Page:India—what can it teach us?.djvu/67

Rh home And while thus contributing so much to our happiness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens of the world, and servants of government, than we should otherwise be; for in our "struggles through life" in India, we have all, more or less, an eye to the approbation of those circles which our kind sisters represent,—who may therefore be considered in the exalted light of a valuable species of unpaid magistracy to the government of India.'

There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in these few words addressed to a sister whose approbation he values, and with whom he hoped to spend the winter of his life. Having been, as he confesses, idle in answering letters, or rather, too busy to find time for long letters, he made use of his enforced leisure, while on his way from the Nerbuddah river to the Himmaleh mountains, in search of health, to give to his sister a full account of his impressions and experiences in India. Though what he wrote was intended at first 'to interest and amuse his sister only and the other members of his family at home,' he adds in a more serious tone: 'Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollections, or the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of others, I believe to be true; and what I relate on my own, you may rely upon as being so.'

When placing his volumes before the public at large in 1844, he expresses a hope that they may 'tend to make the people of India better understood by those of our countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, and inspire more kindly feelings towards them.'