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ment made near thirty years ago, on my voyage to England in 

 the General Elliot; when 1 destroyed every letter and paper, 

 which seemed no longer of importance, and preserved a few 

 tokens of friendship and affection, from a correspondence of near 

 twenty years, passed in the country I was then leaving, at the 

 most interesting and delightful season of life. The originals were 

 deposited with my descriptive letters and drawings; and formed, 

 in my estimation, the choicest part of the collection. They were 

 afterwards rejected from the papers intended for publication, from 

 an idea of their being generally of a private nature, and in some 

 respects irrelevant to the principal purport of the publication. 

 But on further consideration, after receiving the preceding lines, 

 I resolved to make a still more limited selection from the manu- 

 scripts then preserved. It is now indeed confined to a very small 

 number of letters which passed during the lapse of a few months, 

 between the sacrifice of Baroche and the northern purgunnas, 

 and our final departure from Tellicherry to Europe. In these 

 memoirs, which are intended as a medium between the dignity of 

 history, and the hasty language of epistolary correspondence, this 

 little selection ma}' not be altogether without interest, especially 

 to those readers who have resided in India. The letters display 

 an unpremeditated and desultory portrait of the Anglo-Indian 

 character, and exhibit a warmth of heart and liberality of senti- 

 ment, perhaps not inferior to late publications of the corres- 

 pondence of celebrated individuals of both sexes in France and 

 England. I formerly inserted a few letters from my Asiatic 

 friends; these, except in one instance, are from my English asso- 

 ciates during the short period abovemenlioned. 



