raise to spread and to perpetuate his
name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises
triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air
amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made,
to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.

While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet
of water, and upon all the noble works around me, I thought of the
charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the
total want of _public spirit_ among them, by those who have spent
their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy
commercial establishments of our great metropolis.

If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of
individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of
enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the
world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To
live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits
conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the
study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in
his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this
world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are
benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.

According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that
falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by
them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls
in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral
libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted
for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything
judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow
creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the
Deity.

In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find
our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit-
trees, with wells of 'pakka' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great
expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us
ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our
followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford
us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid
plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise
from the _noble public spirit_ th