210 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
in acting up to the minutest requisitions of their for- 
mularies. There are, nevertheless, many impostors 
among them who enjoy at once the reputation of 
saints, and the luxury of sybarites. They assume 
the garb of religion, but revel in every licentious in- 
dulgence with the badge of sainthood upon them ; 
and yet it is quite amazing to see the influence which 
such men obtain over a mass of deluded disciples, 
who, while they behold their dissipation, openly 
practised and avowed, still look up to them as an 
order of beings whom the Deity delights to honour. 
But perhaps, after all, if we look at home, we see 
much the same sort of thing in the profligate dema- 
gogue, who becomes the idol of a class whose thoughts 
and feelings he moulds to his own abandoned pur- 
poses ; in the fanatical sectarian, who assumes for 
himself and for his satellites the exclusive privilege of 
sinning with impunity ; and in the political empiric, 
whose fatuitous predictions are looked upon by a host 
of admiring proselytes as the oracles of legislative 
wisdom. 
