Let us not hasten to condemn our fellows of the olden time and distant land. Manners as fearfully outraging prevailed but very recently among young Englishmen. M. de Warenne, a French officer in our Indian army, describes the manners and customs there prevalent as any thing but edifying. In his “Inde-Anglaise,” he describes himself, on one occasion, as being disinclined for study, and consequently joining a party of his comrades who were at the moment occupied in an unreserved enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. They were from fifteen to twenty in number, married and single, but all young, full of hope, good prospects, and gaiety. Deep were the libations made by this riotous company, seated at a festive board in the open air, looked down upon by a brilliant moon, and gently fanned by the evening breeze.
“While the attendant servant,” says the author, “poured out, with Indian profusion, fresh supplies of tea, coffee, beer, punch, and grog, a dense vapour rose from our cigars, and joyous shouts rang from every lip at the conclusion of songs, bacchanalian and anacreontic. Toasts succeeded each other rapidly, alternately exciting the laughter or approbation of the carousers. One of them caused in me, at the time, a singular impression. A young, wild-brained fellow, in pouring out a bumper, called on us to fill our glasses, in order to sanction the strange wish of a rash ambition,—‘A bloody war, and a sickly season!’”
The blasphemous sentiment, as M. de Warenne rightly terms it, was drunk with enthusiasm; and the gay and thoughtless drinkers had yet the cup to their lips, when one of them was stricken with the cholera, the presence of which in camp was hardly known;—the next day the funeral salute was fired over his grave. The author adds, that the music played on returning from the funeral was joyously and daily hummed by the daily diminishing survivors. He says that there was a mockery in the waltzes they continued to dance; for death was also daily decreasing their orchestra. The stricken, we are told, felt themselves relieved from further anxiety, recovered their temporarily shaken self-possession, and died with indifference. The strong who lived are described as, for the most part, diverting their thoughts, outraging decency, and defying God, by composing or chanting songs whose inspiration certainly savours of hell. Here is a specimen of one of these devil’s canticles, roared over wine, to frighten away the cholera:—
I.
“We meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter,
It seems as the dead were there.
Then stand to your glasses!—steady!
We drink ’fore our comrades’ eyes;