Echoes From Old Calcutta Being Chiefly Reminiscences of The Days of Warren Hastings, Francis, And Impey.

The author reveals that Calcutta, frequently designated one of the most commonplace, is, in reality, one of the most interesting cities in the world; and it is not the less interesting because so many of those Europeans who have sojourned there have been only temporary residents whose local footprints have soon been covered up, but who trod the Asiatic stage in the heyday of their youth or ambitions, and then retired, perhaps to make greater reputation or to figure on a wider stage elsewhere. The writer has never failed to find in its pages both a romance and an inspiration: a romance, because with the early days of British dominion in Bengal were interwoven the fortunes of famous men and women as remarkable for the vicissitudes of their lives as for their talents—an inspiration, because your stimulating narrative must have tempted scores of others, as it tempted him, to explore those obscure but prolific strata of the past from which you have extracted so rich a spoil. It has also been more liberally illustrated, and furnished with an index and chronology.