entanglement of vested rights, are here calmly and dispassionately considered by a Government of absolute, yet responsible, power. The education of the people is admitted to be a foremost duty, and will, as finances permit, be extended to the whole community. Public attention is directed here, as in England, to the improvement of the judicial system, the simplification of its form, the straightening of the channels, by which justice is to find its way to the people. In such investigations the Indian Officials have not been backward, and the least cumbersome, least expensive system is being sought after: the depth of European learning is to be combined with the simplicity of Asiatic practice. In questions of taxation, the Indian Collector, who has any due appreciation of his position, is led to reflect, and form a judgment of the comparative expediency, or inexpediency, of fiscal measures. trade may have its votaries or antagonists, and the question may be argued upon grounds of general and universal expediency, without the embitterment of party. Next follows the question of expenditure; and the Collector is daily called upon to consider, what should be the charges, which can properly be defrayed from the public chest, of which he is the guardian. No false sympathy is extended to the sinecurist or the courtier: no family influences or prejudices are allowed to operate no drones can fatten on the honey collected by the community; the principles of the school of economists have been reduced to stern reality.

Free

The volume, which we have placed at the head of this paper, is one, but only one, of the legacies left by its gifted author to these Provinces, for which he lived and died; and in detailing the duties of a Collector of Revenue, surely some notice of him, who has taught by his practice and words these duties, is not out of place.

When, in 1843, the post of Lieutenant-Governor fell unexpectedly vacant, and the most fastidious of Governor-Generals, who possessed the divining rod of ability, and whose appointments were marked by a wondrous prescience, looked round for a person fit to hold the reins at that crisis, the Foreign Secretary stood alone-the most distinguished of his contemporaries. He may not have had the political skill and vigour, which had characterised Hastings and Elphinstone, nor would he have brought order out of chaos, and converted a rebellious kingdom into thriving provinces, so soon as this has been done by the Punjab Board. Not so great in public estimation as Metcalfe, but in something greater; not so popular as Clerk, but more deserving to be loved; he has left us better things, than the frothy declamations of Napier, the songs of triumph of

Ellenborough, or the carnage-bought victories of Gough. All around him was war, but he calmly worked out his schemes of improvement, and showed that peace has her victories no less renowned than those of war.

Some achieve greatness: he was both good and great, an example to the servants of Government, that great ability can be united to purity and religion, that success in this world need not steel the heart to the concerns of the next. To enumerate his actions would be to notice every improvement for the last ten years in these provinces, for he could combine wisdom and sound views with the most intimate detail. Amidst the glitter of tinsel of the modern great, it was grateful to find something solid to rest on. He was greater because untitled, and, because undecorated, he appears the more distinguished; for he had not been degraded by knighthood, nor has he left a bootless title to his descendants; but, when the question of the Government of a great dependency was agitated in the senate, his actions alone obtained universal praise: his administration alone stood the test of inquiry.

In the midst of the applause he died. Ere the last echo of praise had reached us, while a new proconsular wreath was weaving for his honoured head, while another lustrum of usefulness and advantage was opening out to him, to be followed, with God's blessing, by years of happiness in his native land, he passed away. It was not to be. He was all but lost to us already a few months more, and we should see him no more, when he was snatched away by one of those unaccountable dispensations, to which we can only bow in silence, and believe, that the mission entrusted to him had been accomplished: and so sudden was his death, that the functions of Government for a time stood suspended: the good ship started from her track, as the rudder fell suddenly from the hand of the experienced

steersman.

Let no masses of stone, or useless Mausoleum be raised to commemorate so good, and simple-minded a man: let the testimonial be, like his own character, practical, unostentatious, and beneficent to the people, whom he loved so well. It may do for lordlings, who from time to time obstruct the progress of improvement, to be recorded in kindred blocks of unprofitable masonry, by the presumptuous column, or the unmeaning obelisk let this man live among us, as lives a worthy rival in a sister Presidency: let us learn to connect the moral improvement of the people with the names of Elphinstone and Thomason.

ART. VII.-The Ramayana, an Indian Epic. Edited by Gaspar Gorresio. Paris, 1854.

SIGNOR GASPER GORRESIO has done a service of no ordinary nature to all admirers of Sanskrit literature, and his labours deserve honourable mention in Indian periodicals. There is very little taste now-a-days for the Sanskrit language, yet it would be a shame, indeed, to pass over the noble volumes, published by a native of Sardinia, at the national press of France, without some notice. This is no dull volume of exploded and abortive philosophy-no vast commentary, which it makes the head ache only to open and glance at the contents, but a noble Epic Poem, fresh and original, second only to the great Epic of the Greek nation-and the Editor has done his duty well. He has published five volumes of text, which in beauty and elegance of execution cannot be surpassed, and three volumes of translation into the Italian language. The critical Notes are brief, but some of the Prefaces contain much interesting information, especially that of the seventh volume, in which is a succinct, but complete sketch of the history of the poem.

It is singular, that we should have waited so long for a complete edition of the text, and translation into an European language, of this great master-piece: still more strange, that we should be indebted, at last, to a native of Sardinia, a country in no way, either in times past or present, connected with India. In the years 1806 and 1810, the venerable Carey and Marshman published the text and English translation of two books and a half, out of the seven which complete the story ; and not only are these volumes very scarce, but they are very inferior as productions of literary art, though no blame attaches to the excellent men, who, in the very dawn of oriental studies, published in part what none of their successors have found ability or spirit to complete. The great William Schlegel, twenty years afterwards, gave to the world the text of two books, with a Latin translation of the first, both unexceptionable in merit, and excellent, as far as they go: but his labours were interrupted, and never resumed and another twenty years passed away, ere Signor Gorresio presented to the public, at the expense of Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia, the whole text, the printing of which cannot be surpassed in any country, and the whole translation, in Italian, which may be equalled, but not surpassed, in any other of the languages of Europe. In his translation, he has carefully preserved a Dantesque idiom and form of expression, free from all local patois; his rendering is most