“We were taken to-day to see the Shiah Madrasa, a poor little place, where seventy pupils, men and boys, are taught religion, logic, and arithmetic up to the rule of three. I was begged to examine them, and asked who was the Mogul leader who had sacked Bagdad, but was told that no one knew history. Then I put the problem of the herring and a half costing three half-pence, and six boys, on slates, worked out the problem, two correctly.
“_18th Jan._--We went out in the morning to see the Hoseynabad Imambara, which is certainly the most beautiful thing in Lucknow, though less imposing than the great Imambara. Here we took off our shoes, which pleased the Rajah greatly, and at his suggestion we refused the wreaths offered us by the guardian, this on the ground that, it being a charitable endowment, the money spent on these wreaths given to English visitors was misspent. The way in which this endowment is misappropriated is astonishing. The guardian is a Hindu, appointed by the English trustees with a salary of four hundred rupees a month, and quite recently they have spent £10,000 on building a ridiculous clock tower as a memorial to Sir George Couper, the man most hated by the Mohammedans of Lucknow. These are the things that bring the English name into contempt.
“Prince Mahdi Ali called again and one or two others, but there seem to be few Mohammedans here who know English, except among the younger men, and these did not come to the house. In the afternoon, however, they came to the meeting. We talked with the Rajah about the land assessment, and he gave us the following as the proportion between the ryot, the Talukdar, and the Government. Of a field producing one hundred maunds, the ryot would keep sixty (that is three-fifths, of which fifteen or twenty would represent the seed corn, and forty or forty-five for his profit and labour). Of the remaining forty maunds the Government takes twenty or twenty-five, leaving fifteen or twenty to the Talukdar. He said this would be an average reckoning.
“The meeting in the Kaisar Bagh Hall was the most successful we have yet had. All the religious chiefs, Sunnis and Shiahs, and many of the noblemen of Lucknow, and altogether about one thousand persons were present, as well as about a dozen Englishmen. Three addresses were presented, and I made a long speech of an hour and a half, which, as it is to be printed, I will not give here.