Even the amusements of a Bengalee Baboo are more or less anglicised. Instead of the traditional _Jattras_, (representations) and _Cobees_ (popular ballads) he has gradually imbibed a taste for theatrical performances, and native musical instruments are superseded by European flutes, concertinas and harmoniums, organs and piano-fortes. This is certainly a decided improvement on the old antiquated system, demonstrating the slow growth of a refined taste. Thus we see in almost every phase of life, at home or outside, the Bengalee Baboo is Europeanized. In his style of living, in his mode of dress, in his writings, in his public and private utterances, in his household arrangements and furniture, in his bearing and department, in his social intercourse, in his mental accomplishments, and in fact, in his passionate partiality for Western aesthetics, he is a modified Anglo-Indian. But it were devoutly to be wished that he possessed a larger admixture of the essential elements of European truthfulness of character, energy and manliness of spirit, straightforwardness in his dealings with society, nobility of sentiment, magnanimity combined with simplicity, disinterested love and sympathy, and above all, moral and spiritual elevation. FOOTNOTES: [94] It is a disreputable fact, but it most assuredly _is_ a fact, that when some years ago a teacher of the Government School of Art published a book in Bengallee on the ancient arts and manufactures of Hindoosthan, and sent a copy of it to one of these English-made Rajahs, he politely refused to take it--the price being one Rupee only--saying it was of no use to him though it was an instructive and suggestive manual. This refusal offers a sad comment on the liberality of my fellow countrymen towards the encouragement of learning. But turning from the dark to the bright side of the picture, I may perhaps be permitted to point with pardonable pride to the almost unparalleled munificence of the late Baboo Kally Prosono Singh of this City, in this respect. That distinguished patron of vernacular literature had, it is said, spent upwards of L50,000 on the compilation of Mohabharat, that grand Epic poem of the Hindoos, which says Talboys Wheeler, still continues to exercise an influence on the masses of the people "infinitely greater and more universal than the influence of the Bible upon modern Europe."