have shown their wisdom in pursuing such an independent and manly course. The history of _Peeralee_ is thus given by Mr. Ward: "A Nabob of the name of _Peeralee_ is charged with having destroyed the rank of many Hindus, Brahmins and others; and from these persons have descended a very considerable number of families scattered over the country, who have been branded with the name of their oppressor. These persons practise all the ceremonies of the Hindu religion, but are carefully avoided by other Hindus as outcasts. It is supposed that not less than fifty families live in Calcutta, who employ Brahmin priests to perform the ceremonies of the Hindu religion for them. It is said that Rajah Krishna Chunder Roy was promised five lacks of Rupees by a _Peeralee_, if he would only honor him with a visit of a few moments, but he refused." Such was the virulence with which the caste mania raged when Hindu bigotry had reached its culminating point. Rajah Krishna Chunder Roy of Kishnaghur, about 100 miles north of Calcutta, was otherwise reputed to have been a very generous-hearted man, a great patron of learning and learned men, but he was so blindly led away by the impulse of bigotry that he unhesitatingly declined to assist a brother countryman of his who had been subjected to social ostracism through mere accident. But the Rajah's grandson, if I am rightly informed, when he had occasion to come down to Calcutta a few years back, unscrupulously took up his quarters at Spence's Hotel, and freely enjoyed the company of his European friends, indicating a healthy change in the social economy of the people, the result solely of intellectual expansion, and of the inauguration of a better era through the rapid diffusion of western knowledge.[87]