, and makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the
Brahmanic worship and the earnest appeals of Christian missionaries.
We believe that to many of our readers the two pamphlets, lately
published by a distinguished member of the Parsi community, Mr.
Dadabhai Naoroji, Professor of Guzerati at University College,
London, will open many problems of a more than passing interest. One
is a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, 'On the
Manners and Customs of the Parsees;' the other is a Lecture delivered
before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 'On the
Parsee Religion.'

In the first of these pamphlets, we are told that the small community
of Parsis in Western India is at the present moment divided into two
parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both are equally attached
to the faith of their ancestors, but they differ from each other in
their modes of life--the Conservatives clinging to all that is
established and customary, however absurd and mischievous, the
Liberals desiring to throw off the abuses of former ages, and to avail
themselves, as much as is consistent with their religion and their
Oriental character, of the advantages of European civilisation. 'If I
say,' writes our informant, 'that the Parsees use tables, knives and
forks, &c., for taking their dinners, it would be true with regard to
one portion, and entirely untrue with regard to another. In one house
you see in the dining-room the dinner table furnished with all the
English apparatus for its agreeable purposes; next door, perhaps, you
see the gentleman perfectly satisfied with his primitive good old mode
of squatting on a piece of mat, with a large brass or copper plate
(round, and of the size of an ordinary tray) before him, containing
all the dishes of his dinner, spread on it in small heaps, and placed
upon a stool about two or three inches high, with a small tinned
copper cup at his side for his drinks, and his fingers for his knives
and forks. He does this, not because he cannot afford to have a
table, &c., but because he would not have them in preference to his
ancestral mode of life, or, perhaps, the thought has not occurred to
him that he need have anything of the kind.'

Instead, therefore, of giving a general description of Parsi life at
present, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji gives us two distinct accounts--first of
the old, secondly of the new school. He describes the incidents in the
daily life of a Parsi of