244

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XVIII.

1 ( 191 .

course with allusions to the mythological stories of Ovid. TheBrahminical metempsychosis is represented as an article of theMussulman creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn them-selves with their husbands after the Brahminical fashion. Thisdrama, once rapturously applauded by crowded theatres, andknown by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies, is now for-gotten. But one noble passage still lives, and is repeated bythousands who know not whence it comes.*

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny ofthe East India Company, that body had a great sway in theCity of London. The offices, which stood on a very small partof the ground w'hich the present offices cover, had escaped theravages of the fire. The India House of those days was a buildingof timber and plaster, rich with the quaint carving and lattice-work of the Elizabethan age. Above the window's was a paint-ing which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing on thewaves. The whole edifice was surmounted by a colossal woodenseaman, who, from between two dolphins, looked down on thecrowds of Leadenhall Street.** In this abode, narrow andhumble indeed when compared with the vast labyrinth of pas-sages and chambers which now bears the same name, the Com-pany enjoyed, during the greater part of the reign of Charlesthe Second, a prosperity to which the history of trade scarcelyfurnishes any parallel, and which excited the wonder, the cu-pidity and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealthand luxury were then rapidly increasing. The taste for thespices, the tissues and the jewels of the East became stronger

Addison’s Clarinda, in the week of which she kept a journal, readnothing but Aurengzcbe: Spectator, 323. She dreamed that Mr. Froth layat her feet, and called her Indamora. Her friend Miss Kitty repeated,without book, the eight best lines of the play; those, no doubt, whichbegin, “Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.” There are not eightfiner lines in Lucretius.

** A curious engraving of the India House of the seventeenth century■will be found in the Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1784.