonel is a stout, sturdy John Bull, underbred and overfed, combining with the knock-me-down bluntness of that character, as it once existed more strongly than at present, and a double allowance of all his ordinary prejudices, the _gourmanderie_ and frivolity which an idle life in India is too apt to engender in the very best of us. “He reverses the rule, that we ought to eat to live, for he lives to eat, and much of his time is occupied in devising dishes, or superintending his farm-yard, educating his fat China pigs, and looking after his tealery, and quailery and sheep. “He has a constant supply always pouring in for him from Calcutta, of exotic and expensive luxuries—beer, champagne, pine cheeses, Yorkshire hams, Perigord pies, pigs’ cheeks, and the like—of which he is certainly liberal enough; for no prince can be prouder than he is when at the head of his table, making his gastronomical displays; in short, he greatly prides himself on the surpassing excellence of his breakfasts and dinners, though those who partake of them must often, as their price, submit quietly to all his coarseness and brutality of manner. Folks in India do not generally trouble themselves much about English politics; at least, not so far as to identify themselves strongly with the sects and parties which are everlastingly worrying each other at home, and who remind me of vultures and jackals here over a carcase. “Colonel Bluff is, however, an exception to the rule, and has always set himself up for a great church-and-king man, and a violent high Tory, delighting in talking of such subjects. He is a terribly violent fellow, and when excited by a few glasses of wine, pounds the table, and makes the glasses dance again, as he denounces all Whiggery and Radicalism. “With all his faults, however, and he has more than an ordinary share, he possesses a good deal of Miss Hannah More’s standing dish, ‘good-nature’ (provided he has everything his own way); and, indeed, but for this redeeming trait, he would be utterly unbearable.” [Illustration: Col. Heliogabalus Bluff and Orderly.]