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'Governments in India, particularly in what manner the other 'presidencies were subordinate to the Governor General of Bengal. Having endeavored so to do, the venerable Brahmin told 'me he had lived under many different Governments, and travel'led in many countries, but had never witnessed a general diffu'sion of happiness equal to that of the natives under the mild and equitable administration of Mr. Hastings, at that time Go'vernor General of Bengal. I cannot forget the words of this 'respectable pilgrim; we were near a banian tree in the durbar court when he thus concluded his discourse. "As the burrtree, one of the noblest productions in nature, by extending its branches for the comfort and refreshment of all who seek its 'shelter, is emblematical of the Deity; so do the virtues of the 'Governor resemble the burr-tree; he extends his providence to 'the remotest districts, and stretches out his arms, far and wide, to afford protection and happiness to his people; such Saheb, is 'Mr. Hastings!" Yet, this is the man who by the violence of faction, intended for patriotic zeal and conducted by a flow of eloquence seldom equalled, was arraigned for crimes the most foreign to his benevolent heart, and doomed to a trial of seven years' duration, a scene unparalleled in the annals of mankind.

"I never saw Mr. Hastings until his public appearance on that solemn occasion, and could then hardly conceive it possible, by 'any combination of ideas, or concatenation of circumstances, to 'believe that a man should be tried in his own country, for crimes 'supposed to have been committed at ten thousand miles dis'tance; among a people who not only knew his character, but 'feeling the blessings which flowed from his humane and benevo'lent heart, considered him as an emblem of the godhead."!

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Mr. Forbes also remarks;-"I have since passed one of the hap'piest days which has fallen to my lot at Daylesford, the paternal seat of this great man; where, in the bosom of his family and 'the pleasures of society, hospitality and benevolence, but above all, in the retrospective view of a well spent life, he passed the evening of his days in a state of calm delight, far beyond all the 'wealth and honors to which his country and his sovereign deem'ed him entitled. Never have I beheld otium cum dignitate more "truly enjoyed; never was I more convinced of the serenity and "happiness of mens sibi conscia recti."

Thousands of feet tread past the House of Warren Hastings in the Calcutta street which bears his name, unconscious that the tenement was built by him a hundred years ago, and still remains unaltered; while the throbs of an aroused nation's heart -bleeding from the wounds received in a frightful mutiny, like the faint tone of distant thunder, remind us of the abated storm.

Even from where we write, we can see the birds resting on the branches of that broad tree under which Warren Hastings took aim at his provoking enemy. Was it Junius who sank under that tree on the eventful Sunday morning? Was the secret of the mysterious authorship locked up in that breast which Hastings of Daylesford had covered with blood? Macaulay thought so, as all men some day will.

Harry Verelst went home to note another Clive rise up in America in the person of George Washington, to conduct the eight years' war for independence. In the midst of it commenced the Gordon Riots at home, when the fanatical mob lusting after rapine and destruction swept through the streets which had but a short time before been thronged with the solemn pageantry of Chatham's public obsequies. Then he saw the same Cornwallis fail in Virginia who was to succeed in Seringapatam and be India's Governor, while upon the seas the Spaniards and French were being conquered by Rodney. Another annual cycle of months and the British were nobly rushing from their guns in the galleries of Gibraltar to rescue their Spanish enemies from the flaming ships.

But Harry Verelst read all these signs of the times in the quiet retirement of Aston, and in the genial company of the poets Gray and Mason. A favorite bower of Gray's can still be seen as luxuriant as when the poet enjoyed its solitariness. Mason obtained the living of Aston in the year which witnessed the horrors of the Black Hole, and subsequently was made one of the Royal Chaplains, an honorable position which he forfeited at the beginning of the American War, some expressions of his on freedom giving offence at Court. Having thus slightly sketched the course of a youth from Writers' Buildings to the distinction of Governor of Bengal, then down the sunny declivity to his well-earned English home, our object is accomplished.

In December last died Charles Verelst, Esq., a grandson of the Governor. He inherited the Aston Hall property in 1852, and seemed also to inherit the estimable qualities of his ancestor, for in his praise as a scholar, a man or a friend, language can scarcely be too lavish. The present representative of the family is a youth-Harry Verelst. The old name has come round again, may it long continue as it has hitherto done-without a slur upon it.

38

ART. II.-1. Transactions of the Agricultural and Horticul tural Society of India. 1859.

2. The Bengal Hurkaru. 1860.

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TEA, like every thing connected with the East, has its traditionary associations. About the year 516 B. C., for so the Chinese story goes, an Indian devotee named Dhurma touched by the ignorance, with respect to all religious duties, of the people of the Flowery land, undertook a toilsome and perilous journey to China. Being addicted to habits of the severest abstinence, he overlooked the necessity of providing himself with that amount of food which alone could fortify him against the unwonted fatigues of so protracted an excursion. As he denied himself a sufficiency of both food and rest, it was to be expected that by the time he had reached his destination, the claims of the body should assert themselves in spite of the utmost opposition of the spirit. He lay down and fell asleep. On awaking, he was stung with remorse at having indulged the flesh, and as an expiation, he plucked out both his eye-brows and scattered the hairs upon the ground. Instantly these hairs were transformed into a number of bushy plants. Curiosity led him to taste some of the leaves, when, to his delight, he found they had the effect of imparting fresh vigour to his mind and so promoting divine meditation. So potent a devotional stimulant ought not, he thought, to be disregarded. His fame soon spread in the strange country, and his disciples were numbered by thousands; but to all who submitted to his teaching, he recommended the leaves of the wonderful tree. The tree as a consequence, was eargerly sought for and cultivated, until not only Dhurma's disciples, but the entire population of China, acquired an irresistible relish for its leaves. This was the tea. Whatever may be the nucleus around which this tradition has wrapped its folds of fable, there can be no doubt that the story was to some extent suggested by the stimulating properties of the beverage which "cheers but not inebriates." Here we are content to leave the matter, and pass on to things that are more appreciable. We may not unravel the mystery of its supposed miraculous origin; but of tea itself, its cultivation, its manufacture, and especially its use, we decidedly know more now than in the days when Lady Pumphraston boiled her green tea, and serving it up with melted butter as condiment to a salted rump

of beef, complained that nothing she could do "would make these foreign greens tender."

Valuable papers on the subject of tea have from time to time. been contributed to the Journal of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, and, more recently, the local newspapers have published interesting accounts of the present condition and prospects of the cultivation in Assam and Cachar. From these as well as other sources, we propose to bring together pretty nearly all the information that is abroad, respecting the enterprise as it has been prosecuted in the provinces just mentioned.

The tea tree was discovered in Assam by Mr. Bruce in the year 1825, or a twelvemonth after the province passed into the hands of the British Government. The Government themselves became the first cultivators; but feeling that the speculation would be more manageable in the hands of private companies whose enterprise it was deemed politic to encourage, they early withdrew from the experiment, and transferred their gardens to the Assam Tea Company. The discovery of the plant in Assam appears to have suggested the likelihood of its also being indigenous to Cachar. In the year 1834, as Lieutenant Stewart tells us, the Secretary to the Committee for Tea Culture addressed a letter on the subject to the then Superintendent of Cachar, whose reply not only corroborated the surmise expressed by the Secretary, respecting the natural fitness of the soil for tea cultivation, but announced the existence in his district of "a species of camelia, the leaves of which he had seen manufac'tured by a native from the confines of China into something 'resembling tea." But whilst the productive resources of Assam, aided by the wise administration of the local Government, were gaining rapid development under the active enterprize of numerous speculators, the forest wealth of Cachar lay wholly neglected till the year 1855, when Conoonauth, a Cacharee cooly, having seen the Assam plant, proved its identity with the luxuriant and indigenous growth of his own native hills. Since then, private capital has flowed liberally into the district, and numerous gardens have sprung up, whose commercial value will, we have no doubt, rival that of the Assam plantations, as soon as experiment and experience have helped the planters to discover, and successfully contend against, the influences that as yet retard the cultivation.

Whilst the discovery of tea in Assam was still recent, the Government organized a scientific expedition to the province, with a view to ascertain the physical condition of the plant "with reference to Geological structure, soils and climate."

The members of the expedition, after traversing the forests of the upper country, were inclined to the opinion that the plant was not, strictly speaking, indigenous to Assam, but had probably been introduced at some remote period from China. The fact that there were no tea colonies in the northern portion of the Berhampooter valley or in the Mishmee mountains, led them to conclude that the tea could not have been introduced from countries in that direction. The inference appeared natural, that it found its way into the province from the East, and ultimately from China. This conclusion was, in their view, corroborated by the existence of numerous antiquities and architectural ruins whose architraves, cornices, pilasters, and columns, some in Saracenic, some in Roman style, gave evidence of the high state of civilization that prevailed in Assam in the ancient past. This, said they, "would lead us to conclude that the luxuries of neighbouring countries (and the tea plant among the 'rest) were probably artificially introduced." That we may be at no loss to account for the way in which the tea forests came into existence, we are told :

"On reference to the map it will be seen that the plant is traced along the course of the small rivers which enter the valley from the south-east, in a series of distinct colonies; rendering it probable that the seeds have been transmitted forwards along the course of the currents. It is not necessary that the seeds should have been conveyed at once down the current of any one of these streams from a great distance into the valley, or to suppose that their vegetative principle could survive submersion in a current for any length of time without injury. It is enough that a single seed may have fallen from a Chinese caravan, near the source of one of those fluviatile ramifications which converge to the valley, on every side, over 18° Long. and 4° Lat., where it may have been deposited under circumstances favourable to its growth and propagation. A colony would thus be established, from which thousands of seeds might be annually transmitted, and although ten thousand of these might be lost, still one of them might be drifted during a flood along the banks of a stream, and deposited under circumstances favourable to the establishment of an advanced colony and so on."

Pretty and ingenious as this theory may be, there was no necessity for it. Tea-seeds serve no economic purpose either among the Chinese or any other nation, and if they came in a Chinese caravan, they must have been brought with especial view to the propagation of tea in Assam. If they were brought with that express view, it is not necessary to suppose that the forests of Assam originated in the accidental falling of one or many seeds from the caravan. A more likely deduction would be, that these forests had been artificially planted. But the truth is, there is every reason to believe that the tea is indigenous to Assam. If it grows wild in Cachar, Munnipore, Sylhet and Tipperah, surely we need not contend for its artificial in

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