“As the day wore on, returning from the temple, we once more found the roads alive with men and women, most of the men wearing the Brahminical paint. There are two clearly distinct types of countenance among the people, one with narrow retreating forehead, thick overhanging eyebrows, and coarse features, the other refined and handsome, with here and there a head (for all go uncovered) which might have belonged to a Roman senator, yet distinctly not European. These last are, I suppose, of Aryan descent, the other of Dravidian. The common peasants here have all the appearance of savages, so much so that one expects to see bows and arrows in their hands. They go naked to the waist, and bareheaded, shaving the front part of the skull, but wearing their hair long behind. Nearly all the townsmen are painted with white dabs and streaks, but the Brahmins have a coloured stripe down the forehead, with a stripe of white on either side. Some of the young Brahmins are very handsome, and in their clean white clothes, with books under their arms, are in striking contrast with the peasantry.
“At Tanjore we saw yet another temple, with its colossal bull under a stone canopy. It is said to be a monolith, but is painted to imitate bronze. What interested us most was a series of portraits of Siwaji and his descendants, once rulers of the country, in a little shrine, the whole enclosure surrounded by a deep moat, and fortified, but without worshippers, and all deserted. The palace near it is still occupied by Siwaji’s descendants, dispossessed and pensioned. They are only women now who live on in this rambling place, shut up, sad remains of state greatly out at elbows. The rooms are fine. In the library they showed us some interesting Indian paintings of the last century, and an illustrated book of Chinese tortures, which we may imagine the last Rajah consoling himself with after his loss of power. It was a festival day, and we saw the pomp and glory of the little court turned out, two elephants and two camels, a dozen poor led horses, one mounted officer and twenty soldiers, aged retainers most of these, put into cast-off English uniforms.” The dispossessed Princes of India always reminded me of captive wild beasts shut up in cages, lame and diseased, and dying of their lack of moral exercise.