140 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
ture and ornaments. Several guns and pistols in cases, 
all of British manufacture, were placed in different 
parts of the room, the lids of the cases being open in 
order that visiters might be able to inspect the ge- 
nuineness of the instrument. 
The Rajah was a handsome man about the middle 
age ; he had quick penetrating eyes, which occasionally 
fixed upon you with such ardency of expression that 
it was painful to encounter their gaze. He had the 
character of a worthy prince, and seemed to me fully 
to ratify in his own person an apt saying of one 
of his own countrymen, “ The heart of an excellent 
man resembles the cocoa-nut, which, though hard 
without, contains refreshing water and delicious food 
within.” 
He was exceedingly attentive, and anxious to show 
us his partiality for cabinet-work made by British 
artisans, receiving our approbation with evident 
satisfaction, but was much more familiar than I 
with the names of celebrated makers in this coun- 
try of the different European articles which his taste 
directed him to procure. He had several splendid 
looking-glasses, and four or five pianofortes made by 
dementi, of whom he spoke as if that great com- 
poser had been a visiter at his court, and his High- 
ness had received instructions from him in the sci- 
ence of musical sounds. He was very proud of his 
guns, near which there were two or three highly or- 
namented matchlocks, as if to show that the native 
gunsmiths were not without taste and ingenuity in 
embellishing their arms, though they were far behind 
those of Europe in skill of construction. 
