[2] Necessary truths multiply on us very fast. "We maintain," says Mr Whewell, "that this equality of mechanical action and reaction is one of the principles which do not flow from, but regulate, our experience. A mechanical pressure, not accompanied by an equal and opposite pressure, can no more be given by experience than two unequal right angles. With the supposition of such inequalities, space ceases to be space, form ceases to be form, matter ceases to be matter." And again he says, "That the parallelogram of forces is a necessary truth;" a law of motion of which we surely can conceive its opposite to be true. In some of these instances Mr Whewell appears, by a confusion of thought, to have given to the physical fact the character of necessity which resides in the mathematical formula employed for its expression. Whether a moving body would communicate motion to another body—whether it would lose its own motion by so doing—or what would be the result if a body were struck by two other bodies moving in different directions—are questions which, if they could be asked us prior to experience, we could give no answer whatever to—which we can easily conceive to admit of a quite different answer to that which experience has taught us to give.
[3] Travels of Kerim Khan; being a narrative of his Journey from Delhi to Calcutta, and thence by Sea to England: containing his remarks upon the manners, customs, laws, constitutions, literature, arts, manufactures, &c., of the people of the British Isles. Translated from the original Oordu—(MS.)
[4] Shalwarlek—"tight trousers"—was a phrase used, under the old Turkish régime, as equivalent to a blackguard.
[5] The Moslems, and other natives of India descended from foreign races, are properly called Hindustanis, while the aborigines are the Hindus—a distinction not well understood in Europe. The former take their name from the country, as natives of Hindustan, which has derived its own name from the latter, as being the country of the Hindus.
[6] Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain, by Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee of Bombay, Naval Architects. London: 1841.
[7] Many of our readers must have seen the beautiful ivory model of this far-famed edifice, lately exhibited in Regent Street, and now, we believe, in the Cambridge University museum. It is fortunate that so faithful a miniature transcript of the beauties of the Taj is in existence, since the original is doomed, as we are informed, to inevitable ruin at no distant period, from the ravages of the white ants on the woodwork.
[8] These sacred footmarks are more numerous among the Buddhists than the Moslems—the most celebrated is that on the summit of Adam's Peak, in Ceylon.
[9] Most of the principal cities of India, in addition to the ancient name by which they are popularly known, have another imposed by the Moslems:—thus Agra is Akbarabad, the residence of Akbar—Delhi, Shahjehanabad; and Patna, Azimabad. In some instances, as Dowlutabad in the Dekkan, the Hindu name of which is Deogiri, the Mohammedan appellation has superseded the ancient name; but, generally speaking, the latter is that in common use.
[10] "So called from Kali, the Hindu goddess, and kata, laughter; because human victims were formerly here sacrificed to her."
[11] From the sanctity attached by Oriental ideas to the privacy of the harem, it is a high crime and misdemeanour, punishable by law in all Moslem countries, to erect buildings overlooking the residence of a neighbour. At Constantinople, there is an officer called the Minar Aga, or superintendent of edifices, whose especial duty it is to prevent this.