'those prayed to eternal wrath, who had departed and made de'fection in that time.' Alas! we need not blow them away; 'the great part is going fast enough that way, but this I am 'sure, is not to give God his glory, but to take from him, and limit him in his freedom and choice, in the greatness of his pardon. It is remarkable that the angels in their glory to God, joined also with it good will to men.' 'I forgive all men the wrongs they have done to me,' were nearly the last words he uttered on the scaffold.

But the dying exclamation of M'Kail, to whom, under the name of Macbriar, it is evident from the similarity of the circumstances that the Novelist alludes, in the torture-scene we have extracted, has found a place in the pages even of Hume. These were his last words: Farewell sun, moon, and stars, 'farewell kindred and friends, farewell world and time, farewell 'weak and frail body; welcome eternity, welcome angels and 'saints, welcome Saviour of the world, and welcome God, the Judge of all:' words which, aided by the voice and manner of the speaker, struck all who heard them with emotions of admiration and horror.

Their

We should not have occupied our pages with details familiar to those who are acquainted with history, were it not that the Tales of my Landlord will doubtless fall into the hands of thousands who will not have leisure, even if disposed to take the pains, to compare them with authentic narrative. effect in this case, and we are constrained to think it their designed effect, would be to convey a false impression of a highly important and interesting period in the annals of their own country. What motive could actuate an Author in this attempt, we do not pretend to divine; its honesty we leave our readers to estimate. What must be the feelings of a man who could sit down coolly to turn to amusement the characters and sufferings of men whom, if he was incapable of honouring their heroic fortitude, he must regard as objects of the most poignant com. passion? Yes, the torture is a fine subject for scenic painting, and the Grass-market affords noble scope for ridicule, and a country groaning beneath the blood-stained yoke of petty tyrants, is a most appropriate ground-work for a Landlord's Tale! But were we to presume to remind our Author of the fearful responsibility attaching to talents like his, which he would do well to reflect upon before he commits a similar literary outrage, his only answer would probably be in the spirit of his favourite Claverhouse, To man I can be answerable.'

Art. II. Sketches of India; or Observations descriptive of the Scenery, &c., in Bengal: Written in India, in the Years 1811, 12, 13, 14; together with Notes on the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena, written in those Places in February, March, and April, 1815. 8vo. pp. 261. Price 7s. Black and Co. 1816.

AS it is testified and affirmed of the people of India, with endless repetition, that they exhibit a perpetual sameness of manners, customs, opinions, and institutions, it might seem, at first sight, a natural inference, that there should be no need of a long succession of descriptive accounts of them; especially as it has been stated that their chief characteristics are of a very obvious nature. Nevertheless, the English public receives, with a considerable share of attention, one descriptive work after another; and no one surmises that we are near the conclusion of the series.

One of the most remarkable circumstances attending this succession of descriptions, is, that while the character and economy of that people have been constantly affirmed to be as determinate, as prominently manifested, and as invariable, as the Egyptian Pyramids, it has not however been till after a long course of time, and till after a multitude of reports have been received, that a moderately correct estimate has come to prevail. An estimate in some of the most important points the full reverse of the truth, was very generally admitted till a comparatively recent period, and has hardly even now lost all its maintainers, though they are nearly reduced to silence.

It is among the results of these multifarious reports respecting the Hindoos, that their economy, their system of dogmas and practices, is found to be much less fixed, definite, and invariable, than it has been common to represent and believe: that while they certainly do furnish a wonderful display of how much an institution can do towards securing sameness and permanence, yet there are among them innumerable dissentions of vain speculation, many diversities of degree in the reverence for the authority of the ancient rules and usages, and no little caprice in the selection and observance of superstitious rites, and even in the preferences of the various objects of those rites. On the whole, the system as now practically existing, is a thing greatly different from the original institution, as methodized in a code on the authority of Menu and other ancient oracles. It is contracted into something far less comprehensive and punctilious, and is sunk from that air of majesty in its imposition and sanctions, which in the instituting authority seemed almost to threaten annihilation to the wretch that should question, or hesitate, or wish to modify, or slight the minutest particle of the transcendental appointment. If there could be an inquisitive European who had read only the Institutes of Menu, and

had heard half the assertions and asseverations that have even within comparatively late years demanded belief that the Hindoo economy, strictly and practically formed upon the entire extent of the model of the ancient prescriptions, has been maintained unaltered to this hour, he would soon find himself, if he were to commence an actual survey and investigation of the present state of the Hindoos, sufficiently puzzled between the system thus ordered and settled in his mind, and the matter of fact presented to his view. Especially would he find himself at fault in the affair of the four Castes, discriminated in the 'sa'cred books' by such an immense detail of incommunicable characteristics and inviolable regulations. This accursed contrivance he would find in quite sufficient practical prevalence, to satisfy the most consummate hater or scorner of the human race; but he would look in vain for this infinite precision of distinction and distribution. He might have previously expected that he should be able to recognise the four great classes, whenever he should observe the people, as quickly and certainly as if they were absolutely of different colours; whereas, the disordering, wearing-down effect of time, which counterworks the force of all arbitrary institutions, has in this most worthy case prevailed to a degree which would make it very difficult for him to assign the pagan crowd around him to their respective places in the grand scale of sanctity and turpitude, excepting perhaps those at the very top and the very bottom. An uncanonical jumble of customs, pretensions, and employments, will be found to have involved the ranks between these extremes, and even to be in some considerable degree extending its profanation to the highest.

Nevertheless, the unchangeableness of the Hindoos and of their institutions, is likely enough to be retained among the common-places of a certain class of our wise men, for many years to come. All sorts of men are fond of their respective common-places; but perhaps no class of these pearls of wisdom are held in such estimation by the appropriate class of dealers and owners, as the propositions which bear some implication hostile to Christianity. In the strength of this merit they can long defy not only arguments, but facts, none of which, however large and fast they might come in with their evidence upon the holder of the maxims in question, for a moment disturb their invulnerable self-complacency. The sensible Author of the present very entertaining volume, is so pleased with the notion so tritely repeated among his class, (that same, of the unchangeableness of the Hindoos,) that be affixes it to the head of his book, like the devotee mark daubed on the foreheads of the worshippers of Seeva. His Preface begins thus:

•No nation on the face of the globe presents a wider field for spe

culation, or affords subjects for more interesting enquiry, than the Hindoos. Divided into castes, or tribes, as was indubitably the characteristic of many nations in remoter times, we behold them in the present day what they were in the primeval ages, and what, in all human probability, they will ever remain.

The monotony pervading every custom of this singular people, although it may seem to afford but little scope for curiosity, is in reality the circumstance which seizes with increased interest on the astonishment and admiration of a stranger: for who can contemplate the sad reverses to which their ancient greatness and prosperity have been subjected, without being struck with the immutability which during a lapse of ages has prevailed through their religion and the institutions connected with it??

The Author does not signify for which of the two he feels the greater compassion, the people assumed to be so doomed to perpetual superstition and degradation, or the fanatics for invading them with missions, and translations of the Bible, who fancy that some reliance may be placed on the predictions in that Book, and as a matter of mere common sense, besides, laugh at the notion of a necessary perpetuity in any one particular artificial form of the perversion of the human nature.

A large proportion, however, of the volume, consists of descriptions, given in a clear, lively, and rapid style, of natural scenery, the state of the country, and the effect of time and wars on places once the proudest seats of magnificence. In this last respect the view of India must be exceedingly striking. All describers agree in representing the gloomy and funereal effect, amidst all the life and riches of Nature, of the vestiges of departed grandeur, the signs of an empire dead and inhumed, only with here and there left in ghastly appearance above ground some prominence of its mighty form, in ruins which are themselves also perishing. We cannot, however, pretend to any great degree of sympathy with the pathetic regret which seems to have affected some writers, almost to distress, in the contemplation of what even so gay and easy a person as our Author, denominates the 'sad reverse.' The calamities, indeed, that may be supposed, or are known, to have been suffered during the long period of the decline from the ancient state of the country, justly excite mournful reflections; but the fact simply, that where once there were superb palaces of despots, and temples of idols, there are now dilapidated towers and walls, or but a few mouldering relics, destined soon to vanish from the earth, does not excite in us any deeply sorrowful emotions. There are in all reason quite a sufficient number of such edifices still remaining in the world. The ruin and destruction of so many, is just so much lost of the splendour which aids tyranny and superstition to overawe the mind of the multitude. Philanthropy and piety will wish that some more of this auxiliary force were destroyed.

If it should be alleged that the ruin of these magnificent works, and the accompanying diminution, in some instances approaching to desolation, of the cities which they so proudly adorned, evince a great difference also, in point of multitude, between the population of the ancient and that of modern times, we should answer by asking on what reasonable ground it could be wished there should exist so much as one creatnre more to worship Seeva and Dhoorga, than the actual number?

So far as the decline from the ancient state of the country has involved a diminution of the means of well-being, in any the humblest sense of the word, to the existing individuals, it is matter of mere humanity to be sorry for it; but at the same time it would be the idlest of all dreams that could represent it as even possible for a community formed on the Brahminical polity, to have ever been in a condition deserving in any sense to be denominated happy, whatever might have been its numbers, or the state of arts and wealth implied by the multitude and sumptuousness of the abodes of its monarchs and idols,if indeed the costliness of despots and false gods could be taken as any standard of the wealth or accommodations of the people.

But we must return to our Author, on whose work, however, it is the less necessary to enlarge, as it is likely to be recommended to a considerably extensive circulation by its laudable brevity, its corresponding price, and its merit as a vigorous slight sketch of the physical, moral, and political aspects of India. Very marked praise is due to the judgement or the self-denial which, when a book relating to a foreign country was to be composed, and that under the influence of so many examples of prolixity and ostentation, could decide to leave so large a portion of the Author's journals untranscribed. Indeed, there are parts where we could have wished the rule of exclusion somewhat less rigorous.

The stretch of his excursion in the year 1813, was first directly up the Ganges, fourteen hundred miles, to Hurdwar, the boundary at once of Hindoostan and the Company's influence.' But hardly does a description of Parisian fashions go sooner out of date, than any statement of the limits of the Company's influence, or even of their formal dominion. From Hurdwar the Author had a strong inclination to attempt the Goorkah valley, governed in a spirit of inimical jealousy and precaution against Europeans by a lord lieutenant of his Majesty of Nepaul. The inhabitants too bearing sufficient ill-will to the strangers from the south, such an intrusion through their mountain passes had scarcely ever been thought of by the tourists to the upper provinces, and it was not effected by our Author without some difficulty, and perhaps a little exertion of courage; whereas, for now a considerable time the case has been, that an