Maclean (formerly Miss Landon), one of her oldest and dearest friends.
It was now seven years since she had quitted British India, during
which period important events had occurred, which wrought material
changes in its political and social aspects. The extinction of the
East-India Company's commercial privileges had imparted a new tone to
its government, given a freer scope to the principle of innovation,
and poured a fresh European infusion into its Anglo-Indian society;
steam navigation and an overland communication between England and her
Eastern empire were bringing into operation new elements of
mutation, and the domestic historian of India (as Miss Roberts may be
appropriately termed) felt a natural curiosity to observe the progress
of these changes, and to compare the British India of 1830 with that
of 1840. With a view of enlarging the sphere of her knowledge of
the country, and of deriving every practicable advantage from a
twelve-months' visit, she determined to examine India on its Western
side, and (contrary to the urgent advice of many of her friends)
to encounter the inconveniences of performing the journey overland,
through France and Egypt. Previous to her departure, she entered into
an arrangement with the _Asiatic Journal_ (the depository of most of
her papers on Indian subjects) to transmit, on her way, a series of
papers for publication in that work, descriptive of the objects
and incidents met with in the overland route, and of the "rising
presidency," as she termed Bombay.
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