The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-25 00:00:00

fIILE ENGLISH VAN IV INDI

Ab ! people at home little know the greatness of
the blessings they enjoy! A few years' exile would
make them see in a new light what they now re-
gard with the indifference produced by familiarity.
Those v ho look on the Anglo-Indian as a being who
has but few thoughts apart from the country in.
which he is doomed to spend the greater part of his
life, little imagine with what ardent yearning he
looks towards home, and how precious is everything
that reminds him of its pleasures. How often does
one of those passages that crop out so frequently in
our literature, breathing a rural sweetness and
domestic tenderness, so peculiarly English, recall
to mind happy days spent in our " ain countrie,"
when life seemed a bright vista, and we were sur-
rounded by all we loved. None but those who have
experienced it can tell what delight a description of
Nature in her most charming aspect, as beheld in
some country parts at home, gives to those
who never see her but in extremes, either endued
with a brilliant gorgeousness that palls from its
very spledour, or presenting a dreary monotony
that inevitably saddens a mind at all susceptive of her
influence. Tbose at home see the defects es well as the
beauties of those scenes we recall so fondly; we have
no such drawbacks, for memory tinged by imagina-
tion leaves in the background all that would detract
from, ard brings into strong relief-ell that enhances,
our enjoyment. Often has the writer of these
pages sat in his tent in the midst of a jungle epre, a-
ing apparently illimitably around, with an Idyll
of Tennyson's, a hawthorn breathing poem of Her-
rick's, an essay by Kingsley, or the " Country Par-
son," open before him, bringing before his mental
vision the verdant fields and heather covered hills
of his own green island, and recalling vividly to his
mind the beauty of those summer days concerning
which one of the above-mentioned authors discourses
so charmingly—one of those days when there is an
exquisite, ineffable happiness in the mere sense of
existence, when the birds sing their blightest lays,
and the skies look their brightest. Often has he
been awakened from such a reverie by the howl of the
jackal or the mournful boom of the monkey. Never
did he realise so thm oughly the exquisite beauty of
Marlowe's " Come live with me, and be my love,"
as when in the midst of forests whose hills were the
habitation of bears, and in whose thickets lurked
the snake and the wolf, the hyena and the tiger.
Not that the poem and the works alluded to would
not delight at any time, but in the position de-
scribed the sharp contrast between the ideal and
actual scenery lent a new beauty to the former,
whilst the reminiscences excited of " days that are
no more" gave a pleasure with which pain was
' strangely intermingled. Just as the untravelled
heart of the Indian exile is ever turning towards
home, and even those who are supposed to be most
devoted to the country and its pleasures, (such as
they are) never cease to look forward with impa-
tient longing to the day when they may sit at the
fondly remembered hearth with those whom ab-
sence has but made dearer.—Once a Week,.