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I shall never forget the first night we spent in Kandy, not if I live to the age of old what's-his-name. On one side of our miserable hut was a Buddhist Temple with about half-a dozen holy elephants in it, and what must the wretched heathens do but beat great drums, called Tom-toms, and blow a sort of Bagpipe all the blessed night long. It was their new year, so I suppose the elephants was a keeping their Christmas holidays. There never was such an unearthly noise as they kicked up, except perhaps in the incantation scene in De-Freyschutz. Sleep was out of the question, so I had the felicity of walking in the verandah during the night, occasionally going in to quiet the children. In the morning that nuisance was succeeded by another as bad, for on our other side was a nasty, little papistical chapel, and it being some great festival of the Romans they had a succession of singing all the day long, interspersed with a second edition of the Tom-toms and bagpipes, when the elephants had their dinner. Had it been fine I should have strolled out and quiet, but no, as if to try my temper it set in a regular soaking day. None of your April showers: none of your watering-pot sprinklings, but a regular Falls of Niaggarum. It rained shower-baths. Half the tiles on our roof were broken, so we had a dozen or two of private water spouts inside the house, which amused me during the day in placing pots, pans and cocoanut shells to catch the rain in. Fancy my situation! But you can't fancy anything half so full of despair. Dodging between the loose cattle in Smithfield on a rainy day, with pantaloons and pumps on, would have been comparitively, an agreeable recreation! There was the chapel a singing, the drums and bagpipes a coaxing the six elephants to eat their broth, the rain a pouring like horse beans on the roof, with an occasional gust of wind taking off another tile, my wife grumbling, the young ones crying and asking for dinner, the black servants hollowing like mad things, an I, poor "pill garlick," trying to keep our bed dry by sitting on it with an umbrella over my head.

On the third day after our arrival in Kandy I received an epistle from my superintendent, Mr. Trunk, and as it sets forth some of the difficulties of a Planter's Life, and is, moreover, a curious specimen of Anglo-Portugese li terature I'll e'en give you a copy of it:

Jungle, Tuesday.

HONER'D SIR-May I take the freedom to state you with these few lines and hoping you would excuse me. On the 29th inst. after four days hence, I was arrived at this Jungle to be commanding on your estate and hoping to find the Malabars and others all ready to me to commence my office no May 1st hut to my excessive indignation no peoples is come and I am so perplexed Sir, that vengeance itself is as nothing still I have no mens como and that is a very great botheration to me therefore, will you have the goodness to inform to my notice how I may act: els that I may be able to procure some more Malabar and Chingalee peoples by proper time and to keep

it ready. Will you be accepted that I go some time and git the best mens because I am fráid we shall not pit our lines or huts ready prepared to abode our labors in and that will also be a very great botheration and very crushing to me. Howbeit have you got the requirable impliments for the ser. vice of our branch, if are not ready to commence with our work, please send down to Colombo to bring on first opportunity, the principle thing are the tools, &c. that we require to carry on opperations for the present. If we de not git these it will put a bad stop on everything. I have never been in this place before, shall stop for 2 days for your answer and then go for labors: if anything do not pervent me.

Í remain to be, Sir,

Your most obdt. humble servant, LEONALDUS FRANCISCO LUDWIG TRUNK.

time in procuring laborers, for In three days after, our carts

Of course I told him to lo è no the rains were coming fast npon us. arrived and I was glad to make another start for the woods and leave our wretched abode, for which, by the bye, we had been paying at the rate : of £5, a month! Away we went again, but this time along a safe road and in a quiet bullock carriage, called a hackery; our long train of carts followed us reminding me of the Caravans going across the desert in the Ara bian Nights. Nothing occurred worthy of notice beyond a few quarrels among the drivers, and now and then a stupid bullock insisting on laying down in the middle of the road. We stopped that night at a Rest House about half way, and started again at peep of day, fresh as larks, Mrs. B. and I much elated at the idea of being so near our "clearing." By noon we had gone over all the carriage road and came to a halt at a little bungalow where there was a newly cut pathway striking off into the forest and hilly country. Here we halted for rest and breakfast; if hard rice and tough buffalo flesh could be so called. But to us every thing was new, and the bare idea of eating in a real Indian hut was sufficient to have made us relish even f stewed top-boot, or a silk hat fricasseed. I even began to faney myself sort of modern Coffee Robinson Crusoe, and when I looked at my double barrel'd Manton, almost wished the natives would rise against me en masse1 While endeavouring to gulph down our rice with the aid of a little brandy and water I received a note froin my man Friday, alias Mr. Trunk, to the effect that a dwelling was prepared for me and that the bearer would act as guide. He had sent coolies without number, for our traps, so loading them with our most precious moveables and starting them off, we jogged leisurely on, under the shade of thick, lofty forest trees, leaving the rest of our things for the next day. It would have been a subject for Rubens to have seen our little party tramping it along, the children carried by coolies, my wife loaded with the jewel box and bundle of walking sticks, while I perspired

under the weight of a double barrel'd gun, a telescope, a flask of gunpowder, a writing case, a bottle of brandy and drinking horn, and a parcel of german sausages as a stand by. I had on a most picturesque suit of scarlet and yellow plaid, fancy gaiters, a shovel-shaped black and white straw hat with a brim ample enough for a donkey race round it. With the above and a huge talipot leaf over my head I looked, as Sam Weller had it, "a reglar picter card." After a trudge of two miles over stones, streams, &c., and knocking our toes against stumps of trees all the way, we were glad to pull up under shade and lighten my brandy bottle with the aid of a little brook. By the time we had made half a dozen such halts we came in sight of what appeared to be a roof, and in another minute desired Mr. Trunk, segar in mouth, and surrounded by thirty coolies. It was then, standing on an elevated piece of fallen rock, that I took a sweeping survey of the dark forest before me, breaking out into the most extatic raptures at the prospect, it was then that I saw the striking likeness to Epping Forest, and it was then that the name of my estate was for ever decided!

In another five minutes we were all at the door of our "Bungalow" glad enough to be "at home," as my wife, woman-like, immediately called it, What our Home is like, what “ my Estate" is like, what the views are like, what my coolies are like, and in short what "Life in the Jungle" is like, I really must defer until I again take up my "grey goose quill" as Shakespeare has it. And so good bye, and when you've nothing better to do, just think of the Backwoods of Ceylon, and

SKETCHES OF MEN AND THINGS.

BY THE EDITOR.

-000

"A chiel's amang ye takin notes,

An faith he'll prent_it."

No. 6.-Bedlam.

THE FEMALE WARD.

BEDLAM-what a mass of misery and woe-what a long train of fearful men and things is comprised in that one word! Were is not too dreadful for mortal ken, it might we wished that the records of that melancholy prison-house were opened to the whole world, to read the heartless, the avaricious, the bigoted, and the deceiver, lessons of piety and love. What dark tales could these cold walls tell! What suffering, sorrow and despair have been entombed within their precinths. How many young and gentle hearts that have begun their career strong in hope and love, have been blasted i' the bud, and have gone down to early graves in this abode of woe, unknown, unpitied, unwept! How many noble minds warm with the glorious son of youth and genius, have been wrecked upon some false rock, and hurried though these gloomy portals to dreary maddening solitude, where they have thought and thought until the very power of thinking has passed from them, and insanity has left them mere intellectual petrefactions! But to bare such a mass of misery to the hun an eye would be too much. Men would turn away loathing and disbelieving. Never theless some faint outlines of the picture may be given; some few rays of light may be shed upon the dreary midnight within.

It was a fair and cloudless day in summer, when I paid a visit. to the melancholy but noble building from which this paper takes its title-Bethlehem. Hospital, or as it is familiarly termed, Bedlam. The sun shone gaily and brignty upon its white pillars and its dome, and threw out in bold and sombre relief the massy walls and the dismal iron gratings of the windows. The trees were green, the flowers were shedding their sweetest perfumes, aud the birds chirped merrily in the shrubs: the lawn was neatly trimmed, and the gravel-walks were clean and smooth, while the little porter'slodge seemed more than usually comfortable and quiet. Without the walls, the busy, happy world passed heedlessly along, in one continued hum of life and hope, as though such things as care and woe were not. The rich and the great rolled carelessly by in their gaudy equipages: the young and the healthy tripped gaily past; the student and the merchant sped onwards, cautiously and thoughtfully, deep in their several pursuits: but a few feet of ground and a stone wall intervened, and yet, perhaps, not one of

two

the many passers by gave a thought to the sufferings of their fel low-mortals within. Or, if upon some still summer evening, the passing breeze brought with it the low moanings and the deep toned wails of idiotic and maniac misery, perhaps one or idle stragglers would pause before the great iron gates and give a long stare of curiosity at the heads of the madmen visible through the gratings of the long dark windows: for a moment pity may have stolen across their feelings, but a gay carriage rolled by and they forgot all about "the poor mad-people."

A feeling of dread almost approaching to awe, came over me as I passed the spacious hali and ascended the wide marble staircase of Bedlam. From the apartments of the Matron of the Hospital, that lady conducted me through a long stone passage to the fe male ward; the first portion of this was quiet in the the extreme. Such a calm, systematic activity reigned around, that one would have thought it had been some well-regulated school. The inmates were in spacious and airy rooms, variously occupied, according to their tastes and acquirements. Some were sewing, some knitting, some making little fancy articles, and others reading and writing: but all apparently in the full possession of their faculties. These were such as were but partially insane, or only so at certain intervals; and a few of them had nearly recovered and were to be discharged in a short time. From this we passed on to gloomy and noisy part, where we found the decided, thought not violent cases. These parts had communications with the gardens at the back, which were laid out in different ways. Neat Howergardens were allowed the orderly ones, while those of a troublesome disposition were confined to gravel walks with rather high walls, and the violent maniacs were only occasionly allowed a stroll in small square yards with very lofty walls surmounted by iron spikes.

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When we entered the second division of the ward several of the hapless females ran up to us, laughing and making grimaces, and took hold of our hands, chattering away like a troop of monkeys, and quite as harmless. We descended a wide staircase into the gardens where there were great numbers of patients variously occupied. One was walking rapidly about as though engaged on most important business: another was standing stock still in the centre of a grass-plot, watching the guats in the air with true spanish gravity: a third was seated in a corner deeply immersed in a small boak. Others were walking arm in arm, or rung chases, as merrily as though they were school girls just freed from their lessons. In short nearly all appeared to be lively and gay: there were but very few of a melancholy cast, such by the way are generally the most difficult to cure.*

At least one half of the female cases are caused by love, while with men drunkenness is the chief reason; disappointed ambition stands next, and love last in the list. The proportion in which the professions furnish patients to Bedlam is as follows. Merchants and Tradesmen 60: othcers, naval and mi litary, 50: Clergymen and landed proprietors 30: Lawyers 20: Medical men 10