India who observe the former etiquette: and the latter, which was fifteen years ago never omitted in the army, is now completely in disuse. At the same time, the regulations of which I speak are known to every Tussildar and Soubahdar in India, and they feel themselves aggrieved every time these civilities are neglected."

Of the state of the Schools, and of Education in general, he speaks rather favourably; and is very desirous that, without any direct attempt at conversion, the youth should be generally exposed to the humanising influence of the New Testament morality, by the general introduction of that holy book, as a lesson book in the schools; a matter to which he states positively that the natives, and even their Brahminical pastors, have no sort of objection. Talking of a female school, lately established at Calcutta, under the charge of a very pious and discreet lady, he observes, that "Rhadacant Deb, one of the wealthiest natives in Calcutta, and regarded as the most austere and orthodox of the worshippers of the Ganges, bade, some time since, her pupils go on and prosper; and added, that if they practised the Sermon on the Mount as well as they repeated it, he would choose all the handmaids for his daughters, and his wives, from the English school.'"'

tion of Justice; especially in the local or district courts, called Adawlut, which the costli ness and intricacy of the proceedings, and the needless introduction of the Persian language, have made sources of great practical oppres sion, and objects of general execration throughout the country. At the Bombay Presidency Mr. Elphinstone has discarded the Persian, and appointed every thing to be done in the ordinary language of the place.

And here we are afraid we must take leave of this most instructive and delightful publi cation; which we confidently recommend to our readers, not only as more likely to amuse them than any book of travels with which we are acquainted, but as calculated to enlighten their understandings, and to touch their hearts with a purer flame than they generally catch from most professed works of philosophy or devotion. It sets before us, in every page, the most engaging example of devotion to God and good-will to man; and, touching every object with the light of a clear judgment and a pure heart, exhibits the rare spectacle of a work written by a priest upon religious creeds and establishments, without a shade of intolerance; and bringing under review the characters of a vast multitude of eminent individuals, without one trait either of sarcasm

He is far less satisfied with the administra-or adulation.

(October, 1824.)

1. Sketches of India. Written by an OFFICER, for Fire-Side Travellers at Home. Second Edition, with Alterations. 8vo. pp. 358. London: 1824. 2. Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and Italy. By the Author of Sketches of India, and Recollections of the Peninsula. 8vo. pp. 452. London: 1824.

THESE are very amiable books:-and, be- | them, will be more generally agreeable than sides the good sentiments they contain, they a digest of the information they might have are very pleasing specimens of a sort of travel-acquired. We would by no means undervalue writing, to which we have often regretted the researches of more learned and laborious that so few of those who roam loose about the world will now condescend-we mean a brief and simple notice of what a person of ordinary information and common sensibility may see and feel in passing through a new country, which he visits without any learned preparation, and traverses without any particular object. There are individuals, no doubt, who travel to better purpose, and collect more weighty information-exploring, and recording as they go, according to their several habits and measures of learning, the mineralogy, antiquities, or statistics of the different regions they survey. But the greater part, even of intelligent wanderers, are neither so ambitious in their designs, nor so industrious in their execution;-and, as most of those who travel for pleasure, and find pleasure in travelling, are found to decline those tasks, which might enrol them among the contributors to science, while they turned all their movements into occasions of laborious study, it seems reasonable to think that a lively and succinct account of what actually delighted

persons, especially in countries rarely visited: But, for common readers, their discussions require too much previous knowledge, and too painful an effort of attention. They are not books of travels, in short, but works of science and philosophy; and as the principal delight of travelling consists in the impressions which we receive, almost passively, from the presentment of new objects, and the reflec tions to which they spontaneously give rise, so the most delightful books of travels should be those that give us back those impressions in their first freshness and simplicity, and excite us to follow out the train of feelings and reflection into which they lead us, by the direct and unpretending manner in which they are suggested. By aiming too ambitiously at instruction and research, this charm is lost; and we often close these copious dissertations and details, needlessly digested in the form of a journal, without having the least idea how we, or any other ordinary person, would have felt as companions of the journey-thoroughly convinced, certainly, that we should

not have occupied ourselves as the writers | before us seem to have been occupied; and pretty well satisfied, after all, that they themselves were not so occupied during the most agreeable hours of their wanderings, and had omitted in their books what they would most frequently recall in their moments of enjoyment and leisure.

Nor are these records of superficial observation to be disdained as productive of entertainment only, or altogether barren of instruction. Very often the surface presents all that is really worth considering-or all that we are capable of understanding;-and our observer, we are taking it for granted, is, though no great philosopher, an intelligent and educated man-looking curiously at all that presents itself, and making such passing inquiries as may satisfy a reasonable curiosity, without greatly disturbing his indolence or delaying his progress. Many themes of reflection and topics of interest will be thus suggested, which more elaborate and exhausting discussions would have strangled in the birth-while, in the variety and brevity of the notices which such a scheme of writing implies, the mind of the reader is not only more agreeably excited, but is furnished, in the long run, with more materials for thinking, and solicited to more lively reflections, than by any quantity of exact knowledge on plants, stones, ruins, manufactures, or history.

"The "Sketches of India," a loose-printed octavo of 350 pages, is the least interesting perhaps of the two volumes now before usthough sufficiently marked with all that is characteristic of the author. It may be as well to let him begin at the beginning.

"On the afternoon of July the 10th, 1818, our vessel dropped anchor in Madras Roads, after a fine run of three months and ten days from the Motherbank.-How changed the scene! how great the contrast!-Ryde, and its little snug dwellings, with slated or thatched roofs, its neat gardens, its green noble-looking buildings, tall columns, lofty veran and sloping shores.- Madras and its naked fort, dahs, and terraced roofs. The city, large and crowded, on a flat site; a low sandy beach, and a foaming surf. The roadstead, there, alive with fishing barks. Here, black, shapeless Massoolah beautiful yachts, light wherries, and tight-built boats, with their naked crews, singing the same wild (yet not unpleasing) air, to which, for ages, the dangerous surf they fearlessly ply over has been rudely responsive.

"I shall never forget the sweet and strange sen. sations which, as I went peacefully forward, the new objects in nature excited in my bosom. The rich broad-leaved plantain; the gracefully drooping bamboo; the cocoa nut, with that mat-like-looking binding for every branch; the branches themselves waving with a feathery motion in the wind; the bare lofty trunk and fan-leaf of the tall palm; the aloes; the prickly pear; the stately banian with slender and elegant stem of the areca; the large drop-branches, here fibrous and pliant, there strong and columnar, supporting its giant arms, and forming around the parent stem a grove of beauty; and armong these wonders, birds, all strange in plumage and in note, save the parroquet (at home, the lady's pet-bird in a gilded cage), here spreading his bright natural and untaught scream. green wings in happy fearless flight, and giving his

Such, at all events, is the merit and the charm of the volumes before us. They place us at once by the side of the author-and bring before our eyes and minds the scenes he has passed through, and the feelings they "It was late and dark when we reached Poonasuggested. In this last particular, indeed, we mallee; and during the latter part of our march we are entirely at his mercy; and we are afraid had heavy rain. We found no fellow-countryman he sometimes makes rather an unmerciful to welcome us: But the mess-room was open and lighted, a table laid, and a crowd of smart, roguishuse of his power. It is one of the hazards looking natives, seemed waiting our arrival to seek of this way of writing, that it binds us up in service-Drenched to the skin, without changes of the strictest intimacy and closest companion-linen, or any bedding, we sat down to the repast ship with the author. Its attraction is in its direct personal sympathy-and its danger in the temptation it holds out to abuse it. It enables us to share the grand spectacles with which the traveller is delighted-but compels us in a manner to share also in the sentiments with which he is pleased to connect them. For the privilege of seeing with his eyes, we must generally renounce that of using our own judgment-and submit to adopt implicitly the tone of feeling which he has found most congenial with the scene.

provided; and it would have been difficult to have found in India, perhaps, at the moment, a more ing natives, in white dresses, with red or white cheerful party than ours.-Four or five clean-lookturbans, ear-rings of gold, or with emerald drops, and large silver signet rings on their fingers, crowded round each chair, and watched our every glance, to anticipate our wishes. Curries, vegetables, and fruits, all new to us, were tasted and pronounced upon; and after a meal, of which every one seemed to partake with grateful good humour, we lay down for the night. One attendant brought a small carpet, another a mat, others again a sheet or counterpane, till all were provided with something; and thus On the present occasion, we must say, the closed our first evening in India. The morning reader, on the whole, has been fortunate. for, was shaving a man as he still lay dozing! there, scene was very ludicrous. Here, a barber uncalled The author, though an officer in the King's another was cracking the joints of a man half service, and not without professional predi-dressed; here were two servants, one pouring water lections, is, generally speaking, a speculative,on, the other washing, a Saheb's hands. In spite sentimental, saintly sort of person-with a taste for the picturesque, a singularly poetical cast of diction, and a mind deeply imbued with principles of philanthropy and habits of affection:-And if there is something of fadaise now and then in his sentiments, and something of affectation in his style, it is no more than we can easily forgive, in consideration of his brevity, his amiableness, and variety.

of my efforts to prevent them, two well-dressed men were washing my feet; and near me was a brother officer, as if he had been an infant under lad dexteronsly putting on the clothes of a sleepy his care-There was much in all this to amuse the mind, and a great deal, I confess, to pain the heart of a free-born Englishman."

Sketches of India, pp. 3-10.

With all this profusion of attendance, the march of a British officer in India seems a matter rather of luxury than fatigue.

64

long piazza, where it has been adorned by streets | officer, and without public character of any of uncommon width. One, indeed, yet remains kind, it is admirable to see with what uniform nearly perfect; at one end of it a few poor ryots, respect and attention he was treated, even by who contrive to cultivate some patches of rice, cot the lawless soldiery among whom he had freton, or sugar-cane, in detached spots near the river, have formed mud-dwellings under the piazza. quently to pass. The indolent and mercenary Brahmins seem the only class of persons from whom he experienced any sort of incivility. In an early part of his route he had the good luck to fall in with Scindiah himself; and the picture he has given of that turbulent leader and his suite is worth preserving.

First came loose light-armed horse, either in the road, or scrambling and leaping on the rude banks and ravines near; then some better clad, with the quilted poshauk; and one in a complete suit of chain-armour; then a few elephants, among them had dismounted. On one small elephant, guiding the hunting elephant of Scindiah, from which he it himself, rode a fine boy, a foundling protegé of Scindiah, called the Jungle Rajah; then came, slowly prancing, a host of fierce, haughty chieftains. forward, and all took their proud stand behind and on fine horses, show ly caparisoned. They darted and reining up their eager steeds to see, I suppose, planting their long lances on the earth, our salaam. Next, in a common native palkee, its himself. He was plainly dressed, with a reddish canopy crimson, and not adorned, came Scindiah turban, and a shawl over his vest, and lay reclined, smoking a small gilt or golden calean.

round us,

While, with a mind thus occupied, you pass on through this wilderness, the desolating judgments on other renowned cities, so solemnly foretold, so dreadfully fulfilled, rise naturally to your recollection. I climbed the very loftiest rock at day-break, on the morrow of my first visit to the ruins, by rude and broken steps, winding between and over immense and detached masses of stone; and seated myself near a small pagoda, at the very summit. From hence I commanded the whole extent of what was once a city, described by Cæsar Frederick as twenty-four miles in circumference. Not above eight or nine pagodas are standing; but there are choultries innumerable. Fallen columns, arches, piazzas, and fragments of all shapes on every side for miles. Can there have been streets and roads in these choked-up valleys? Has the war-horse pranced, the paltrey ambled there? Have jewelled turbans once glittered where those dew-drops now sparkle on the thick-growing bamboos? Have the delicate small feet of female dancers practised their graceful steps where that rugged and thorn-covered ruin bars up the path? Have their soft voices, and the Indian guitar, and the gold bells on their ankles, ever made music in so lone and silent a spot? They have; but other sights, and other sounds, have also been seen and heard among these ruins. -There, near that beautiful banyan-tree, whole that they eyed us most haughtily, which very much I looked down on the chiefs under us, and saw families, at the will of a merciless prince, have been increased the effect they would otherwise have prothrown to trampling elephants, kept for a work so duced. They were armed with lance, scimitar and savage that they learn it with reluctance, and must shield, creese and pistol; wore some shawls, some be taught by man. Where those cocoas wave, once stood a vast seraglio, filled at the expense of tears wrapped in clothing; and wore, almost all, a large tissues, some plain muslin or cotton; were all much and crimes; there, within that retreat of voluptu-fold of muslin, tied over the turban top, which they ousness, have poison, or the creese, obeyed, often fasten under the chin; and which, strange as it may anticipated, the sovereign's wish. By those green sound to those who have never seen it, looks warbanks, near which the sacred waters of the Toom-like, and is a very important defence to the sides budra flow, many aged parents have been carried forth and exposed to perish by those whose infancy they fostered."-Sketches of India.

of the neck.

"How is it that we can have a heart-stirring sort of pleasure in gazing on brave and armed men, The following reflections are equally just though we know them to be fierce. lawless, and and important :—

"Nothing, perhaps, so much damps the ardour of a traveller in India, as to find that he may wander league after league, visit city after city, village after village, and still only see the outside of Indian society. The house he cannot enter, the group he cannot join, the domestic circle he cannot gaze upon, the free unrestrained converse of the natives he can never listen to. He may talk with his moonshee or his pundit; ride a few miles with a Mahometan sirdar; receive and return visits of ceremony among petty nawabs and rajahs; or be presented at a native court: But behind the scenes in India he cannot advance one step. All the natives are, in comparative rank, a few far above, the many far below him and the bars to intercourse with Mahometans as well as Hindoos, arising from our faith, are so many, that to live upon terms of intimacy or acquaintance with them is impossible. Nay, in this particular, when our establishments were young and small, our officers few, necessarily active, nec essarily linguists, and unavoidably, as well as from policy, conforming more to native manners, it is probable that more was known about the natives from practical experience than is at present, or may be again."-Ibid. pp. 213, 214.

:

cruel?
?-though we know stern ambition to be the
chief feature of many warriors, who, from the cra-
dle to the grave, seek only fame; and to which, in
such as I write of, is added avarice the most piti-
less? I cannot tell. But I recollect often before, in
my life, being thus moved. Once, especially, I
stood over a gateway in France, as a prisoner, and
saw file in, several squadrons of gens-d'armerie
d'elite, returning from the fatal field of Leipsic.
They were fine, noble-looking men, with warlike
helmets of steel and brass, and drooping plumes of
black horse-hair; belts handsome and broad; heavy
swords; were many of them decorated with the
cross of the Legion of Honour. Their trumpets
flourished; and I felt my heart throb with an ad-
miring delight, which found relief only in an invol.
untary tear. What an inconsistent riddle is the
human heart!"-Ibid. pp. 260-264.

In the interior of the country there are large tracts of waste lands, and a very scanty and unsettled population.

"On the route I took, there was only one inhab. ited village in fifty-five miles; the spots named for halting-places were in small valleys, green with young corn, and under cultivation, but neglected sadly. A few straw huts, blackened and beat down The author first went up the country as far by rain, with rude and broken implements of husas Agra, visiting, and musing over, all the re-bandry lying about, and a few of those round hardenmarkable places in his way-and then return ed through the heart of India-the country of Scindiah and the Deccan, to the Mysore. Though travelling only as a British regimental

dering families, of a rude unsettled people, visit ed thrashing-floors. tell the traveller that some wanthese vales at sowing time and harvest; and labour indolently at the necessary, but despised, task of the peaceful ryot."-Ibid. p. 300.

"I enjoyed my march through these wilds great- | plete was their seclusion, that though one of ly. Now you wound through narrow and deeply them died and was committed to the sea during wooded glens; now ascended ghauts, or went down the passage, the event was not known to the the mouths of passes; now skirted the foot of a mountain; now crossed a small plain covered with crew or passengers for several days after it the tall jungled-grass, from which, roused by your had occurred. "Not even a husband entered horse tramp, the neelgau looked upon you; then their apartment during the voyage-because flying with active bound, or pausing doubtful trot, the women were mixed: an eunuch who joined the more distant herd. You continually cooked for them, alone had access." cross clear sparkling rivulets, with rocky or pebbly beds; and you hear the voice of waters among all the woody hills around you. There was a sort of thrill, too, at knowing these jungles were filled with all the ferocious beasts known in India (except elephants, which are not found here), and at night, in hearing their wild roars and cries. I saw, one morning, on the side of a hill, about five hundred yards from me, in an open glade near the summit, a lioness pass along, and my guide said there were many in these jungles."-Sketches of India.

Abundantly, however," he adds, "was I amused in looking upon the scenes around me, and some there were not readily to be forgotten:when, at the soft and still hour of sunset, while the full sail presses down the vessel's bows on the golden ocean-path, which swells to meet, and then sinks beneath them, then, when these Arabs group for their evening sacrifice, bow down with their faces to the earth, and prostrate their bodies in the act of worship-when the broad ameën, upon the listener's ear-the heart responds, and deeply intoned from many assembled voices, strikes throbs with its own silent prayer. There is a so

We should like to have added his brilliant account of several native festivals, both Hindu and Mahometan, and his admirable descrip-lemnity and a decency in their worship, belonging, tions of the superb monuments at Agra, and the fallen grandeur of Goa: But the extracts we have now given must suffice as specimens of the "Sketches of India”—and the length of them, indeed, we fear, will leave us less room than we could have wished for the "Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and in Italy."

in its very forms, to the age and the country of the Patriarchs; and it is necessary to call to mind all that the Mohammedans are and have been-all that their prophet taught, and that their Koran enjoins and promises, before we can look, without being strongly moved, on the Mussulman prostrate before his God."-Ibid. pp. 13, 14.

They land prosperously at Mocha, of which he gives rather a pleasing account, and again embark with the same fine weather for Djidda

shore, and generally indulging the passengers with an hour's ramble among its solitudes. The following poetical and graphic sketch of the camel is the fruit of one of these excursions:

This volume, which is rather larger than the other, contains more than the title prom--anchoring every night under the rocky ises and embraces, indeed, the whole history of the author's peregrinations, from his embarkation at Bombay to his landing at Dover. It is better written, we think, than the former. The descriptions are better finished, the reflections bolder, and the topics more varied. There is more of poetical feeling, too, about desert reddens with the setting sun, is a fine object "The grazing camel, at that hour when the it; and a more constant vein of allusion to to the eye which seeks and feeds on the picturesque subjects of interest. He left India in Decem--his tall, dark form-his indolent leisurely walkber 1822, in an Arab vessel for the Red Seaand is very happy, we think, in his first sketches of the ship and the voyage.

his ostrich neck, now lifted to its full height, now bent slowly, and far around, with a look of unalarmed inquiry. You cannot gaze upon him without, by the readiest and most natural suggestions, reverting in thought to the world's infancy-to the times and possessions of the shepherd kings, their tents and raiment, their journeyings and settlings. The scene, too, in the distance, and the hour, eventide, and the uncommon majesty of that dark, lofty, and irregular range of rocky mountain, which ends in the black cape of Ras el Askar, formed an assemblage not to be forgotten."—Ibid. p. 42.

At Djidda they had an audience of the Aga, which is well described in the following short passage::

"Our vessel was one, rude and ancient in her construction as those which, in former and successive ages, carried the rich freights of India for the Ptolemies, the Roman prefects, and the Arabian caliphs of Egypt. She had, indeed, the wheel and the compass; and our nakhoda, with a beard as black and long, and a solemnity as great as that of a magician, daily performed the miracle of taking an observation! But although these "peeping contrivances" of the Giaours have been admitted, yet they build their craft with the same clumsy insecurity, and rig them in the same inconvenient manner as ever. Our vessel had a lofty broad stern, unmanageable in wearing; one enormous sail on a martial man, with mustachios, but no beard; he "Rustan Aga himself was a fine-looking, haughty, heavy yard of immense length, which was tardily hoisted by the efforts of some fifty men on a stout wore a robe of scarlet cloth. Hussein Aga, who mast, placed a little before midships, and raking sat on his left, had a good profile, a long grizzled forwards; her head low, without any bowsprit; beard, with a black ribbon bound over one eye, to and, on the poop, a mizen uselessly small, with conceal its loss. He wore a robe of pale blue. The hardly canvass enough for a fishing-boat. Our person, Araby Jellauny, was an aged and a lading was cotton, and the bales were piled up on very plain man. The attendants, for the most part, her decks to a height at once awkward and unsafe. wore large dark brown dresses, fashioned into the In short, she looked like part of a wharf, towering short Turkish vest or jacket, and the large, full, with bales, accidentally detached from its quay, and the heavy ornamented buts of their pistols protru. Turkish trowsers; their sashes were crimson, and floating on the waters."-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 3, 4.ded from them; their crooked scimitars hung in

He then gives a picturesque description of the crew, and the motley passengers-among whom there were some women, who were never seen or heard during the whole course of the voyage. So jealous, indeed, and com

other

silken cords before them; they had white turbans, shaven. Their complexions were in general very large mustachios, but the cheek and chin cleanly pale, as of men who pass their lives in confinement. They stood with their arms folded, and their eyes fixed on us. I shall never forget them. There