This was cordial and gratifying. I am apt to generalize from a few striking particulars. So I set the Madrassees down at once as polished and hospitable in the extreme—a perfectly correct inference, I believe, however precipitately formed by me on that occasion. Mr. Hearty was a fine, erect, fresh old gentleman, of aristocratic mien and peculiarly pleasing address. His manners, indeed, were quite of what is termed the old school, dignified and polished, but withal a little formal; far superior, however, to modern _brusquerie_, and that selfishness of purpose which, too often disdaining disguise, sets at nought the “small courtesies” which so greatly sweeten existence. His wife, much his junior, was a handsome woman of eight-and-twenty, gay and lively, and apparently much attached to her lord, in spite of the disparity of their years. He, in fact, was one of those rarely-seen well-preserved old men, of whom a young woman might be both proud and fond. My host lived in the good old style of Indian hospitality, of which absence of unnecessary restraint, abundance of good cheer, and the most unaffected and cordial welcome, constituted the essential elements. In India, from various causes, perhaps sufficiently obvious, the English heart, naturally generous and kind, has or had full room for expansion; and the “luxury of doing good,” in the shape of assembling happy faces around the social board, can be enjoyed, without, as too frequently the case here, the concomitant dread of outrunning the constable, or trenching too deeply on the next day’s quantum of hashed mutton. Certainly, our close packing in these densely populated lands may give us polish, but it rubs off much of the natural enamel of our virtues. Mr. Hearty’s house was quite Liberty Hall, in its fullest meaning. Each guest had his bedroom, where he could read, write, or doze; or if he preferred it, he could hunt squirrels, shoot with a rifle, as my friend, the Scotch cadet, and I did; sit with the ladies in the drawing room and play the flute, or enjoy any other equally intellectual amusement, between meals, at which the whole party, from various quarters, were wont to assemble, rubbing their hands, and greeting in that warm manner, which commonly results where people have been well employed in the interim, and not had too much of each other’s company. Mr. Hearty’s house was full of visitors from all points of the compass.