recommenced the study of the Vedas. Sacrifices were again regularly performed. Every thing reassumed its pristine state. The heavens rang with the praises of Parvati. And the gods, in return for so signal a deliverance, immortalized the victory by transferring to the heroine the name of Durga.

Suppose, then, you were in Calcutta in the month of September, you might every where witness the most splendid and extensive preparations for the annual festival of Durga. In going along the streets of the native city, your eye might be chiefly arrested by the profusion of images unceremoniously exposed to sale like the commonest commodity. On inquiry, you are told that wealthy natives have images of the goddess in their houses made of gold, silver, brass, copper, crystal, stone, or mixed metal, which are daily worshipped. These are stable and permanent heir-looms in a family; and are transmitted from sire to son like any other of the goods and chattels that become hereditary property. But besides these, you are next informed, that for the ceremonial purpose of a great festival, multitudes of temporary images are prepared. The reason why we call these temporary will appear by and by. These may be made of a composition of hay, sticks, clay, wood, or other cheap and light materials. They may be made of any size, from a few inches to ten, twelve, or twenty feet in height. But the ordinary size is that of the human stature. The only limitation is that of the form. This is prescribed by divine authority; and from it there must be no departure. Hence all are framed or fashioned after the same divine model. This, we may remark in passing, is one of the principal reasons why in India the arts of painting and statuary have for ages been stationary. These images may be made by the worshipping parties themselves, and made so small, and of substances so little expensive, that the poorest may be provided with one as well as the richest. But if the parties do not choose to make the images themselves, they can be at no loss. There is an abundance of image-makers by profession. And, alas, in a city like Calcutta, the craft of image-making is by far the

most lucrative and unfluctuating of all crafts. If there be thousands and tens of thousands of families that are to engage in the celebration of the festival, there must be thousands and tens of thousands of images prepared for it.

This explains to you the origin of the spectacle presented to your eyes in passing along the streets of Calcutta. Before, behind; on the right, and on the left ;-here and there, and every where, you seem encompassed with a forest of images of different sizes, and piles of limbs and bodies and fragments of images of divers materials, finished and unfinished, -in all the intermediate stages of progressive fabrication. But not only is the sense of vision affected; the ears too, are assailed by the noise of implements busily wielded by the workmen. You step aside, and standing at the door of an image-maker's work shop, you gaze with wonder at the novel process. You recall to remembrance some striking passages in Isaiah and other prophets, descriptive of the very spectacle then exhibited to your own eyes:-how the carpenter "heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak from among the trees of the forest ;-how he burneth part thereof in the fire, and warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, and have seen the fire; and the residue thereof he maketh his god, even his graven image ;how he stretcheth out his rule, and marketh it out with a line, and with the compass, and fitteth it with planes, and fashioneth it with hammers;-and how he then falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god." All this, and much more, in a similar strain, may now present itself with peculiar vividness to your mind. And you may remember, too, how you once thought that such passages of sacred writ had now become altogether antiquated. In your native land, you never had seen a graven image, nor a heathen temple. There all false gods, in the gross and literal sense of these terms, had utterly perished from off the earth, and from under the heavens. And it had been so long delivered from the presence of idols, and idol worship, that the mere remembrance of them had become wholly obliterated in the

minds of the great mass of the people; and but faintly and casually revived in the memory of the traveller that has gazed at the wonderful Scandinavian relics, in the roofless stone temples of the North; or at the still more wonderful Druidical remains, in the giant columns of the South. You remember, on the other hand, how, with the pliant tongue. of infancy, you had been taught to lisp that there is but one true, living God, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth"-and how you were taught to believe that the Godhead, in whom "we live, and move, and have our being," cannot possibly be "like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." And this knowledge had so commended itself to your expanding reason, and your mature reflection, that you could not well conceive how it was possible that beings in human form, and endowed with human understanding, should become so bereft of all sense as to fabricate gods of wood and stone, the work of their own hands-gods that "have mouths, but speak not; eyes, but see not; ears, but hear not; noses, but smell not; hands, but handle not; feet, but walk not; neither have any breath in their mouths." Such descriptions, you had supposed, must have special reference to times long gone by -to remote eras of ignorance and barbarism-which may figure in the pages of recondite history and hoary antiquarianism but can no longer be applicable to the present advanced and refined age;—this age, so boastful of the march of intelligence, and the earthly perfectability of man ;—this age, so vauntful of its transforming rationalism and widespreading illumination! Ah! what a shock to such Utopian reveries must be given by the spectacle now presented to your eyes, in the very heart of the metropolis of the mightiest province of the British empire! As you gaze at the busy operations of scores of image-makers, and hear all around the sounding tokens of the presence of hundreds more, how you must be forced to feel that the language of the prophets, and of the Psalmist, is not yet obsolete! How you must be amazed to find, that up to this year and month and day of the Christian era, there exists a cotemporaneous state of heathenism

and heathen image-making—and that, too, on a scale of inconceivable magnitude-precisely similar to what existed in the time of the prophets, three thousand years ago!—yea more, that so exact is the parallelism, that were you to range through the vocabulary of all languages for terms to pourtray what your own eyes behold, you could not find words or figures more aptly representative than the graphic, the almost pictorial, portraiture of the inspired seers of the house of Israel.

As you gaze at the image-makers, your thoughts pass to and fro. The recollections of the past strangely blend with the visible exhibitions of the present. The old settled convictions of home-experience are suddenly counterpoised by the previously unimagined scene that has opened to the view. Your conclusions seem for a moment to vibrate in the balance of a quivering judgment. To incline it one way or other, and thus determine the "dubious propendency," you again and again watch the movements of those before you. You contemplate their forms, and you cannot doubt that they are men. You narrowly mark their countenances; and you cannot but observe the sparks of intelligence beaming therefrom. Your wonder is vastly increased; but the grounds of your decision have multiplied too. And where can you find more appropriate terms for its annunciation, than in the bold language of the evangelical prophet:

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They have not known nor understood; for He hath shut their eyes that they cannot see; and their hearts that they cannot understand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul; nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand?"

After the abatement of the first surprise, you are impelled to address the men :-What, you exclaim, do you really believe that, with your own hands, you can, out of wood and straw and clay, fabricate a god; before which you may fall down and worship? No; will be the prompt reply, we be

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lieve no such thing. What then do you believe? We believe, respond they, that we mould and fashion only the representative image or graven likeness of the deity. How, then, come you to worship it? Wait, may be the reply, till the first great day of the feast, and you will then see how it is rendered worthy of homage and adoration.

As the great day approaches, symptoms of increasing preparation thicken and multiply all around. People are seen in every direction peaceably conveying the images to their houses. The materials for wonder-stirring exhibitions and ceremonial observances, are every where accumulating. Thousands of residents from a distance, are seen returning to their homes in the interior, laden with the earnings and the profits of months to lavish on the great occasion. At length the Government offices are by proclamation shut for a whole week! Secular business of every description, public or private, is suspended by land and by water, in town and in country. All things seem to announce the approach of a grand holiday-a season of universal joy and festivity.

Ye British merchants!-who are so often deaf to every call that does not reach you, as it rebounds from the temple of Mammon, would that ye could understand how the continuance of such a state of society vitally affects your pecuniary interests! For many days in succession, no clearances at the custom-house for lading or unlading, no tables open at the exchange or other public offices for the transaction and despatch of necessary business, no hiring of native agency, so indispensable for preparing or disposing of valuable cargoes. Your noble vessels lie motionless, lazily reflecting their shadows from the bosom of the mighty stream,-their pennons idly floating in the breeze.-Your men dispersed from want of regular employment,madly roaming over city and country on wild crusades of intemperance and vice;-contracting habits of future insubordination and misrule,—or haplessly treasuring up the seeds of incurable maladies. Apart altogether from the tarnishing of the British character, and the ruin of immortal souls, who can estimate the thousands that are thus periodically lost and consumed by