3, himself, besides his jumma, has service as a chowkidar or watchman of the neighbouring station, for which he enjoys the advantage of drawing regularly four rupees a month. In consequence of this employment, he has to walk to his post every evening about seven and eight o'clock, to watch all night, to return in the morning, and to sleep as best he can during the day. His achievements, as a guardian of the public security, are limited to the capture of a thief or burglar, who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment; the captor himself getting a reward of five rupees. His nightly employment preventing him from tillage, he keeps a servant throughout the year, paid at the usual rate of one rupee eight annas a month, in addition to food and clothing; and during the season for piercing the date trees for their juice, he keeps an extra servant for the rather limited remuneration of six rupees for the season, and food and clothing, for these items are almost inseparable from low pay. The joint tenure of property with his brother, goes, however, no farther than common responsibility for rent and the common sharing in any profits. Thus, No. 3 himself had five cows of his own, while his brother had only three. And the salary of the chowkidar's appointment is not carried to the common account, but kept rigidly separate for the payment of the servant above alluded to, and for other incidental expenses or pleasures. The tenure by which the man holds his jumma is simply that of a resident non-proprietary cultivator, with fixed rates of rent, not liable to be ejected as long as payment shall be punctually made. The party to whom he pays rent, we shall, for the present, term the middleman of the village, holding under the zemindars, though we believe the said middleman to be nothing else than the real proprietor of the soil, if such a person can be found and defined. No. 3 was admitted by the villagers and even by himself, to be a thriving individual with cause for contentment.

No. 4 is a married man with two children, and has two small jummas, one of two rupees fourteen annas, and the other of only fourteen annas. The first jumma had originally been one of nine rupees, but the two other brothers, who shared it, had been sold up for debt to the mahajan, and had emigrated: that is, had gone off to some village distant eight or ten miles. Village history says nothing of the fate of one of them, but the other had retrieved his fortunes in a surprising way, and had become the possessor of a considerable number of date trees. No. 4 himself is tenant proprietor of the first jumma, but only cultivator, not liable to sudden ejectment, of the second. Altogether, the two jummas were not more in space than five

beegahs, with a rate of rent of about one rupee a beegah. The land is rice-land or garden, but seemingly there is not enough of both or even of one, to require all the man's energies or to repay undivided attention to culture. There are no more than five date trees, a clump or two of bamboos, and some mangoe and plantain trees, and the rice-land cannot be above three beegahs. Consequently, No. 4 falls back on the resource of day-labour for hire, and may be taken as a good specimen of the condition of hundreds of ryots.

No. 5 is, in some respects, a remarkable character. He has a jumma of only Rs. 2-8 immediately round his dwelling, represented by garden land, bamboos, mangoe-trees, beds of gourds and the like. On this he has erected three exceedingly neat and well-built houses, in which himself and wife, his old mother, and his sister, with her husband and child, all manage to live. One house is set apart for cooking, and two are for sleeping. The history of this man was that, when a minor, he had had a jumma of ten rupees thrown on his hands in a village about four miles off, which jumma he was unable to manage. He left it and came to his brother-in-law, who was then living in a village about two miles from their present residence, and the two together are now settled in their present holding as simple cultivators with leases at fixed rates, by a very substantial tenant-proprietor, who owns a considerable part of the village. This said proprietor had also engaged No. 5 himself as servant, at the usual rate of Rs. 1-8, and food and clothing, and in this capacity he takes his meals in his master's house; and as occasion requires, he plasters the earthen floor, mends the thatch, cultivates the garden, and drives the plough. The brother-in-law has a situation as dawk-runner, on a cross-country-line, and is thus destined to a twelve mile stage in one direction or the other, every day of his life. On the days when he carries the outward mail, he cooks and sleeps in a small shed belonging to the Post Office establishment, where he has to keep a distinct set of cooking things; and to add to his difficulties, he is obliged to go two miles beyond his own door every day, either to take up or to deliver his post bag. His pay is Rs. 3-8 a month, and he can run in dry weather about five miles in the hour, keeping up this rate throughout, and we have repeatedly seen him so travelling, and accomplishing his stage in about two and half hours. In this way, during the old coaching days of England, did many a guard of the Tallyho or the High Flyer go regularly every day in the year, between the metropolis and some town a hundred and twenty miles down in the country. The brothers-in-law, we must

observe, live in undisturbed amity, divide not only the proceeds of the jumma, but also the profits of their respective earnings. No qurarel had as yet arisen between the woman-kind. The families had enough to live upon, and No. 4, who evinces a high degree of intelligence, animation, and contentedness, admits that his main object in life is to add a fourth house to his dwelling next year, and so complete the court-yard.

No. 6 is one of the principal inhabitants of the village. He has a tenure of forty rupees, of which he is the real proprietor, with only one nephew as shareholder, and he a mere boy. To cultivate part of his lands, he keeps, throughout the year, two servants, one of whom has been described in No. 5, paid, and fed, and clothed as usual. These two men look after about fifteen beegahs of land between them, the proprietor keeping two ploughs and six head of cattle one of which is a milch-cow, and in the date season a third hand is employed to cut the trees and carry off the juice, at sixteen rupees for the four months and a-half, during which the trees run. No. 6 can read and write, his reading being mainly confined to books written in the Bengali character, but in the strangest possible jumble of Persian and Arabic with words of Sanskrit origin; and he can instruct his younger relation in the duties of religion. His dwelling consists of five exceedingly well-raised houses, with a wall round them, the whole having been erected by the father, who in his day had been Naib or agent of a powerful Zemindar. It was the ill-luck of No. 6, that, when his father died, he himself was still a minor, or with his credit and opportunities he might have succeeded to the office of Naib, as such tenures descend constantly as heir-looms in the service of either land-holder or of Government. As to the well-being of this individual, there can be not the slightest question, and we believe that in every decent village throughout the country, there are three or four like him.

Certainly in this village there are, for the next man lives in the same abundance and comfort. No. 7 shares a jumma of thirty-two rupees with two brothers, who live in the same enclosure or nest of houses, though not in a common mess. The houses are eight in number, all well-raised and wellthatched. No. 7 himself is able to read and write Bengali, and has a smattering of Persian, in virtue of which he had formerly held a small appointment in the office of the Sudder Ameen, while one of his brothers had been a subordinate dawk inspector, but had lost his place for the very fault into which native supervisors and inspectors of all kinds so constantly fall, i. e. collusion for a douceur with the dawk runners, and

failure to make them do their work. Still, the family are obviously well to do. Two servants maintained throughout the year, and two extra hands employed during the date season, one on twelve rupees, and the other on sixteen rupees for the whole job, as well as the possession of two hundred and forty date trees, speak plainly enough of independence and plenty. No. 7 having lost his place and having servants to work for him, it would be difficult to describe his mode of passing his life, by any other term than the native one that" he sits." It is also pretty clear to us that this man, though he has ryots under him, and pays to the Zemindar above him, and therefore to a certain extent must be termed a middleman, is yet from his very tenure, his power to dispose of the land as he may think fit, cultivating some portion by his hired servants, and leasing out other portions to ryots, a de facto proprietor of the soil.

In order to avoid, as far as possible, exhausting the patience of such readers who may have followed us thus far, we lump together Nos. 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, as having nothing peculiar to distinguish them from the mass of the villagers. They are, in fact, average specimens of cultivators without proprietary rights. Their jummas are about from seven to eight rupees respectively, though No. 9 has retained, somehow, all, instead of one-half of twenty-one rupees, the other half being claimed by his brother, who is about to bring an action for it; all these men have three houses each, and wives and children. They all depend mainly on rice, but have a second resource in their date trees: they all live from hand to mouth, and have all been in debt to a moderate extent of ten rupees or so, at some time or other. We can discern but small hope for such men either on this or the next generation, for there can be little prospect of better circumstances, where there is no time to acquire education, and no wish to learn any distinct trade.

In No. 13, we have a man of a higher stamp. His jumma is only eight rupees, but it consists of first-rate garden-land, well stocked with good fruit and timber trees. Besides, No. 13 knows both Bengali and Persian, and even Arabic, though his knowledge of this latter language is limited to ability to read the character of the Koran in the original at racing pace, without understanding it. Still, his acquirements have procured for him a place as Dawk Munshi, at an out-station, on five rupees a month, nearly twenty miles from his village. Like every decent person, who obtains service, he remits money regularly to his wife and nephew, and comes home whenever he can get leave.

In No. 14, we have an individual who, by universal consent,

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is dubbed the Murad the Unlucky' of the whole village. To his fortunes, as illustrative of the grievance and unthriftiness of some Bengali ryots, we shall devote a few extra lines. The patrimonial inheritance of ten rupees jumma was fairly divided between No. 14 and his brother, in equal portions. Separation from the common mess took place. The brother stuck to his eight rupees jumma, built three houses, and got on very fairly. No. 14 himself had learned to read and write Bengali, and being of a restless and talkative disposition, spent his time in running after service which he never got, and in visiting and living on his relations. The result of this was not far to seek. Debt and difficulties, and two marriages, soon left him no resource, but to mortgage his jumma. He had borrowed twelve rupees from a substantial ryot in his own village, and another sum of twelve rupees from a money-lender in another village. To pay off the first debt, he had been ill-advised enough to grant a mourusi or invariable lease of part of his jumma, in which he had a proprietary right, to the substantial ryot alluded to, on the understanding that the produce of the land was to pay off the interest only, and that the repayment of the principal would be made from other sources, till which unlikely event the land should not be released. The land being productive, of course liquidated the yearly interest twice and thrice over, but by the foolish agreement entered into, not an anna could go to the reduction of the principal. For the second debt, No. 14 had only given his bond in writing, but he had pledged the remainder of his land for the money, fortunately without any reservation as to interest alone. This luckless condition was still further aggravated by the necessity of paying eight rupees yearly to the Zemindar for actual rent; a moderate rate, had the land remained in his hands, but excessive when the only means of paying it was the sale of bamboos and thatching grass growing immediately round his house. This strait, of course, in a year or two more, resulted in further debts by loans from three different ryots, to the total amount of thirty rupees, and the helplessness was again increased by the death of his second wife this year, the first having died some years ago, and the necessity of looking after two children, neither of whom were of age sufficient to look after themselves. The whole case of motherless children, valuable lands recklessly alienated, further debts incurred, and no visible means of paying them off by agriculture, trade, or service, or even day labour, seems to us almost without parallel, in spite of the general indebtedness of the rural population. Things, however, mend when at the worst, in English proverbs and in Bengali experience, in the