“Well,” said Marpeet, “I think I shall start for the Upper Provinces, and leave you sooner than I thought. The lads there in the old corps are very anxious to have me amongst them once more. I have a letter to-day from Tippleton—an old friend of mine, who is a real good fellow, with no nonsense about him (I hope to bring you acquainted some day)—urging my going up without delay. Let me see,” said he, feeling his pocket, “I think I have it somewhere about me. Oh, yes, here it is, and you may read it, if you like. He is rather fond, you will perceive, of the Hindoostanee zuban, and so forth, but he does not set up for a great scribe, but is what is better, a devilish honest fellow. Come governor, toss off your heel-taps, and take some more wine.” Every language has, probably, terms which, from their superior terseness or euphony, express more fully the meanings they are intended to convey than corresponding words in another tongue; and this certainly justifies their adoption. But there is also a practice of using foreign phrases indiscriminately, when the native ones would do quite as well. Shortly after the last peace, novel-writers could express nothing with point and effect but in French and Italian; so in India there are a class of men, generally small wits, who interlard their conversation with Hindoostanee words and phrases; these they often sport in England, where of course they are unintelligible and out of place. Ye guardian genii! who watch over the “well of English undefiled,” whilst you admit what will purify and sweeten, prevent its unhallowed pollution from garbage thrown into it by every idle and thoughtless hand! And now for Captain Tippleton’s letter, which though rather more fully charged with Hindoostanee terms than any the writer ever met with, yet presents some likeness of a certain species of Indian epistolary style (of the slip-slop and slang-wanging order):— Grillumabad, Aug. 18— MY DEAR MARPEET,