Politics, The Occurrences Of The Day, Living
Characters, Classical Reminiscences, French, English, Italian And German
Litterature, Afforded Us An Inexhaustible Variety Of Topics For
Conversation:
And the profound local knowledge that Mr Sismondi possesses
of Italy, of its history and antiquities, renders his communications of the
utmost value to the traveller.
Our supper was prolonged to a late hour and
I question if the suppers and conversations of Scipio and Atticus, those
nodes caenaeque Deum[100] were more piquant or afforded more variety than
ours. Shakespeare, Schiller, Voltaire, Ariosto, Dante, Filangieri, Michel
Angelo, Washington, Napoleon, all furnished anecdotes and reflexions in
abundance.
The last evening that I passed here, two families of Pescia came in. One of
the gentlemen was a great reader of voyages and travels, and India suddenly
became the subject of discourse. As I had passed six years in that country,
during which time I had visited the three Presidencies of Calcutta, Madras,
and Bombay, having ascended the Ganges as far as Benares, having visited
the Mysore country and Nizam's territory, having sojourned three weeks
among the splendid and magnificent ruins of Bijanagur or Bisnagar, having
travelled thro' the whole of the Deccan from Pondicherry to cape Comorin,
besides having traversed on horseback the whole circumference of Ceylon and
across the whole island from East to West by the Wanny, I was enabled to
furnish them with many an anecdote from the Eastern world, which to them
was a great treat, and I dare say at times my narration appeared almost as
marvellous as a story in the Arabian Nights, particularly when I related
the various religious ceremonies, the grim Idol of Juggernaut, the swinging
to recover cast, the exposure of old people to the holy death in the
Ganges by stopping up their nose, mouth and ears with mud, and placing them
on the water's edge at low tide in order that they should be swept off at
the high water; the holy city of Benares; the magnificent remains of
Bisnagar; the splendid Pagodas of Ramisseram; the policy of the Bramins;
the appalling voluntary penances of the Joguis or Fakirs as the
Europeans call them; the bed of spikes; the arm held up in the air for
fifteen years; the tiger hunt; the method of catching the elephant in
Ceylon; the pearl fishery; Sepoy establishment; in short I must have
appeared to them a Ulysses or a Sindbad, and I dare say that they thought I
added from time to time a little embellishment from my imagination, tho' I
can safely and solemnly aver that I did not extenuate nor exaggerate any
thing, but simply related what I had myself seen and witnessed.
Mr Sismondi is under a sort of banishment from his native country Geneva in
consequence of the side of the question he took in his writings on the
return of the Emperor Napoleon from Elba. It was indeed natural for the
restored government (the Bourbons) to desire the removal from France of a
man of talent who had exposed their past and might scrutinize their future
conduct and wilful faults; but why the Government of Geneva should espouse
their quarrel and visit one of their most estimable citizens with
banishment for opinions not at all connected with nor influential upon
Geneva, appears to me not only absurd and anomalous, but unjust in the
highest degree.
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