ART. VI.-1. The Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador from His Majesty, King James the First, of England, to Jehanguire, the Mighty Emperor of India, commonly called the Great Mogul. 2. A new account of the East Indies, being the Observations and Remarks of Captain Alexander Hamilton; who spent his time there from the year 1688 to 1723, trading and travelling by sea and land, to most of the Countries and Islands of Commerce and Navigation, between the Cape of Good Hope and the Island of Japan. 3. A voyage from England to India in the year 1754. And an Historical Narrative of the operations of the Squadron and Army of India under the command of Vice Admiral Watson and Colonel Clive, in the years 1755, 1756, 1757. By Edward Ives, Esq. 4. Annals of the Hon'ble East India Company from their establishment, by the Charter of Elizabeth 1600, to the union of the London and English East India Companies 1707-8. By John Bruce, Esq. 5. History of the Mogul Dynasty, translated from the French of Father François Catron of the Society of Jesus. 1826. 6. Outline of the History of Bengal, by John C. Marshman. Serampore, 1838. 7. The East India Sketch-book, comprising an account of the present state of Society in Calcutta, Bombay, &c. in 1832. 8. A few Local Sketches, by John Mawson. Carey and Mendes, Calcutta, 1846. THE progress of the Annalist is that of a moral miner who works a good deal in the dark, since the taper, by the light of which his operations are conducted, sometimes burns very dimly indeed. He must ever and anon shade its flickering flame with his hand lest some sidewind should extinguish it. Sometimes, when by its glimmering light, he deems that the vein is likely to prove a feasible and profitable one, it all at once suddenly ceases. He must then, if a stern seeker after truth, leave off working in that direction, and following such indications as he best may, pieree a lode elsewhere, when perhaps he may be rewarded, by finding a continuation of that which he had previously laboured at. Not so the more speculative or imaginative inquirer. He is content with whatever he can pick up in any direction, and leaves the rest to analogy and inference. He resembles a geological Naturalist, who finding the fossil claw of some extinct species of creature, reconstructs the whole animal, as it were, from the scientific stores of his own brain. Without inference and deduction, the historian would often be at fault, and have to close his lucubrations in despair. In seasons of abundance, people will have wheaten bread, but in those of dearth they must put up with what is available, be it ryebread, or cakes half made up of saw dust. A noble Duke, not long since, proposed to make up to the poor for the want of potatoes, and for dear bread, by an infusion of curry powder; deeming apparently that to tickle the palate and to fill the stomach with sustaining aliment, is the same thing. It is truly edifying sometimes to see how patriotic projectors would feed the people. Thus Mr. Parnel, the Author of "Maurice and Berghetta,' an Irish novel, fully aware that it is not an easy matter for the Irish labourer to have a hot joint daily, gets at once out of the difficulty by shewing how the sturdy peasant may thrive capitally on cold meat. What with the thinnest Mulligatawney, and convenient cold meat, why should the poor man want, and why should not the Annalist, when positive evidence fails him, eke out with inference? Our very familiarity with current things and events, makes us careless of noticing them. We are ever apt to forget that what is so well known to ourselves, is not known at all to others. How often will a distant friend taking for granted your participation of knowledge, allude in a letter, to the death of another friend, merely mentioning cursorily the bare fact, without stating any of the circumstances, thus painfully tantalising us. Another will tell you that you have of course-heard of the lamentable scrape'-into which some mutual old acquaintance has fallen. Our omitting to register many things well known to ourselves, cannot fail to render them very obscure to posterity. It is seldom indeed that people note the minutiae of the present; though by generations unborn, they would be as much prized as those of remote antiquity are by us. After Lord Byron's death, Mr. Moore and another friend, had some difficulty in deciding which foot was deformed. From indifference to familiar points and circumstances, those who shall follow us, may lose as much as we have done, from the omission or apathy of those who have preceded us. People rarely note down in a record likely to endure, details of every day life, save when they travel in foreign countries. One might desire to know how Semiramis dressed for an evening party, what wines and dishes Nebuchadnez zar most fancied, and what kind of conversation passed at his supper table. Would it not be very interesting to us, had an Egyptian Pepys given us the gossip about the court of the Pharaohs, or a Roman Boswell the sayings of the Augustan Literati ? It is the absence of accessaries, and the particulars of physiognomy, bearing and tone, that gives the dim obscure, characterising some phases of history. We perceive mere outlines flitting across its phantasmagoric field. We cannot realise lifelike portraiture. We snatch parts but fail in catching a harmonic whole. The individuals and groups are like objects seen through slightly ruffled water. All is tremulous and indistinct. We have but a suggestion of form, and a trace of quality. We are as much tantalized as Geoffrey Crayons, when after all his efforts, he could only catch a sight of the receding back front of the Stout Gentleman,' or like the guests at Branksome Hall, where 'Some saw a sight not seen by all And on the spot where burst the brand, And some the waving of a gown.' Various are the ways in which the reflecting man arrives at something like a consistent verity of form and character. The Antiquary and the Numismatist here lay us under greater obligations than the Sculptor or the Painter; or perhaps it were juster to say that the ruthless Vandalism which has not spared the master-pieces of the latter, had nevertheless, a hoarding instinct, that has served a good turn for posterity. To realize the individuals of history in all their integrity of life-like resemblance, till they become as palpable to the mind's eye, as those earnest, almost speaking portraits of Titian, that scem as if about to step out from the canvas, is no easy matter. At best when our memory of history yields up the dead, they are indeed, but dead. It is the valley of bones, but they do not receive the supernatural breath of revivification, nor stand up a great and terrible army. We are in a sort of Udolpho castle, and hear steps and sighs and groans, but behold nothing definite, and the catastrophe may be a lame and impotent conclusion; and all the bustle made, about what proves but a sort of lay figure of the fancy, as different perhaps from the genuine historic character, as the mild and innocent Hindu,' of our earlier fireside speculators on India, is from the unscrupulous Pindaree or truculent Thug. History sometimes, in dealing with personalities, gives us only a nose and a chin, and we must piece up the face and person as we best may; giving eyes, whiskers, and hair; with undaunted liberality of pencil. After all, perhaps, when we deem that we have hit off an Emperor, a Consul, a Chief, or a great criminal well, we may only have achieved a mere lay figure of the imagination. How to construct such into moving fantocini, is a question to be considered; how our prototypes moved, dressed, and fed; how they talked and how they associated. In short, the whole economy of their life becomes an abstract question, a thing to be pondered on, measured, and determined, and yet comprising altogether, a train of items and circumstances, regarding which, history, as deeming them beneath her province, may perhaps he altogether silent. At this day, when we have been gathering information from so many, and so various sources, how difficult it is for untravelled Europeans especially, to realize the whole pomp and circumstance of oriental characteristics. Even as relates to Europeans themselves adventuring to the Indies, it is not easy to picture forth with sufficient fidelity, traits of their sayings and doings, in days when men were too busy in scrambling for a footing to move in, and to occupy'-to dream of recording matters that were familiar to their every day experience; but which, the collision of national and political events, scarcely left them time to record, if inclined to do so. The genius of history too often reminds one, of a well known fascinating danseuse bounding in the pas de l'ombre, and striving to catch what she deems substance, in her own shadow. To the mass of English minds, to the million supposed to form the public, all that till very recently was known of India, might be comprised in the figure of the great Mogul upon the envelope of a pack of playing cards; or what a showman might troll forth ore rotundo, when inviting the "ladies and gemmen, to walk in and see the Royal Bengal Tiger all the way from the Eastern Ingies." To the majority of those who spend the best years of life in India, the native is only known, as it were, in his dress of ceremony. We see the outer raiment and movements of the living automaton, but the inner springs and pullies of the chess-player are beyond our ken. Our knowledge of motives in general, as laid down by western sages, will aid us very little in our endeavours to analyse those of the wily Asiatic. The interior economy of the native's household, his individual impulses, the scope of his ambition, and the summit of his desires, are quite beyond us. Of the turn of his domestic converse, thoughts, and felicities, we are almost entirely ignorant. We know no more about them than we do of the domestic life of the ancient Assyrians. We have heard indeed of Europeans who could pass for natives in a group or a crowd. Burckhardt could pass among the Arabs as one of themselves, and we have heard from those who often saw and who knew him well in Egypt, that when in the Bedouingarb, and speaking in character accordingly, there was no distinguishing him from an Arab peasant. Nevertheless how often was he suspected, and it was because he was suspected of not being what he appeared, that he was not allowed to visit the tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor. The probability is that had he been permitted to ascend, he would have seen no more Aaron's genuine tomb (if he had one) than he could have done on the summit of the Jung-frau, for our Moslem friends have shewn themselves, in their own fashion, quite as great adepts in tomb and shrine finding, as the Syrian monks; and that is saying much. We have never heard of an European who could pass for a Hindu out and out, or rather out and in. Christians have kissed the Kaaba, who were Mussulmans pro hac vice, but we have never heard of an European who could pass for a Brahman. Perhaps Horace Hayman Wilson might have done it, had he chosen to be at the trouble. We well remember the start of surprise, if not of terror, given by an upcountry Brahman, on the Boden professor whispering a word in his ear. It was no doubt some potential and dread Muntra that he never imagined could issue from a Mlecha's mouth. The late Nathanial Brassey Halhed of the Bengal civil service (nephew of the author of the Grammar-the school-fellow at Harrow of Sheridan and Sir William Jones) could pass for a native, sit down, and smoke a pipe with any group he fancied, and never be recognised as an European. The Court language, or the patois of the provincial peasantry, came alike to him, as the whim might suggest. To pass into the domestic circle of a native on the other hand, is for any European, nearly an impossibility. Some, perhaps, in the lapse of time, when anglicised natives of Calcutta, may so far relax from prescriptive fetters, as to conform to European ideas, may be admitted within Native thresholds, but the prospect is still a remote one. The institution of caste and the restraints of purdah nasheen are formidable, and almost impassable obstacles in the way of any approach to domestic intimacy. In this respect there is a gulf between the races, which it will take perhaps ages to bridge over. The late General Stuart, (at one period of his life at least) conformed so much in externals to Brahmanical injunctions, that he was known |