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she must prepare!" Her husband had written that he should come 

 in a barge to Surat bar to accompany her on shore. He did not 

 appear; but a friend of mine went on board to announce to her 

 his dangerous illness: he was then in the last paroxysm of a fever, 

 and expired in her arms! I came home a passenger in the same 

 ship with the widow and another lady, who endeavoured to allevi- 

 ate her sorrow by every tender assiduity. The name of a brahmin 

 was never mentioned at table, nor any thing relating to Hindoo 

 astrology. The anniversary of her husband's death happened dur- 

 ing the voyage, and was indeed a day of woe! 



On these singular anecdotes I do not attempt to comment; 

 many respectable characters who knew the parlies, still live to at- 

 test the truth of the prediction long before the fulfilment. If any 

 thing of the kind was permitted among the heathen nations of an- 

 tiquity, it may still exist in Hindostan, where arts and science, 

 learning and philosophy, and the sublimest poetry, were encou- 

 raged by the native sovereigns at a time when Greece and Rome 

 were involved in darkness, and Egypt herself was probably in a slate 

 of comparative barbarism. The mahomedan conquests and other 

 causes have sadly degraded, not only the philosophy and science 

 of the Hindoos, but totally destroyed the simplicity of a religion 

 which there can be no doubt was then essentially different from 

 modern brahminism. If there should still remain any of that 

 priesthood who adore God in his unity, and cherish the sublime 

 ideas then inculcated, it is perhaps not easy to determine the limits 

 of their researches, or the gifts and talents they possess. 



" Such were thy strains, Vyasa, saint and sage, 

 The immortal Berkeley of that elder age ! 



