42 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
mighty God gifted his creature with the power of 
adorning his works, and nowhere has that power 
been so transcendently displayed as in the eastern 
world ; it is indeed most marvellously conspicuous in 
those prodigious evidences of the derivative energies 
of the human mind from the great Fountain of Om- 
nipotence which so eminently adorn this beautiful 
country ; man has here fully shown that he is 
“ The paragon of animals.” 
But while we behold such undeniable tokens of 
human greatness, we cannot at the same time but 
sigh to perceive that the marks of human ferocity 
are equally conspicuous ; ruin and devastation too 
frequently meet the eye, and wring from it the tear 
of bitter sympathy, as the fierce passions of man’s 
heart are forced upon our reluctant contemplations by 
the wrecks of what was once most noble and mag- 
nificent in art, scattered in crumbling ruins by the 
iron hand of war, and which are everywhere so sadly 
exhibited to the observation of the traveller. The 
houses in Trinomalee are all in a most dilapidated 
state; there are consequently very few inhabitants, 
and those are of the lowest class. The pagoda is 
extremely grand, and once contained much trea- 
sure ; Kummer-ul-dien Khan, Tippoo Saib’s com- 
mander-in-chief, is said to have plundered it of a lac 
of pagodas at the commencement of the war, and to 
have made a dreadful slaughter of the inhabitants of 
the town. Many of the Bramins were unmercifully 
massacred; their temple was most wantonly dese- 
crated ; cattle were stalled within the hallowed pre- 
