The rajah told us that he fully intended to pass the evening of his days in England, where his beautiful daughter, with her ample dowry, will probably become the victim of some expert adventurer. Having halted two days at Benares, we proceeded through as uninteresting a country as before, passing, occasionally, a mud town or village, with the usual appendages of a small grove of trees and a few square patches of cultivation round the wells, whilst two or three hundred natives, huddled together, and squatted like so many vultures on the walls and by the road-side, watched our onward progress, and chattered their rapid jargon. Ten marches from Benares we again crossed the Ganges where it unites its polluting waters with those of the rocky and clear Jumna, and entered the cantonments of Allahabad. The fort commands a view of the two rivers as they flow onwards to their junction, immediately under its walls; but excepting these waters, the eye wanders over a continued parched and arid plain, save where a small grove of trees presents occasionally a relieving object. The festival of the Mohurrem was about to take place as we quitted Allahabad. The scenes of riot and debauchery annually consequent on this as well as other festivals, have entailed a lasting disgrace on the government of India, which not only tolerates, but actually encourages them. Nor has it scrupled to convert the superstition of the deluded natives into a substantial accession to the revenues of the country. Those who may be affected with any scruples on this subject, possibly reconcile the matter to their conscience by the disbursement of a few rupees annually for the maintenance of a handful of missionaries to convert the people of India to Christianity; but it will require something more than the present feeble efforts to accomplish that object, and possibly a little more sincerity in the authors of such an endeavour. In these modern days of toleration, it will hardly answer to follow the policy of the Emperor Julian towards the early Christians, and apply it to the Mussulman or Hindoo--as, when the emperor says, "I show myself the true friend of the Galileans. Their admirable law has promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor, and they will advance with more diligence and virtue in the paths of salvation when they are relieved, by my assistance, from the load of temporal possessions."[3]