pestiferous atmosphere by which they are encompassed, and their reeling posture and bestial intoxication, _all_ conspire to make them "mock at sin."[84] Nor is this to be wondered at. The lives and examples of the Hindoo gods have, in a great measure, moulded the character of their followers: "Shiva is represented as declaring to Luckhee that he would part with the merit of his works for the gratification of a criminal passion; Brahma as burning with lust towards his own daughter; Krishna as living with the wife of another, murdering a washerman and stealing his clothes, and sending his friend Yoodhisthira to the regions of torment by causing him to utter a falsehood; Indra and Chundra are seen as the paramours of the wives of their spiritual guides." It is much to be lamented that the authors of the Hindoo mythology have unscrupulously held up the revels of their gods to the imitation of their followers. It is but just to observe that the more respectable classes are restrained by a sense of honor from participating with the populace in the vicious pleasures of undisciplined passions. But their implied approval of such sensual gratifications tends, in no small degree, to fan the flame of superstitious frenzy. If they do not expose themselves in the highway, they betray their concupiscence within the confines of their own dwellings. They substitute opium and bhang (hemp) for spirituous liquors, and among the females of the house, some aunt or other is the butt of their rude, unseemly satire. Their lusts and want of inward discipline, stimulated by a false religion as well as by the demoralized rules of an abnormal conventionalism, have deadened, as it were, their finer sensibilities, and generations must pass away before they are enabled rightly to appreciate their social relations and their moral and religious duties. FOOTNOTES: [84] When the late Mr. Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, visited Benares, the far famed city of holy shrines and holy bulls, during this festival, he exclaimed in pious indignation, "what disgusting scenes are enacted and frightful crimes perpetrated in the name of religion by rational beings capable of purer and sublimer enjoyments. Surely the shameless ragamuffins are the fit subjects of a bedlam." XIII. CASTE.