The things we do!

James
Binnie of the Civil Service, a jolly young bachelor of two- or
three-and-forty, who, having spent half of his past life in Bengal, was
bent upon enjoying the remainder in Britain or in Europe, if a residence
at home should prove agreeable to him. The Nabob of books and tradition
is a personage no longer to be found among us. He is neither as wealthy
nor as wicked as the jaundiced monster of romances and comedies, who
purchases the estates of broken-down English gentlemen, with rupees
tortured out of bleeding rajahs, who smokes a hookah in public, and in
private carries about a guilty conscience, diamonds of untold value, and
a diseased liver; who has a vulgar wife, with a retinue of black servants
whom she maltreats, and a gentle son and daughter with good impulses and
an imperfect education, desirous to amend their own and their parents'
lives, and thoroughly ashamed of the follies of the old people. If you go
to the house of an Indian gentleman now, he does not say, "Bring more
curricles," like the famous Nabob of Stanstead Park.


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