'The provoking malice and wicked fun towards Scotchmen, of comparing the pipes with the music of the natives of India, cannot be apparent to those who have never been in that country. Therefore the following attempt to convey a faint idea of the peculiar attractions of Hindoo music has been inscribed--first with the view of enlightening minds (or ears) uninstructed by experience; secondly with the view of giving point to the preceding remarks. The instruments on which native performers display their powers and skill are gongs and tom-toms, horns of different kinds, and sometimes a kind of hurdy-gurdy. I do not call to mind any others. By means of the gongs and tom-toms they mark time, and this is really the only approach (European ears being judges) to what we understand by the word "music"; but even this is so outraged by the stunning crashing noise made by these detestable contrivances, that the effect which would otherwise be produced by the regular recurrence of sounds at stated intervals is lost; while the horns and the trumpets, if such a name is allowable, and the squeaking, shrieking, wailing, grunting sounds produced by the instruments referred to, make up a _tout ensemble_ that must be heard to be imagined. Every performer plays his own tune, or rather produces a series of sounds one only more diabolical than another--if such assaults on the sense of hearing can be called a tune--on his own instrument, and every man performs in his own key. The result is the most hideous and frightful discord that can be produced. If the gongs and tom-toms are in the ascendant, the noise is deafening. If the small pipes and horns predominate, the conversation of cats in the gutter, or the howling of jackals, roving about at night, or the screaming of women and children, or all three mingled together, are simulated. A child, once very dear to me, described the effect produced on his ears by the performance of a number of native musicians in these words: "Oh, there's the crying band again!"