EVERY traveller knows the feeling of newness, the novelty of imagination, with which a foreign city is approached. As the ship expands her snowy wings, and bends onward before the gale; as the busy wharves and piers come in view, and the accustomed pilot bids you welcome to new scenes and strange forms and faces, there is an indescribable tumult of emotion in every bosom. WASHINGTON IRVING depicts it as a sort of heart-sickness to a stranger, with which, however, many pleasant and unfamiliar sentiments are commingled. If this be the predominant item in the experience of the tourist who arrives in England, or makes the continent of Europe, as the termination of his outward-bound voyage from the New World, what peculiar emotions should thrill the wanderer over a trackless ocean, when he reaches the haven, where he desires to be, in an Eastern clime? A long and weary residence upon the deep, prepares him to relish, with peculiar delight, the scenes that greet his eye on land; and if they are unlike any which he has ever before witnessed, the impression which they make upon his memory is indelible as life. We submit, as the best comment upon the truth of what we write, the testimony of an eye-witness, descriptive of the spirited and most faithful picture, which it so ably illustrates. It is the evidence of an intelligent English artist, who seems, during his sojourn in India, to have "looked on all things with a poet's eye:"

“We coasted within four leagues of the land, under easy sail, with light breezes, passing the island of Ceylon, with its thickly-wooded hills and broken line of beach, covered with tall palms and tufted cocoa-nut trees, until the whole mass dwindled into a pale speck in the distance, and was finally lost in the shadows of evening. After a most delightful sail of four days, we anchored in the roadstead of Madras, and a most imposing scene it presents to the contemplation of a stranger! The splendid edifices, and at a distance they have an appearance of extreme splendour, with their lofty verandas and terraced roofs; the tall white columns, which are seen in striking relief against a clear blue sky, and these surrounded by the broad massy fort; the lashing surf, foaming and hissing over a long unbroken line of beach, which the eye follows

nature.

until its powers of perception are baffled by the distance; the variety of barks dotting the smooth. surface of the waters, beyond the influence of the surge; the groups of dark and busy figures gathered at intervals upon the strand: - all these are objects not to be beheld with indifference by a stranger, pointing, as many of them do, to a new page in the vast and varied volume of The extent to which the city, when first observed from the offing, seems to stretch beyond the walls, gives it an appearance of vastness at once singularly unexpected and imposing. The low sandy beach, over which the violently agitated waters are continually chafing and roaring with a din and turbulence that must be heard and seen to be conceived, apparently offering an insurmountable impediment to your passage beyond the perilous barrier which they oppose to your landing; the varieties of the shipping and smaller craft, from the smartly-built fishing-smack to the unsightly catamaran; the uncouth-looking Massoolah boat, labouring along by the side of the buoyant yacht and lighter wherry-severally afford an agreeable relief to the dull uniformity of a four months' voyage."

Of the Monsoon, a representation of which forms so striking a portion of the engraving, the same author has the following graphic sketch: "As the house which we occupied overlooked the beach, we could behold the setting in of the monsoon in all its grand and terrific sublimity. The wind, with a force which nothing could resist, bent the tufted heads of the tall, slim cocoa-nut trees almost to the earth, flinging the light sand into the air in eddying vortices, until the rain had either so increased its gravity, or beaten it into a mass, as to prevent the wind from raising it. The pale lightning streamed from the clouds in broad sheets of flame, which appeared to encircle the heavens as if every element had been converted into fire, and the world was on the eve of a general conflagration, whilst the peal, which instantly followed, was like the explosion of a gunpowder-magazine, or the discharge of artillery in the gorge of a mountain, where the repercussion of surrounding hills multiplies with terrific energy its deep and astounding echoes. The heavens seemed to be one vast reservoir of flame, which was propelled from its voluminous bed by some invisible but omnipotent agency, and threatened to fling its fiery ruin upon every thing around. In some parts, however, of the pitchy vapour by which the skies were by this time completely overspread, the lightning was seen only occasionally to glimmer in faint streaks of light, as if struggling, but unable, to escape from its prison, igniting, but too weak to burst, the impervious bosoms of those capacious magazines in which it was at once engendered and pent up. So heavy and continuous was the rain, that scarcely any thing, save those vivid bursts of light which nothing could arrest or resist, was perceptible through it. The thunder was so painfully loud, that it frequently caused the ear to throb; it seemed as if mines were momentarily springing in the heavens, and I could almost fancy that one of the sublimest fictions of heathen fable was realized at this moment before me, and that I was hearing an assault of the Titans. The surf was raised by the wind and scattered in thin billows of foam

over the esplanade, which was completely powdered with the white feathery spray. It extended several hundred yards from the beach; fish, upwards of three inches long, were found upon the flat roofs of houses in the town during the prevalence of the monsoon, either blown from the sea by the violence of the gales, or taken up in the water-spouts, which are very prevalent in this tempestuous season. When these burst, whatever they contain is frequently borne by the sweeping blast to a considerable distance overland, and deposited in the most uncongenial situation, so that now, during the violence of these tropical storms, fish are found alive on the tops of houses; nor is this any longer a matter of surprise to the established resident in India, who sees every year a repetition of this singular phenomenon."