Catalogue of Stars to be observed with the Moon in March 1834. Names of 18 119 Tauri, (5.6)+18 27 5 22 28.02 21163 Cancri, 6 +16 14 8 48 18.22 121 6 23 55 25 18.14 > 1 Limb, 4 Leonis, 1 Limb, 23 41 49 (5.6)+22 43 w Arg. Car. (6.7)+17 11 59 48.57 6 6+18 25 9 42.75 5 9 27 51.84 6 (6.7) 22 56 6 2 14,08 18 2 Lyncis, (4.5) 59 4 4 57.34 351 K Columbæ, (4.5)-35 5 13 Geminor. 3 +22 36 19'54 Aurigæ, 27 Geminor. (834) a Can. Maj. 36 Geminor. (6.7) +21 57 10 38.68 12 54.32 Argus, 14 12 10 2 42.31 41 35.85 137 45 5.21 r Arg. Car. (4.5)—40 47 15 14.39 5 +56 50 19 59.61 43 20 49 54 15.33 p Arg. Vel. 6 +27 8 7 1 4.56 25 10 4 32.08 46 Leo. Min. (4.5) +35 7 44 1.26 41 10 6 28.49 56 Leonis, 7 7 51 47 24.62 5 -44 531 8 15.31 -42 58 7 23 57.86 > 1 Limb, 11 47 57 6 4 7 23 33 38 37.09 78 Leonis, 27 12 43 19.39 (6.7) 20 20 45 58.24 36626 ) 1 Limb, x Argus, 19 Cancri, 116 Cancri, y 2 Argus, 19 Cancri, -52 32 23 7 18 9 8 2 41.06 -46 50 6+24 33 1 Ursa Maj. (4.5) 1 Virginis, (6.7) 9 4 29 54.55 3 (4.5) 6 (1383) 28 Cancri, (6.7)|||||24 42| 18 45.33 VII.-Miscellaneous Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Saturday, 11th May, 1833. The Report of the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of this prosperous Institution has just reached us, and we hasten to put our readers in possession of such parts of it as must be interesting to those engaged in kindred researches and pursuits in the country whence the literary food of all Asiatic Societies is alike provided. The proceedings themselves are as usual on such occasions but a string of unanimous thanks for services, great or small, rendered during the past year. We are sorry to see that Mr. GRAVES C. HAUGHTON had been obliged to resign the office of Secretary, from ill health; he has been succeeded by Captain HENRY HARKNESS. The Right Honorable C. W. W. WYNN continues to be President, and Lieut.-Col. J. ToD, Librarian. Economy has been the standing order in the financial department, not without good effect, since a debt of £160 has been cleared, and a balance accumulated of nearly £400 from the contributions of the year, after a payment of £300 for printing, and £900 for house rent, taxes, and establishment. The Society has 232 paying members, at 2 and 3 guineas per annum; it admitted 23 new members in 1833, paying five-guinea admission fees. We observe among the sources of income a yearly donation of one hundred guineas from the Court of Directors, besides many valuable presents, and a hundred pounds from the Oriental Translation Fund ::-a lamentable contrast all this to the state of things in the parent Society of Bengal, which has received, at least in these latter days, but little indeed of the fostering aid and patronage either of the local Government or of the Honorable Court; and has itself subscribed (from the contributions of only about fifty paying members) a hundred pounds yearly to the Translation Fund; and yet cannot even attempt to print a volume in promotion of the professed objects of that useful institution on the responsibility of a resident committee of the fund! We remark that the composition for the subscription of an elected resident member of the Royal Asiatic Society is thirty guineas, and for a non-resident, twenty: the same scale might, we think, be advantageously adopted into our own rules. There is another new rule equally worthy of imitation; namely, "that the resignation of no member shall be received until he has sent in a written declaration, and has paid up all his arrears of subscription." We remark with pleasure the acknowledgment of several literary contributions from native corresponding members in the Madras presidency, the result we would hope of the extension of English education in the peninsula: the same good effect is already visible in our own pages, and it is a part of our ambition, as it is of the Royal Asiatic Society, "to become an active and useful instrument in calling forth the great but almost dormant talents of the natives of India. It is by urging the singularly intellectual races of that country to make known through themselves the result of their ancient and steady civilization, that it hopes to make manifest to the philosophic inquirer into human nature the character of the remarkable and interesting people who have not merely been the authors of their own improvement, but who have steadily preserved, by the force of primeval institutions, their sacred language, their literature, and their laws, in spite of the anarchy and misrule consequent on the invasions of maný barbarous nations by which they have been either subjugated, or their country laid desolate." The obituary list of 1832 is of melancholy extent, it comprises many of the élite of the Orientalists of Europe: their memory and their achievements belong to India, and we cannot render a pleasanter service than in extracting at length from the Report before us, the epitome of the deeds of those among them who were the most conspicuous for their learning and talent; passing by such names as the Raja of Tanjore, whose merits, however great, were those of a patron rather than a labourer in the field of Oriental research. "Dr. ADAM CLARKE was born in the county of Derry, in Ireland, about the year 1760, and commenced his studies as a minister in the Wesleyan connection, at the age of eighteen. It was not till long after this period that his attention was turned to the study of Oriental literature; but he eventually acquired a profound knowledge of the Hebrew language and its sister dialects, ample proof of which is afforded by his highly esteemed commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. This was his principal work, and it extended to eight volumes quarto. Another work of great research and value has been published since the death of Dr. CLARKE, with a continuation by his son, the Rev. J. B. B. CLARKE, containing a view of the succession of sacred literature, from the invention of alphabetical characters to the year 1300. "On the return of Sir A.JOHNSTON from Ceylon, in the beginning of 1818, he brought with him two young priests of Budd'ha, who were anxious to increase their knowledge by a visit to England; and on their arrival in this country, they were placed by that gentleman under the care of Dr.CLARKE, who had very liberally offered to receive them. They remained with him for two years, when they returned to their native country. "The life of Dr. ADAM CLARKE has been so fully detailed in the auto-biography which has been recently laid before the public, that it is unnecessary to dwell more particularly on it in this place. He continued attached to the study of Oriental literature to the latest years of his life, which was brought to a termination in the autumn of last year, by an attack of cholera. "As Secretary to the Madras Auxiliary Society, the connexion of Mr. JAMES LUSHINGTON With this body was of an intimate and important character. When, on the arrival of the late Governor of Madras at that Presidency, he proceeded forthwith to carry into effect the suggestions with which he had been furnished by this Society for the re-organization of the Literary Society of Madras, his private secretary and second son, the subject of this notice, was selected for the situation of Secretary to the Asiatic department of the Institution; and the manner in which the duties of that office were performed amply proved the propriety of the choice. To the possession of talents of no common order, he united great industry and zeal. The active share he took in the promotion of an object which this society had much at heart, namely, the continuation and completion of the Historical and Antiquarian researches of the late Colonel MACKENZIE, cannot easily be forgotten; and the Council has to regret that by his death an interruption has occurred in the prosecution of this design. He expired at Laulpettah, near Vellore, on the 12th of September 1832, after a tedious and painful illness, at the early age of twenty-eight years. "The late Lieutenant-Colonel JOHN BAILLIE entered the service of the Honourable the East-India Company in the year 1790, and arrived in India in 1791. He applied himself with great diligence to the study of the learned languages of the East; as a proof of which, it may be mentioned, that in the year 1797, at the desire of the then Governor-General, (Sir JOHN SHORE, now Lord Teignmouth,) he undertook the translation from the Arabic of a copious digest of Muhammedan Law, so arranged as to comprise the whole of the Imamea code, as applicable to secular matters. This work it was originally contemplated would extend to four volumes in quarto, but of these the first only was ever published, and that without the preliminary discourse or table of contents. It comprehends only the laws of commercial transactions. "On the establishment of the College of Fort William, Colonel BAILLIE was appointed professor of the Arabic and Persian languages and of Muhammedan Law, a post which he filled with high credit until the year 1807, when he was appointed resident at the court of the NAWAB VIZIR of Oude, in place of Colonel COLLINS. During the period of his professorship, Colonel BAILLIE was twice called into active service as political agent to the Governor General in Bundelkhund, and for the zeal and ability displayed by him in this capacity, he was honoured with the public thanks of the Government. In the year 1801, he published a series of sixty tables, elucidatory of the first part of his course of lectures at the college, on the inflexions of Ajabit grammar; and in 1802, he published the two first volumes of his edition of the original texts of the five most esteemed works on Arabic grammar, namely, the Miut Amil; Sirhu Miut Amil; Misbah; Hedayet un Nuhvi; and the Kafeea of Ebn Hajeb. In tonsequence of his employment in Bundelkhund, the work was not completed till 1803; and his intention of publishing an English version of the third volume, and indeed all further literary exertion, appears to have been put a stop to by his appointment to Lucknow, where he remained till 1815. In 1818, he retired from the service, and in 1823, succeeded the late Mr. COTTON as a Director of the East-India Company. "M. ABEL REMUSAT was born at Paris on the 5th of September, 1788, and was consequently in his fifty-fourth year at the time of his death. He was originally designed for the medical profession, and applied himself successfully to the requisite studies; but at the same time he indulged in a taste for Oriental literature, and selected as his principal object of pursuit in this direction ths almost inaccessible language of China. He was unassisted in this task either by grammars or dictionaries, for none at that period existed in print; yet, in spite of this disadvantage, he persevered, and succeeded in overcoming the difficulties opposed to his progress; for it was not until after he had published his Essays on the Chinese Language and Literature, that he became possessed of the Dictionarium Latino-Sinicum, in manuscript, of the French Mission at Peking. The talents thus signally displayed at this early age by M. REMUSAT secured him exemption from the law of conscription, so rigidly enforced throughout the French empire. In connection with the Chinese, M. REMUSAT studied the Mandchu and Tibetan languages; and when in the year 1814, at the suggestion of the Baron de SACY, two professorships were founded in the Royal College of France, for the more effectual cultivation of the Sanscrit and Chinese languages, M. REMUSAT was nominated to fill the latter, and this honourable post he maintained till the period of his decease. In 1820, he published the first volume of his Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, a work in which the literature of these nations is ably discussed. The sequel to this work, intended to contain the original texts of which translations had appeared in the first volume, has never been published. In 1822, he produced his Grammar of the Chinese Language : a work arranged in a lucid and methodical manner, which has reflected high credit on his abilities and acquirements. M. REMUSAT Contributed many papers of value to the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions; and the notices of and extracts from the Oriental MSS. in the Bibliothèque du Roi. A few years back, he published his translation of the Chinese novel entitled Yukiao-li; or, the Two Fair Cousins. He has left behind him three important works in MS., two of which, however, are unfinished one of these is a Philosophical Dictionary of the Budd'hist Religion, translated from one published at Peking, in Sanscrit, Tibetan, Mandchu, Mongol, and Chinese: the second is a translation of the Travels of the two Chinese Priests of Budd'ha, in Tartary, India, and Persia, which he had undertaken to prepare for publication by the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, when death, from a disease in the stomach, intervened, and prevented the fulfilment of this intention. The third is an account of the Natural History of the eastern countries of Asia; and in this laborious enterprize he was to have been assisted by the powerful aid of the first naturalists of France, and indeed of Europe, for among them may be recorded the names of CUVIER, BROWN, CORREA DE SERRA, PETIT THOUARS, JUSSIEU, VALENCIENNES, &c. &c. "On the retirement of the venerable and illustrious BARON DE SACY from the President's chair of the Asiatic Society at Paris, he was succeeded by M. REMUSAT, who retained it until his decease; and the BARON DE SACY has since resumed the office thus left vacant, at the earnest solicitation of the Society. |
