tribe from the banks of the Indus, had established themselves in a territory between Agra and Jyepoor, in the very heart of Hindostan. The Rohillas, a Patan race, had taken possession, as an independent state, of a tract bordering on the province of Delhi. Central India, Gujerat, and great part of the Deccan, were under the power of the Mahrattas. The viceroy of the Deccan, known under the title of the Nizam, whose capital was Hyderabad, claimed the independent sovereignty of all the states and principalities south of the Toongbuddra, whichi had submitted to Aurungzebe. The Mysore state, though a declared tributary of the Moguls, and of the Rajah Shao, was rising into power and importance. And in the Carnatic, various deputies or nabobs were taking advantage of the general confusion, to set up for themselves: among these, the most célebrated in the subsequent annals of British India, was Dost Ally, the nabob of Arcct.

A hundred years have not elapsed, and what is now the political geography of India? The Mogul empire is extinguished. The Mahrattas, as a political power, are annihilated. A pageant Rajah of Satara is substituted for the once powerful Peishwa, the head of the Mahratta confederacy; and Sindia, Holkar, and the Guikwar, are the only Mahratta chiefs who can claim, in courtesy, the title of sovereigns. The Vizier of Oude has been encouraged to indemnify himself with the title of king for the loss of great part of his kingdom, and the whole of his political power. The Rohillas and the Jauts, like the Rajpoots and other tribes, no longer claim enumeration among the powers of India, although they exist as tributary states. The short-lived dynasty of Seringapatam has been destroyed. The Nabob of Arcot is almost forgotten. There is a pageant Rajah at Mysore, and a Nizam at Hyderabad, both under the surveillance of a Resident. A new power has obtained possession of Lahore-the Seiks; the only one, except the Ghoorkalese of Nepaul, which can be considered as retaining any portion of independence. Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, Allahabad, Delhi, part of Agra and Gujerat, the Concan, the Carnatic, are British territory; and by means of residents at every native court, a chain of posts intersecting the country in every direction, and the possession of the whole of the three coasts, India, from Himalaya to Cape Comorin, and from the Indus to the Brahmapootra, is under the supremacy of a power which, a century ago, was unable to make itself respected by a Mahratta pirate, and was repeatedly on the point of losing all its Indian possessions. The annals of history present no parallel to this astonishing revolution, either in rapidity or magnitude, involving as

it does the government and destinies of above a hundred and twenty millions,-more than an eighth part of the human race.

The remaining volumes of Capt. Grant Duff's history are full of interest; but we cannot go further into the subject. Volume the second embraces the period between the death of Bajee Rao in 1740, and the year 1785, when Sindia's power had reached its zenith. Volume the third brings down the history to the final reduction and settlement of the Peishwa's territory in 1819, when the conquest of India by the British may be regarded as having been completed, by the destruction of the Pindarries and of the Mahratta confederacy. The highest praise is due to the Author for the manner in which he has accomplished his laborious task. To the primary merit of fidelity and accuracy, he unites the rare qualifications (in a writer upon Indian subjects) of unaffected moderation and impartiality, and a singular freedom from any apparent party bias. He is neither the panegyrist, nor the calumniator, of the Hindoos and their institutions. He is neither the eulogist of the Honourable Company, nor their opponent. His volumes possess the genuine interest of history, without any of the high colouring and exaggeration which it is apt to receive from writers whose main object it is to interest the passions, or to bias the opinions in favour of some side or party, some course of policy or political question. There is nothing of the pam phleteer, nothing of the advocate about the present Author; nor are there any attempts at philosophizing. He apologizes, indeed, for having given to his first volume too much the ap pearance of mere annals, by cautiously refraining from that amplification and generalizing which form so cheap a method of manufacturing what passes with many for philosophical his tory. It would have been easy for Capt. Grant Duff, in this way, to have expanded his three volumes into six; and we commend his good sense and forbearance. As it is, he has produced a work which will always be referred to with confi dence, as the best possible substitute for primary authorities in relation to the statements which it comprises; and no library, of which Indian literature forms a part, can be complete without it. The style of the narrative, it will be seen from the extracts we have made, is manly, perspicuous, and correct; and it is due to the Author to add, that we have seldom read a work in which so much, compression was observable, without // producing dryness or obscurity in the narrative. A good index is given, which forms also a glossary. There are two excellent maps, and three very neatly engraved frontispieces, ot the subjects of which are particularly well chosen and interest on

ing; the mausoleum of Adil Shah at Bejapoor, the fortress of Raigurh, and Satara.

1

Col. Briggs's Letters are well adapted to answer the purpose of supplying the novice, on his first entrance into India, with much important information and some useful cautions. In this point of view, the reprint of Sir John Malcolm's Notes of Instructions, which takes up a fifth part of the work, is not to be considered as unnecessarily adding to the bulk and price of the volume. We are, however, somewhat disappointed at meeting with so little original information, and even with occasional inaccuracy. For instance, Col. Briggs asserts, that the only religious edifices of importance, devoted to the Hindoo worship, not built since the period of Mahratta supremacy, are found south of the Krishna and the Toongbuddra, a tract

over which the Mohammedans never held undisputed sway.' He must have forgotten the pagodas of Benares, of Bindrabund, of Jyepoor, and of various other places in Central and Western India, which are certainly of higher antiquity; and indeed Aurungzebe was the only emperor of his family who shewed much iconoclastic zeal. We regret to find Col. Briggs arguing in favour of the continued toleration of suttees, and that in a style of whimpering sentimentality and affected alarm, not altogether worthy of either the statesman or the soldier. The justice of depriving the infatuated females of their only reli'gious consolation in the depth of grief, however mistaken 'their belief, seems,' he says, at least doubtful.' Shame on the man who regards it as doubtful, whether it be just to prevent murder, for such most of these suttees really are. But then, how cruel to prevent these affectionate women from suieide! Exquisite philanthropy !

Our Indian alarmists are perpetually reminding us of the fearful odds which the population of India present to the handful of Europeans by which they are governed. It were absurd,' says this Writer, to imagine, that India is held in 'forcible subjection by the few Englishmen who reside there for a time. No, India is united to England by the singular system which pervades its administration.' That the strength of our Indian government consists in our intellectual and moral ascendancy, we admit; but what government does not depend, in like manner, upon the moral subjection of the governed? What is it that bows the millions of China to a Tatar despot? What binds together the heterogeneous elements of the Rus sian empire under one autocrat? What keeps under the brute" force of a nation of serfs, held in subjection by a few tyrannical nobles? The spell is upon the mind; the bondage is that of the will. What is a soldiery without officers, but a rabble

an unintelligent machine, that has lost its guiding impulse? Le besoin d'être gouverné is an instinct to the full as strong in the mass of mankind, as le besoin d'être aimé. In all that Col. Briggs says, as to the duty of treating the natives of India with kindness. and consideration, we entirely concur; and it is humiliating to find our national character so frequently disgraced by the ignorant and vulgar petulance or proverbial arrogance of our countrymen towards foreigners. We are afraid that the Englishman must be admitted to be naturally the most selfsufficient and insolent of mortals,--next, at least, to the Tatar. Some of the instances cited by Col. B. of the conduct of the young gentlemen sent out to India, are truly disgraceful. Yet, we are not afraid of any more Vellore mutinies. While we admit that our Indian empire is greatly an empire of opinion, which must be retained by attaching the Hindoos to their rulers by ties of gratitude and moral esteem, we cannot but regard with contempt and indignation the notes of alarm sounded in the ears of the Legislature, when any measure is contemplated that has for its object the promotion of Christianity, the discouragement of the abominations of idolatry, or the repression of actual crime. We cannot believe that the security of our Indian empire depends upon putting so wholly out of consideration the claims, the authority, and the providence of Him by whom kings reign, and who is the Ruler of princes.

Art. II. 1. A Practical and Pathological Inquiry into the Sources and Effects of Derangement in the Digestive Organs; embracing Dejection and some other Affections of the Mind. By William Cooke, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 290. Price 9s. London. 1828.

2. Commentaries on the Causes, Forms, Symptoms, and Treatment, Moral and Medical, of Insanity. By George Man Burrows, 1 M.D. &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 716. Price 11. 8s. London. 1828.4

IT

T must not be supposed, that, because we class these two works together for consideration under one head, we are therefore affected with the insanity of generalization, so as to imagine it to be in the digestive organs only, that all ailment, mental or bodily, physical or moral, has its seat and source. Our readers indeed, who may have looked over the several articles which have been devoted to topics of a medical character and bearing, will already have perceived that, so far is the Eclectic Review from being the advocate of any sweeping and systematic opinions, its pages have always been directed to their suppression, rather than their support; and we are pleased

to find, that the two able Authors with whom we are now about to be engaged, take themselves the same objections which we have repeatedly advanced against the application of any pathological principles in the exclusive spirit of abstract system.

But the stomach, although not the sole organ for primary consideration on the part of the physician, has, we all know, and all have long known, most extensive connections and sympathies. And even what are called mental, as opposed to bodily disorders, are often so manifestly modified by different states of the first passages and organs subservient to the assimilation of food, that no Author who takes a comprehensive view either of nervous affections on the one hand, or of stomachic irregularities on the other, can fail to allude, the one to digestive derangements, the other, to derangements of the mind. Accordingly we find, that several of the remarks, and even of the cases which are submitted by Mr. Cooke and Dr. Burrows, would admit of being mutually transferred into each other's pages. There is, therefore, no impropriety in a simultaneous review of these treatises, both of which contain (we are pleased at being able to say it) much that is interesting in matter, as well as worthy of commendation for the manner in which it is presented to us.

It is not only respecting the stomach and its dependencies, that a mistaken pathology has mischievously obtained. Mental disorders and alienations have been judged of, almost from the commencement of physic, under misconception relating to first premises. Nor can it excite surprise, that disordered conditions which exhibit such an awful series of morbid manifestation,and which, even in the present day, are inexplicable upon any known principles of the connexion of body and mind, should, in the earliest ages, have been referred in an immediate and specific manner to spiritual visitation, and even set down to the score of moral demerit. The miserable metaphysico-theology of the dark ages served to establish, what a defective anatomy, and a vague pathology, and a poetical abstraction, had introduced; and the poor lunatic was not only consigned at once to darkness, and chains, and dungeons, but viewed as a being in whom reason was suspended as a mark of the vengeance of Heaven! *

* The word iußgorTnTo, as applied even to apoplectic affections, is sufficiently indicative of the mode in which these maladies were judged of. The more modern term, lunacy, is, indeed, at present generally considered to be of fanciful or superstitious origin; the best writers on the subject having discarded the opinion, which still continues however to be maintained by the vulgar, that the phases