further, they had no other effect than that of serving to sharpen the acumen and to keep alive the animosities of disputants: so long as the people at large, heedless of learned controversies, continued to submit their faith to the decrees of the sovereign Pontiff, he might very well tolerate a few subtile treatises maintaining the opinions of St. Austin upon points not immediately connected with the government of the Church; but when these very opinions once became popular, we know that they led to divisions and tumults, of which the Pope could not for a moment be a passive spectator. The practical effect of those doctrines, and the uneasiness which they occasioned to the Court of Rome, may be learnt from the history of Jansenism. As to the remark of Bishop Horsley, that "the highest supralapsarian Calvinist may be as good a churchman as an Arminian," we have no doubt that his meaning has been mistaken: he appears to us to mean, not that the supralapsarian will find his opinions countenanced by the formularies of our Church, but only that the supralapsarian doctrine has not per se any thing to do with the question of discipline or church government. The whole context shows this to be the true interpretation of an assertion, which when quoted by itself, as we have often heard it, could not but excite surprise. To such an assertion, considered abstractedly, we can have nothing to object, unless it be that abstract considerations are but rarely permitted to those who would judge of what actually happens in human Life. Notwithstanding a few splendid exceptions of Calvinistic Prelates, we cannot consider the tendencies of Calvinism to be favourable to the discipline of the Church of England. Upon the subject of Episcopacy Calvin's opinions were not always consistent; but we discover no want of uniformity in his practice; and we are told, that when he was about to die, after having exercised an irregular authority over the Church of Geneva for many years, he cautioned his people against trusting any man in future with similar powers. In short, we consider Calvinism, with reference to its discipline, to be Christianity republicanized; and as to doctrinal Calvinism, deeply as we reverence the piety and the learning of many who have professed it, we ardently wish that it had never been published to mankind. The whole of Christianity is contained in what is written; and if that be not sufficient to exercise the faculties of acute inquirers, and to amuse the excursive imaginations of the curious, we could at least have wished that their theories of the divine decrees, and of the unrevealed dispensations of Providence, badbeen kept distinct as arcaua and esoterics unfit to be commuuicated to the people.

The

The fourth and last Charge in this volume was delivered to the Clergy of St. Asaph. Upon this our remarks must be brief; nor indeed does it call for so much of our attention as those which precede it. Some of the topics had been anticipated ; much of it is occupied in discussing points of ecclesiastical law; and we wish, for the sake of the Clergy, that the Bishop's admonition to them to make themselves acquainted with the statutes which immediately relate to their profession, had been more regarded. It may be hoped, after what has recently happened, that they will not in future act as if they were as little coucerned in them as in the laws respecting the collection of the customs or the excise." The Bishop has in this Charge various reflexions upon Calvinism, tending to show, that it has not doctrinally any connexion with the question of Church Government; and he is of opinion, that it would conduce to the welfare of the Church, "that the Calvinistic Controversy should be suffered to go to sleep.". Wishing, as we do, that it had never had existence, we shall not, whenever we observe it to be drowsy, employ any efforts to keep it awake. Unhappily, however, for the last fifty years it has not betrayed any symptoms of somnolency, but an unusual and restless activity: labourers and mechanics have been harangued upon points which Horsley himself, with his mighty intellect, pronounces to be "far above the powers of the human mind;" and the Church has had no alternative but that of engaging in the Controversy, or of being deserted by her children without making any effort to retain them in their duty. We shall hail the day, if we live to see it, when piety shall regain the calmness of sentiment and the humility of heart, by which it reflects glory upon God, and promotes peace on earth: but at present this happy consummation seems far distant; and instead of there being any apparent disposition to let the Calvinistic Controversy sleep, a translation of the Institutes has recently been published for the use of those, who possess not the very common acquirement of being able to read Latin.

ART. II. The History of Bengal, from the first Mohammeda Invasion until the virtual Conquest of that Country by the English, A.D. 1757. By Charles Stewart, Esq. M.A.S. late Major on the Bengal Establishment, Professor of Orien tal Languages in the Honourable East-India Company's College, Herts, &c. &c. 4to. 548 pp. 31. 3s. Black, Parry, and Co. 1813.

THE establishment and consolidation of our Empire in the East, and the light which has recently been thrown upon the literature

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literature and the manners of the nations, who have thus become subject to the British Empire, have imparted a high degree of interest to every enquiry connected with India. Whatever be the particular view, in which we regard that portion of the globe, it presents much, which cannot fail to stimulate curiosity and to exorcise reflexion. The politician contemplates with wonder the apparently inadequate causes, which have so rapidly effected our Oriental aggrandizement; and he finds abundant matter for speculation in that nice adjustment of jarring interests, by which, the stupendous fabric of our power is kept together with so little of visible constraint. The languages of the East attract the cholar not merely by their structure so widely differing from that of the idioms, which prevail in the western world, but by the treasures which they contain in the several departments of history, of poetry, of philosophy, and law; but chiefly by the testimony, which they are found to bear, amidst a mass of inco herent fiction, to the existence of primeval truth. To those, who are impressed with a sense of the blessings which result from Christianity, as well as with the moral obligation to im part them to the heathen world, the superstitions of Hindooism are objects of something more than curious research; and much thought will be directed to the means, which may gradually accomplish their abolition, and cause them to give place to the reasonable worship and the happier hopes of a pure religion. It is in India, that monuments are still preserved, the origin of which baffles the boldness even of antiquarian conjecture; while the admirer of nature there beholds her in her grandest forms, in mountains, which seem to mingle with the clouds, and in rivers, which are the aggregate of tributary streams not inferior to the Rhine. To the " which is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear, which is not tired with hearing," we cannot conceive that any region of the habitable globe presents stronger attractions: but indissoluble ties at home, or the apprehension of disease in a sickly climate, or the want of opportunity till the evening shades of life are beginning to descend, imposes on many an ardent mind the necessity of repressing the strong propensities of science, benevolence, or of taste.

We receive therefore, with thankfulness, and are disposed to examine with candour, whatever may contribute to enlarge our stock of information. respecting any part of India; and no province, perhaps, of that vast territory, is, upon the whole, more deserving of our attention than the one, of which the history is here presented to the reader. Equalling, if not surpassing in fertility any hitherto discovered region, teeming with a population devoted to industry and the peaceful arts, and having been For successive ages the object of ambition, and the prize of intrigue,

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trigue, it has settled under the mild dominion of Britain the seat of our government, which at the distance of little more than a century had no existence, except in three inconsiderable villages, has a population of half a million of souls, and has become the emporium of the Eastern world. Nothing, which tends to illustrate the history of possessions this valuable and revolutions so surprising, can be uninteresting to the inquisitive mind; and if the historian be unable to keep alive the feelings, with which his volume will be opened, he cannot resolve his failure into the unfortunate choice of his subject.

Major Stewart proceeded to the execution of his task in the pos session of great advantages. Among these a local knowledge of the country, of its military positions and its means of defence, of the character of the natives and of their civil and religious prejudices, cannot be deemed unimportant: but a still higher and more indispensible requisite was his familiar acquaintance with the Persian. language, and a ready access to the records contained in it, as the writings of Persian historians, the Imperial Firmauns, and treaties of peace and commerce. It is, indeed, from such sources, that the author professes to have derived chiefly the materials for his volume. But while we admit, that he could not have had recourse to higher authorities, we are under the necessity of appreciating the general character of the Persian historians, translations of whose writings, as the author avows, form the principal part of his work. If the reader expect to find in these writers the same excellencies, which distinguish the historians of classical antiquity, or those of Italy or England, he will inevitably be disappointed. They appear for the most part to content themselves with the relation of events: profound political reflexions, a nice discrimination of character, graphical exhibitions of nature and of art, the connexion of moral causes and effects, or the variety of incident which characterizes the pages of occidental history, must not be looked for in the chronicles of the East. These defects, however, are not to be imputed so much to any want of talest in the writers, as to the circumstances in which they have been placed, and to the nature of their ma terials. The philosophical historian cannot easily exist under à long-established tyranny: we

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fears would restrain the freed can not to say merely, that his

of his reflexions; but that matter for reflexion under such a government can never be abundantly supplied. It is inseparable from despotism to narrow the sphere of action: implicit obedience to the will of one leaves little opportunity to the energies of the many to display themselves; and those germs of character, which, in free states are variously developed, are here crushed as soon as they appear, or are suffered to unfold themselves only in modes of acting and thinking

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thinking too unimportant to fall within the view of those, who would trace the progress of the mind in its grander movements, as they affect the destiny of Empires. In such a state of things political science is without its proper aliment: in vain does it endeavour to detect the operation of causes, which under frée governments secretly-but invariably produce the improvement or the depression of the species: here the passions of the multitude have little if any effect on the condition of society every thing may be resolved into the power or the caprice of a single individual; a limit, beyond which inquiry is impossible, and conjecture unavailing. Tacitus, indeed, whose writings are a library of political science, was born in the reign of Nero: but the Roman spirit still breathed in Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus ; and though it was repressed, a long period elapsed, before it was finally extinguished: manebat nihilominus quædam imago reipublicæ."

While, however, we cannot allow to the Persian writers the higher excellencies of historical composition, we are ready to admit that they are usually very interesting from the clearness of their narrative, from the surprising revolutions which it is their province to record, and from the pictures, which they incidentally exhibit of oriental peculiarities in manners and sentiment. They are also distinguished by an air of ingenuousness, and veracity: they write like men, who have not any party to serve, but are ntent only upon recording events as they are believed to have actually happened: they appear not to entertain an idea, that any other passion can be gratified by their labours, than that of curiosity they frequently fall into moral reflexions, which while. they break the monotony of the narrative, delight us by their pathos and truth; and they sometimes indulge in sentiments of simple and unaffected piety, which conciliate our esteem: felv persons can read the memoirs of the Mogul Empire" by Eradut Khan without feeling the force of these remarks. Of the history of Hindostan by Ferishta we are disposed to speak with even less qualified approbation: he frequently manifests an independence of judgment, which should seem to be the growth of a different climate and in some of his characters he evinces a discriminatron, which reminds us of our own Clarendon.

The history of India, previously to the first Mohammedan invasion, is involved in a degree of obscurity, which our author, even if it had been his object...might have found it impossible to disperse. From the Mahommedan historians information tendng to this point was hardly to be expected. They seem to have considered India as the scene only of petty transactions and uninteresting events, till the standard of the Moslems had passed the Persian frontier, and their power was established in the plains

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