the Berhampooter. Many invalids, gentlemen as well as ladies, go to the Hills, there to pursue a system of late hours, convivial in dulgence, insufficient exercise, and languid mental vacuity. They get through the time as best they may, and wonder that they feel so little benefit from change and relaxation. For such we would prescribe an exploring march, during which they would necessarily purchase by fatigue and privation, the sleep and appetite of tired and hungry travellers. How delightful is such" unchartered freedom" to the soldier or civilian, worn out by details and responsibilities, that become irksome only when "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak;" to the invalid "who long hath fed on drugs;" to the mother, whose strength has been spent in watching her sickly child, till she was forced to deem "the grasshopper a burthen," and who now feels her own elasticity renewed, with her nurseling's returning strength. The cold weather spent in a march through the Dhoon, the hot winds in a hill-tent, thatched over, on the top of the Chor or some other of our giant hills; the rains, in Kanawur beyond the influence of the monsoon,-this is the sort of programme we would draw up for the Indian invalid's year of sick certificate; and by all means let him take his wife and children with him.

Some twenty years ago, a lady attempted to explore Kanawur, and was killed by falling from one of the rude spar bridges. Her fate has, perhaps, deterred others from trying the same route, for we have only since heard of one, who accompanied her husband from Simla to the Chinese frontier. She encountered few greater difficulties on this trip, than the ladies who remained at Simla underwent in their preparations for "tableax vivants" and "bals masqués." Which amusement was better worth the trouble, is, of course a matter of opinion. Neither party would, perhaps, have changed places with the other.

To sum up the lesson we would fain impress on those who will listen. We deem that no faculty of the soul has been given in vain; that duty consists not in the eradication, but in the direction of our feelings; that flowers may be culled even on the dusty highway of life, and above all, that enjoyment is more frequently met with in the straight-forward track of obvious duty, than discovered by express search. More solemn appeals befit not with the motley mantle we have worn, yet do we venture to hope that the tendency of all that has been said is to prepare the mind for listening to the doctrines that appeal to unseen and

eternal realities.

In the foregoing pages we have sought for illustration rather than definition or argument, and perhaps it would be the discreeter

part to leave our readers to gather their own moral from the tales we have told; yet, having heard the witnesses on either side, we are tempted to sum up the evidence and give our judgment thereon. We say then, that the quality variously designated Romance or Enthusiasm, Poetry or Ideality, is not to be despised as the mere delusion of a heated brain, but is to be valued as an energy imparted to the human mind, to prompt and sustain its noblest efforts. We would urge, on the young especially, not that they should repress enthusiasm, but that they should cultivate and direct the feeling. Undisciplined Romance deals in vague aspirations after something better and more beautiful than it has yet seen; but it is apt to turn in disgust from the thousand homely details and irksome efforts, essential to the accomplishment of any thing really good, to content itself with dreams of glorious possibilities.

Reality, priding itself on a steady plodding after a moderate, tangible desideratum laughs at the aimless and unprofitable vision of Romance, "but the hand cannot say to the eye, I have no need of thee." Where the two faculties are duly blended, Reality pursues a straight though rough path to a desirable and practicable result; while Romance beguiles the road by pointing out its beauties, by bestowing a deep and practical conviction that even in this dark and material existence, there may be found a joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not, a light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

ART. III.-Our Indian Empire, by Charles MacFarlane, Vol. II. London. Charles Knight, 1844. (Knight's Library for the Times.)

THIS is one of the many important works, for which we are indebted to the benevolent energies of Mr. Charles Knight, who has done more than any man living to render trade the hand maiden of philanthropy, and to shew that the printing and publishing of books does not necessarily imply an inability to write them. Mr. MacFarlane is the author of the chapters on "Civil and Military Transactions," contained in the Pictorial History of England, from which work the greater portion of the "Indian Empire," lately published in Knight's "Library for the Times" is reproduced in a separate and more portable form.

Mr. MacFarlane's work will find readers, among those who have turned away with alarm from the more formidable volumes of Mill and Thornton. How far it may, as a whole, be entitled

to rank beside the histories of those gentlemen, we shall perhaps take an opportunity hereafter of enquiring, when Professor Wilson has brought to a close his continuation of the work of the former writer. At present, it is our intention to do little more than notice that portion of Mr. MacFarlane's work, which embraces some account of Lord Wm. Bentinck's Administration and a narrative of the great events which have, within our own times, agitated Central Asia. We regret much that these chapters are not entitled to the same degree of praise which we are able, in all sincerity, to bestow upon the earlier portion of the work.

Mr. MacFarlane has no great claim to the indulgent consideration of cotemporary writers. With singularly bad taste, he comments in language of unbecoming contempt upon the historical writings of men, whom the world has consented to honor; and though himself, as we shall presently have occasion to show, saturated and sodden with prejudice, has extraordinarily little forbearance towards the prejudices of others. Of Mill's History Mr. MacFarlane observes, "the history of British India abounds in error, prejudice, and unfairness, the unfairness being as often in omission as commission, or as often in what is suppressed as what is said. It is a book, too, written upon a dogmatical theory, and in a cold sneering, scoto-metaphysical, find-fault spirit, altogether unsuited to the bold, glowing and romantic subject." Of Mr. Macaulay, it is said, that "the books and papers which he consulted" when preparing his admirable Historical Essays, are "few and one-sided;"* and elsewhere the same writer is spoken of with very little respect. Mr. MacFarlane must not therefore be surprised if Reviewers canvas with some degree of asperity his own claims to be considered exempt from the failings of prejudice and one-sidedness, with which he so liberally charges other writers of much higher repute.

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The last volume of Mr. MacFarlane's "Indian Empire" contains some account of the Administrations of Lord Wm. Bentinck, Lord Auckland and Lord Ellenborough. The writer, on approaching these chapters of cotemporary history, claims to

We have lately had occasion to consult a large number of books and papersmany of them contemporary publications-relating to the life and times of Warren Hastings; and the deeper our researches have led us, the more firmly have we been convinced of the accuracy and fairness of Mr. Macaulay. There is one paper which Mr. Macaulay has consulted and which it would have been well if Mr. MacFarlane had also condescended to read, as it might have spared him a very gross blunder contained in the very note from which we have extracted his opinion of Mill and Macaulay. In what book or paper did he learn that "If Francis, Clavering and Monson had wished to save the Rajah (Nuncomar) they could have done so; they were, as we have already said, the majority in Council?" Why, if the Council had been unanimous, they would not have had the smallest power to remit the sentence of the Supreme Court.

himself some praise, for the delicacy he has exhibited and the forbearance which he has exercised-" The day is not yet 'come" he observes" for writing anything like a history of the

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Afghan War. Passions and prejudices must cool, and time 'must be allowed for the gradual collection of authentic and dispassionate materials. We feel that we could not venture upon details without occasionally expressing very strong opinions. It is indecorous, it is savage to yell over a newly 'made grave. The promoters of and the chief actors in the Afghan War, paid for their follies with their lives, dying 'most of them with the troops they led to death; and their castastrophe is of so recent a date, that scarcely an allusion can be made to it without wringing the hearts of numerous ⚫ surviving friend and relatives." This is a very excellent precept. How far Mr. MacFarlane has thought fit to carry it out in practice, we purpose presently to show.

Mr. MacFarlane's notice of Lord William Bentinck's administration has been evidently drawn from the statements contained in Mr. Thornton's History, which we recently noticed; and partakes, therefore, of the injustice and partiality of that work. In reference, however, to one transaction, and that the noblest of his Lordship's government, the transcript has less of candour and generosity than the original. Mr. Thornton does allow a high order of merit to the Act abolishing Suttee, and is content with expressing a doubt of the purity of the motive, though even this doubt has no other foundation than the prejudices of the writer. But Mr. MacFarlane will scarcely allow any merit whatever to Lord William in this act of mercy. Though he opens the subject with the observation, that, "happily for his Lordship, there were other nobler and more enduring changes effected under his administration," he is resolved that no fraction of the credit of these noble changes shall fall to the lot of the Governor-General for he concludes his notice by remarking, "that previous 'legislation had left Lord William Bentinck very little to do, and ⚫ rendered the execution of that little a safe and easy task. task. It is ⚫ absolute nonsense and something worse to overlook every thing that was done by his predecessors, and to attribute to his Lord⚫ ship the sole merit of putting down the Suttees. We believe that between the year 1826, or the time when Lord Amherst's regula⚫tions were passed, and the end of 1829, hardly any Suttees had ⚫ been known to occur in Bengal."

The previous legislation to which Mr. MacFarlane alludes is said to belong to the government of Lord Amherst, and is thus described :

"In 1826, during the administration of Lord Amherst, and nearly two years before Lord William Bentinck airived at Calcutta, the evil practice was seriously circumscribed by legal enactments; the government declared the burning of a widow without the body of the deceased husband to be illegal; and all persoas, whether relations or others, aiding or abetting in such an act, either before or after the death of the husband, were to be committed for trial at the Circuit Courts, to be made liable to the punishments inflicted for murder and homicide. Even before this time no woman was supposed to be burned without her own wish duly certified to a Magistrate. And now the burning of a widow was declared to be illegal under various circumstances. In fact, only those Suttees were to be considered lawful where the widow appeared in Court, and solicited permission in person from the magistrate. At the same time, all the property, real and personal, in actual possession of the deceased husband and widow who performed Suttee (even though under the sanction of the proper authorities), was declared to be forfeited to government. Moreover, it was declared that no person should be eligible to any office or employment whatsoever under government, in whose family a suttee should take place from this time forward."

For the legal enactment here quoted, we have searched in vain. During Lord Amhert's incumbency, no Act was passed in which Suttees were so much as alluded to. The Histories of Auber and Thornton are altogether silent on the subject; and we may be certain that if Thornton could have discovered, in the efforts of any previous administration to restrain the practice, any thing which was calculated to diminish the lustre of Lord William Bentinck's merit, he would not have omitted to mention it.

The fact is, that no legal enactment was ever passed to restrain the practice of Suttee, before that which Lord William Bentinck promulgated. Nor can we discover that any instructions were issued from the Government for the guidance of the Magistrates after the year 1817; and in those issued between 1813 and 1817, we look in vain for the restrictions which Mr. MacFarlane has detailed in the extract given above. Government did not "declare the burning of a widow without the body of the deceased husband to be illegal;" it only gave effect to the precept of the pundits, that the widow of a brahman should not burn except with the body of her husband. Neither did it declare that all persons aiding and abetting such an act should be committed for trial at the Circuit Courts, and be made liable to the punishments inflicted for murder and homicide. The instructions only direct the police officer to apprize the relations, or others concerned, that they would be dealt with as criminals, if they took steps to effect the Suttee in cases prohibited by Government; that in this case, "they would involve themselves in a crime, and become subject to retribution and punishment." It is not true that only those Suttees were to be considered