Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the face of the “Almanac des Gourmands?” IDA. Evelyn is severe. May I tell him that, among the records of the East, he will find incidents blended with this idea which may almost consecrate the creed of a Pagan. As the honey is hung close to the poisoned sting of the bee, there may be a bright spot to illuminate the gloomy annals of superstition. The very belief in _transmigration_ may impart an atom of mercy, even to an infidel; and where superstition, shorn of the light of Christianity, _must_ prevail, it were better sure to foster that notion which may, even in one little sentiment, half humanize the heart. Listen to this contrast, between some orient sects, along the eastern shores of Hindostan. The daughters of Guzzerat fold their infants to their bosoms drugged with opium; and when the babe is thus poisoned, the Hindu girl will answer with a languid and seeming innocent smile, “It is not difficult to blast a flower-bud.” Then the Kurrada Brahmins (as we read in the “Rudhiradhyaya”), believing themselves the agents of Vishara Boot, the spirit of poison, sacrifice the pundits to their vampire goddess, Maha-Lackshmi. Equally blind, yet more happy in the _nature_ of their superstition, are the Shravuch Banians, or the proselytes of Jena. The Yati, or officiating priest of _this_ order, in purifying the temples, sweeps the floor with the Raju-hurrun, a broom of cotton-threads, lest hapless one little insect may be destroyed. And this we may believe, from the creed of transmigration being influential among these people. Sir Paul Rycaut also, in his oriental history, informs us of parallel incidents among the devout Mahomedans, who, believing that in the body of a brute may reside the soul of a departed relative, ransom, with their gold, many a bird that would otherwise flutter away its captivity in a cage. CAST. I will not flout your praises, Ida; but, in our own island, this illusion has rather led _to_ captivity. I remember the story of a lady, living in Worcestershire, who, under the innocent delusion that her daughters were changed into singing-birds, hung her pew in the cathedral with cages of goldfinches and linnets. And Lord Orford, in his “Reminiscences,” thus records the monomania of the Duchess of Kendal: “In a tender mood, he (King George) promised the duchess that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The duchess, on his death, so _much expected_ the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa, at Isleworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird, or she, took the last flight.”