The people of India do not
seem to be sufficiently aware that any sign of parsimony in the
management of a large park or pleasure ground produces in the mind of
the visitor an unfavorable impression of the character of the owner. I
have seen in Calcutta vast mansions of which every little niche and
corner towards the street was let out to very small traders at a few
annas a month. What would the people of England think of an opulent
English Nobleman who should try to squeeze a few pence from the poor by
dividing the street front of his palace into little pigeon-sheds of
petty shops for the retail of petty wares? Oh! Princes of India "reform
this altogether." This sordid saving, this widely published parsimony,
is not only not princely, it is not only not decorous, it is positively
disgusting to every passer-by who himself possesses any right thought or
feeling.
The Natives seem every day more and more inclined to imitate European
fashions, and there are few European fashions, which could be borrowed
by the highest or lowest of the people of this country with a more
humanizing and delightful effect than that attention to the exterior
elegance and neatness of the dwelling-house, and that tasteful garniture
of the contiguous ground, which in England is a taste common to the
prince and the peasant, and which has made that noble country so full of
those beautiful homes which surprize and enchant its foreign visitors.
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