wretch ?" With these words he struck me, and dashed me on the earth; and when he had in this manner partly abated his rage, commanded his slaves to bind me, and cast me into a dungeon.

In the evening, Melite, having bribed my centinel, entered my prison, and informed me that she had found my letter to Leucippe, which I had incautiously dropped, but that love had overcome her anger, and that she was come to restore me to freedom and Leucippe. "How," I cried, “is it possible?" "Fear nothing," she replied, " clothe yourself in this dress of mine, and veil your face; Melanthe, the mistress of my maids, shall accompany you to the gate, where a youth waits, who will, according to my directions, conduct you to Clinia and Satyrus. Leucippe also shall be in readiness to receive you." I obeyed her directions, and put on the dress; when, having bade me a tender farewell, and given me a purse of gold, she called my guide, Melanthe, and sent me forth to liberty and love.

(To be Resumed.)

OCCUPATIONS AND CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES OF

A GRIHASTHA BRAHMIN.

A GRIHASTHA Bramin should rise in the morning an hour and a half before the sun. On getting up, his first thoughts should be directed to Vishnoo. About an hour before sunrise, he walks out of the village, intent upon a business of great importance to a man of his cast, that of attending to the calls of nature. The place is chosen with great circumspection, and decency requires of him to put off his clothes and slippers. The demands of nature being discharged, he washes himself with his left hand, which, on account of the impure use of it, is never employed in eating, nor allowed to touch the food. The number of times they must wash, and what particular parts of the body, with a kind of water and earth they must use in purifying, and many other observances which decency prevents us from enumerating, are detailed in the ritual of the Brahmins. After having attended to this business, the next use of the Grihastha is to wash his mouth. This to him is no trifling matter. The care with which he must select the small bit of wood with

which he rubs his teeth; the choice of the tree he must cut it from; the prayer he must address to the deities of the wood for permission, and many other ceremonies prescribed for the occasion, make a part of the education of the Brah mins, and are explained at great length in their books of ceremonies. The scrupulous attention with which they perform this operation every morning, with a piece of wood, always cut fresh from the tree, leads them to make a comparison very unfavourable to Europeans, many of whom altogether neglect the practice; and those who most regularly adopt it, add to the horror of the Hindoo, when he sees them rubbing their teeth and gums with brushes made of the hair of animals, after being soiled with the pollution of the mouth and saliva. Happy is he, who, after cleansing his mouth, can wash himself in a running stream. It is more salutary to the soul and the body, than any water he could find at home, or in a standing pool. An affair of so much importance is necessarily accompanied with many rites, as frivolous in our eyes as they are indispensable in their's. One of the most essential is, to think at that moment of the Ganges, the Indus, the Krishna, the Caveree, or any other of those sacred rivers, whose streams possess the virtue of effacing sin; and then to implore the gods that the bath they use may be no less available to their souls, than one of those nobler floods would be. While in the water, it is necessary to keep their thoughts stedfastly fixed upon Brahma and Vishnoo; and the bathing ends with the ceremonial of taking up hands full of water three several times, and with their faces towards the sun, pouring it out in libations to that luminary.

It has

When he comes out of the water, the Grihastha Brahmin puts on his clothing, which consists of one piece of cloth, uncut, of about a yard in width, and three yards in length. been already soaked in the water, and thus made pure from all the stains it had contracted. He then completes his dress by rubbing his forehead with a little of the ashes of cowdung, or with the paste made of sandal-wood. He then drinks a small quantity of the water which he has taken out of the river; and the remainder he sprinkles around three times, in honour of all the gods, mentioning several of them by name, with the addition of the earth, the fire, and the deities which preside over the eight cardinal points; and he

concludes the ceremony with a profound reverence to the whole circle of the gods. It would be tedious to describe the variety of gestures and movements which the Brahmin exhibits in such cases; but we may select one particular, the signs of the cross which he distinctly makes as a salutation to his head, his belly, his right and left shoulders. For after saluting all external things, he commences with the particular salutation of himself in detail. Every member has its particular salutation; even his fingers are not forgotten, as he touches them all round with his thumb. All these actions are accompanied with prayers or matras, solemnly appropriated to the occasion.

It would now seem time for the Brahmin to go home, after his leisure has been so long occupied with ceremonies but he has still a prayer to offer to the tree Ravi, consecrated to Vishnoo. He implores the tree to grant him remission of his sins; and then walks round it seven, or fourteen, or twenty-one times, always increasing by seven.. He orders dinner about mid-day; this is provided by the women, though the ordinary Brahmins value themselves on their skill in cookery. The great object here is absolute cleanliness in the preparation. Many precautions are necessary for this. The clothes of the women employed must be newly washed, and their vessels fresh scoured. The place must be neat and free from dust, and the eyes of strangers must not pervade it. While dinner is preparing, the Brahmin returns a second time to the river. He bathes again, repeating almost all the ceremonies in the same order as in the morning. But the anxious care is in returning home, lest he should happen to touch any thing on the way that might defile him; such as treading on a bone, or a bit of leather, or skin, on an old rag, broken dish, or any thing of that nature. Upon these points, however, it must be allowed, that they are not all equally scrupulous.

The Brahmin, being seated on the ground, his wife lays before him a banana leaf, or some other leaves sewed together, and, sprinkling them with a few drops of water, she serves the rice upon this simple cover, and close by it, on the same leaf, the different things which have been provided, consisting of the simple productions of nature, or of cakes. The rice is seasoned with a little clarified butter, or a kind of sauce so highly spiced, that no European palate could endure its pungency. The manner of serving

up all this would appear very disgusting to us, as it is entirely performed by the hand, unless where the women, to save her fingers, is obliged to take a wooden spoon. But this rarely happens, as the Hindoos generally love their meat cold, and their drink hot. The viands being laid before him, the Brahmin, before he touches them, sprinkles some drops of water round his plate; but whether to attract the dust that might blow over his rice, or as a sacrificial libation to the gods, I know not. But, before he puts a morsel into his mouth, he lays upon the ground a little of the rice, and the other things set before him; and this is an offering to his progenitors, and their portion of the meal. The repast is quickly finished, as in swallowing they have neither the bones of fish, nor of flesh to dread. He rises immediately, and washes both hands, although one only has been used; for the left being reserved for other purposes, as we have already mentioned, cannot even be employed in washing the right; and the lawful wife of the Brahmin can alone pour water over it for that purpose. After washing his hands, he rinses his mouth twelve times. He never uses a tooth-pick, at least he never uses one twice, thinking that none but such as are inured to filth and beastliness, could put up for another occasion a thing that had once touched their mouths, and been polluted with saliva. When the man has finished his repast, the wife begins her's, on the same leaf which had served him. As a mark of his attention and kindness, he is expected to leave her some fragments of his food; and she, on the other hand, must show no repugnance to eat his leavings.

About half an hour before sun-set, he returns a third time to the river, and goes through nearly the same ceremonies as on the two preceeding occasions of that day. He then goes home, offers the sacrifice of Homan, and reads the Bhagavata (a book written in honour of Vishnoo, metamorphosed into the person of Krishna) and other books of that

nature.

POLYPHEMUS, ACIS, GALATEA,

ONE of the most celebrated love-stories in ancient fable. Acis was a mortal, because his mother was so, though his father was the wood-god Faunus. Galatea, who loved him deeply;

and whose passion was returned, was an immortal sea-nymph, the daughter of two deities of the ocean. They enjoyed the happiness of their affection in the delightful vales of Sicily: but unfortunately it had one drawback, which was the jealous importunity of Neptune's gigantic and one-eyed son, the terrible Polyphemus. In vain the enamoured monster implored Galatea to listen to him. In vain had love softened the natural ferocity of his manners, so that he would sit whole days on the sea-coast, watching to catch a glimpse of her out of the water, while the tears ran down his dreadful face, and he was as gentle and humble as a child. The fair nymph fled but the more for refuge into the arms of the handsome shepherd. The wretched Polyphemus, looking down one day into a valley, saw the happy lovers giving way to their transport; and this sight made the load of his despair intolerable. He rent off a fragment of the rock on which he was sitting, and hurling it down, as Jupiter might do his thunder, smote his rival so as to crush him to death. Galatea, inconsolable, and unable to restore her lover to life, or render him a deity like herself, turned him into a fountain. It was after this event that we may suppose Polyphemus to have become the inhospitable and cruel wretch which he is described to be in Homer's Odyssey: and this point of view helps to throw an additional interest over his story, which always appeared to us one of the most pathetic and deeplymeaning in poetry. He was separated by his monstrous appearance from human-kind, and yet in his heart and inclinations he sympathised with them. The want of this sympathy from others made him ireful, revengeful, impious. What moral can go to the heart of things more deeply than this?

This story has been a great favourite with all men of genius. It has been touched upon with great pathos and simplicity by Theocritus, who was followed not so well by Virgil, and with much less nature by Ovid. The Italian writers are so fond of it, that they have sonnets called Polyphemic sonnets. Raphael painted a beautiful picture of Galatea triumphing on the waters, of which there are many engravings. And Handel finished the homage of the arts to it by that divine oratorio of Acis and Galatea, for which Gay contributed words not unworthy. If the reader wishes to know how the great poets have written on the subject, he should hear how Handel composed.