180 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
superstitious usages as the natives of India. Perhaps 
there is no part of the world where the sculpture is 
more exquisitely wrought, and at the same time 
scattered with such lavish profusion over the building 
without the least confusion or violation of good taste. 
When the Brahmin reached Juanpoor, he found to 
his mortification that the Mohammedan had just 
quitted it ; and he could gain no further information 
respecting him than that he had been for a few weeks 
on a visit to a wealthy relation, who, when question- 
ed upon the subject of the abduction of the Hindoo’s 
wife, did not appear to think it necessary that he 
should satisfy the anxious inquiries even of an in- 
jured husband, and refused to make any com- 
munication respecting his relative. The devotee 
turned from him with a bitter malediction and re- 
turned to Benares, whence, after a short sojourn, in or- 
der that he might fortify his spiritual temper after 
this additional shock of disappointment, by making 
his humble offerings in some of her more celebrated 
temples, he departed for the south, whither he arrived 
with a macerated frame but chastened spirit, after an 
absence of upwards of two years. 
The miserable man reached the abode of his former 
happiness just at the setting in of the monsoon ; he 
soon however abandoned it for a solitary hut in the jun- 
gle, where he shared it with the owl, the bat, and the 
toad. The rains set in with extreme violence ; and 
though the almost roofless hovel in which he had sought 
shelter scarcely shielded him from the inclemency of 
an unusually tempestuous season, he nevertheless 
rigidly denied himself every comfort, and remained 
