“And so—little—Olivia—Jenkins—is actually—married? Good heavens! only think of that!” “Why, sure,” said the ensign, smiling, “there’s nothing very strange in a pretty girl getting married; but,” added he, looking hard at me, and after a pause, “I suspect you were a little touched in that quarter yourself; am I not a true diviner?” “I acknowledge it,” said I; “I did like that girl. Good heavens! and so little Olivia Jenkins is actually married!” The ensign pressed me to stay with him a week, but I was forced to decline his hospitality, and resumed my onward route the next morning. In a few days I reached Benares—Kasi, the splendid—the Jerusalem or Mecca of the Hindoo world. What a treat to look upon a picture of human existence, just as it probably was when Alexander the Great was a little chap! As I glided past the swarming ghauts, where the pure-caste damsels, the high-born Hindoo maidens, of this strange and antique land, displayed their lovely forms, and laved their raven tresses in the sacred stream; where the holy bramin and the learned pundit, seated cross-legged, marked with ashes and pigments, pattered their Veds and Purans, I felt this in all its force; whilst the blowing of the conch, or the tinkling of bells, announced the never-ending round of _Poojah_ and devotion! Here and there, the sacred Bull of Siva, and the _yoni_ and _lingam_, festooned with wreaths of lotus or chumbalie, met the eye; whilst crowded boats, jingling bylies (ruths or native carriages), armed natives in the varied costumes of India (here assembling in the common centre of religious hopes and duties), with an elephant or two half-immersed, would serve to complete the foreground of this interesting picture. Behind arose, somewhat after the manner of those congregated architectural masses in Martin’s pictures, though of course inferior in the boldness of their proportions and general taste and magnificence of the outline, the closely-wedged masses of this most curious and old-world city; the continuity of buildings occasionally broken by masses of foliage, or a cuneiform temple, with its tapering bamboo and blood-red pennon. High over all, in the centre of the city, on a natural eminence, towered the celebrated mosque of Aurungzebe, with its two lofty minarets, which command a magnificent prospect of the surrounding country. This mosque is erected, it is said, on the site of a Hindoo temple of great sanctity, which was previously desecrated by having the blood of a cow sprinkled over it. When the Mahomedans and Hindoos have a serious flare-up, the cows and pigs are pretty sure to suffer for it. The one is held in the highest veneration by the Hindoo, the other in utter abomination by the Moslem; consequently, the killing of one in a mundil, and of the other in a mosque, in pursuance of the _lex talionis_, generally constitutes the crisis of a religious dispute.