No people in the world exhibit so many exceptional developments of human nature as the different races occupying the eastern peninsula of India. The most impressible of races, ideas and views of life take root among them such as would find no acceptance elsewhere. Supple and pliant in their bodily frames, they are equally so in their mental and moral constitution; and upon no other race has the force of circumstance and the contagion of example so potent an influence in determining them towards good or evil. Royalty, therefore, to them, is not a mere name. It has taken such hold on their affections that it usurps the place of a religious sentiment. The person of the king is sacred. He is not only enthroned, he is enshrined. His rule may be called despotic, but it is tempered by law and by not less revered custom. He may name his successor by Will, but the Royal or Secret Council will determine whether that Will shall be carried into effect. A second king, selected, like the first or supreme king, from the royal family, is also appointed by the Secret Council. Whatever may have originally been the functions of this second king, his exercise of them appears, from incidents of the late reign, to be dependent upon the disposition of the supreme king, and his desire or disinclination to concentrate in his own person all the powers of the throne. The whole empire is divided into forty-nine provinces, with their respective Phayas, or governors; and these again are subdivided into districts under inferior officers, respecting whose administration but little that is good can be said. Every subject, even the most humble, has by law the right to complain to the king in person against any official, however exalted; and the king sits in public at the eastern gate of the palace to receive the petitions of his people.