such as intoxicate themselves with Lethe, and remember not their 
former condition. When it is expostulated, is this the reward of 
an harsh and severe pupilage? Is this the elysium after a tedious 
waftage! For this will any thirst, will any contend, will any for- 
sake the pleasures of his native soil, in his vigorous age, to bury 
himself alive here? Yet this abroad and unknown is the ready 
choice of those to whom poverty threatens contempt at home: 
what else could urge this wretched remedy? For these are untrod- 
den paths for knowledge, little improvement being to be expected 
from barbarity. Custom and tradition are only venerable here; 
and it is heresy to be wiser than their forefathers; — whereby society 
and communication, the characteristic of man, is wholly lost. 
What then is to be expected here, where sordid thrift is the only 
science? After which, notwithstanding there is so general an in- 
quest, few there be acquire it: for in five hundred, one hundred 
survive not; of that one hundred, one quarter get no estates; of 
those that do, it has not been recorded, above one in ten years 
has seen his country.” 
I will not make any further extracts from Dr. Fryer’s interest- 
ing letters; nor particularize the numerous diseases, inconveniences, 
and unpleasant manners and customs which then prevailed among 
the European inhabitants of Bombay. When I arrived there, most 
things were on a pleasant medium between the evils of that period, 
and the present refined and luxurious mode of living: comfort, 
hospitality, and urbanity, then characterized the settlement: some 
of the 3munger classes thought there was rather too much subordi- 
nation and economy: no government can exist without a proper 
degree of the former, and there was no alternative between living 
