In another room there are six statues of Clive, Hastings, Cornwallis, Coote, Lawrence, and Pococke—all men who won for themselves distinguished names in India.
The upper part of the house, besides offices, contains the library and museum: the latter is open on Saturdays from eleven to three; and with the exception of the Tower, we know of no place where four hours can be more agreeably and profitably spent in the City, than in examining this rare collection. Here we see beautiful specimens of every description—Goorkha swords, Sumatra shields, and Lahore gauntlets. In another compartment we find models of Oriental manufactures: objects of natural history are also there—animals, birds, insects, and shells of the richest colours.
Here also is Tippoo Sultan’s tiger. “It is a curious piece of mechanism, displaying both the ingenuity and barbarism of the artist who produced it, no less than the ferocity of nature which could induce a prince to esteem it as a favourite toy. By turning a crank, like the handle of an organ, sounds are emitted resembling the shrieks of a man in the jaws of a tiger, while ever and anon a deeper tone is heard, intended to represent the roar of the animal.”
We find here Tippoo’s howdah, or elephant seat, together with his quilted corslet. The seat is of silver, and the bird forming the canopy is of the same material, while the eyes are said to be of precious stones. The padded shirt is said to have belonged to Tippoo Sultan; also the corslet, which is lined with blue diaper.
There are Hindoo idols of gold and silver, marble and wood, remnants of shrines and inscriptions, the very letters of which “would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.”
The Chinese curiosities are well worth examining, especially the materials for engraving, writing, and printing; nor ought the mariner’s compass to be overlooked, for we must remember that this strange nation have some claim to the invention of our “ocean guide,” though rude, perhaps, the first form may have been, and its bearings but little understood.
From the Illustrated London News, we give the following description of the paintings found in the Ajunta Caves, in India, copies of which have lately been added to the Museum of the East India Company:—“These paintings were found upon the interior walls and roofs of a series of temples, excavated out of the solid rock, situated near the Ajunta Pass, where the road from central Hindostan ascends the mural heights supporting the table-land of the Dekkan. The town of Ajunta is about 200 miles north-east from Bombay; and in a ravine amongst the hills, some four or five miles distant, occur the caves. According to Mr. Fergusson, in his ‘Memoir on the rock-cut Temples of India,’ published in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ the entrance to the ravine is nearly half a mile in width; but the ravine becomes narrower as the traveller winds up it, until it terminates in a cascade of seven falls, or leaps: the lowest is about 100 feet high, the others about 100 feet higher. Immediately below the fall the
