ine, now no more, Captain Medwin, was once looking with
me at a beautiful landscape painting through a glass. At last he put
aside the glass, saying: 'You may say what you like, S--, but the
best landscape I know is a fine black partridge[3] falling before my
Joe Manton.'

The following lines of Walter Scott, in his _Rokeby_, have always
struck me as very beautiful:-

As yet the conscious pride of art
Had steel'd him in his treacherous part;
A powerful spring of force unguessed
That hath each gentler mood suppressed,
And reigned in many a human breast;
From his that plans the rude campaign,
To his that wastes the woodland reign, &c.[4]

Among the people of India it is very different. Children do not learn
to exercise their powers either in discovering and robbing the nests
of birds, or in knocking them down with stones and staves; and, as
they grow up, they hardly ever think of hunting or shooting for mere
amusement. It is with them a matter of business; the animal they
cannot eat they seldom think of molesting.

Some officers were one day pursuing a jackal, with a pack of dogs,
through my grounds. The animal passed close to one of my guard, who
cut him in two with his sword, and held up the reeking blade in
triumph to the indignant cavalcade; who, when they came up, were
ready to eat him alive. 'What have I done', said the poor man, 'to
offend you?' 'Have you not killed the jackal?' shouted the whipper-
in, in a fury.

'Of course I have; but were you not all trying to kill him?' replied
the poor man. He thought their only object had been to kill the
jackal, as they would have killed a serpent, merely because he was a
mischievous and noisy beast.

The European traveller in India is often in doubt whether the
peacocks, partridges, and ducks, which he finds round populous
villages, are tame or wild, till he asks some of the villagers
themselves, so assured of safety do these creatures become, and so
willing to take advantage of it for the food they find in the
suburbs. They very soon find the difference, however, between the
white-faced visitor and the dark-faced inhabitants. There is a fine
date-tree overhanging a kind of school at the end of one of the
streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of
the baya birds; and they are seen, every day and all day, fluttering
and chirping about there in scores, while the noisy children at their
play fill the street below,