We are not quite certain of the full import of the word success' in this place. If it means that some of these visitants to the pool there met their fate, it should seem that at least the most harmless of them, the royal tigers, were generously allowed to come and go with impunity.

The whole book does not contain any thing more spirited than two hunting narratives; the one in a letter of Sir John Day to Sir W. Jones, the other in a letter to the Author from Sir C. Malet. In the first instance the game was nothing less than a junto of five full-grown royal tigers, which sprung together from the same spot where they had sat in bloody congress: they ran diversely but running heavily, they all couched again in new covers within the same jungle, and all were marked.' Four of them became the trophies of the skill and prowess of the hunters. The oldest and fiercest of the five prudently retired beyond reach early in the engagement. This was a splendid party, borne in state on no less than thirty elephants.

The latter description is still more striking, as representing a region far more wild and gloomy, and a more direct exposure of the persons of the adventurers. The scene was the forest of Durlee, about twenty miles to the northward of Cambay. The game was not hares, nor antelopes, nor foxes, nor elks, nor buffaloes, nor even wild boars; it was a sort of litter, the playful greetings of which, were it possible for them suddenly to come to the senses of a party of our sportsmen at home, might threaten petrifaction to the whole gallant field, horses and men, with my lord duke, or his betters, at their head. The game was, in short, a knot of lions. The existence of any animals of this tribe in India excited considerable surprise. We are sorry that the too extensive space we have occupied with curiosities, does not fairly leave us room to insert the whole description. We will transcribe a part of it.

As we advanced into the wood, we saw in one of its thickest glooms a number of large dead serpents, some entirely devoured, except their skins: some half caten, and others apparently just killed. We also observed the bones of various animals strewed thick all

about this spot. The country people assured me this appearance was the proof of our being very near the haunt of the savage beasts; and mutual exhortations followed to be steady and circumspect; in fact, in a few paces we discovered, in the soft grass and moss, the almost perfect figures of several animals of various sizes, who had been reposing there; and the carnivorous smells which then assailed us, and the numerous and recent impressions of the fect of beasts of prey, left us no room to doubt of the evidence which I had just received, of this being the gloomy residence of the savage race, who had been roused by our approach.

Having watched for two nights in vain, on the third evening we tied lures of goats and asses under the trees, in three different places,

and at each of these stations three marksmen, including myself, watched in a tree. About midnight, four animals, which we imagined to be tigers, but afterwards discovered to be lions, having, at some distance, ta en a momentary survey of the goat tied at one of the spots, rushed furiously on it; and the largest of them seizing it by the neck, with one shake broke the bone and the animal was instantly deprived of life. The lion then made an e ort to carry off his prey, which being purposely bound with strong cords, he failed in the attempt. At that instant two of the marsinen posted with me in the tree. fired, and wounded him, but he suffered only a momentary stupefaction, for immediately recovering, he quitted the slain goat and retired. One of a smaller size instantly came forward and seized the goat, when the third marksman fired, and wounded him; he also directly retired, but, by the light of the moon, we perceived that they both retreated with difficulty.'

By the assistance of the people of the country, they were discovered to have retired a few miles, to an almost impenetrable jungle, or thicket, of the extent of several miles, and thither Sir Charles, with eight musketeers, besides the villagers, followed them.

• Soon after entering this dismal scene, our people, from different quarters, gave the alarm but nothing appearing within shot, we proceeded further into the gloomy forest, which was impervious to the sun's rays, and so entangl. d with underwood, that we were obliged frequently to proceed upon our hands and knees. In a short time the villagers discovered and announced the wounded lions; and we were instantly saluted by a most tremendous roar, and a frightful rushing through the thic et; which, with the gleam of sabres, the shouts of the party, and the thick darkness, formed an awful and terrific scene. The animals retreating. we followed, till we arrived at a part of the wood absolutely impenetrable.' Vol. III. p. 91.

A manoeuvre, in which buffaloes were employed, brought one of the lions, at last, into a more open place, within the aim of Sir Charles and the musketeers, where the stroke of three of their balls hardly sufficed to finish his destruction.

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The reader is often compelled to perceive a striking contrast in these oriental regions between Nature, with its animal and vegetable productions, and its aspects and operations of the elements, on the one hand, and Man on the other, a contrast of magnificence and pettiness. There is grandeur in the forests, the rivers, the tempests; in the elephants, the savage beasts, the brilliance of the feathered tribe, and even in the very flowers; the indigenous human exhibition is that of feeble intellect, redulity, inertness, the poorest modes of superstition, and the impotence of utter slavery. There has, indeed, appeared, now and then, an individual somewhat analogous to a royal tiger, and such an occurrence has afforded a striking illustra

tion of the quality of the general race, in that the monster found nothing to prevent him devouring as many of them as he pleased.

In several of his stations, Mr. Forbes was at the head of a court of justice; and it should appear, that if the records were published, they would, in point of curiosity, reduce, by contrast, our reports of cases to a very business-like homeliness. He has given a few specimens; one of which is in the form of a grave and earnest petition from a Parsee merchant of Baroche, representing, that the wife of another Parsee merchant in the city had some time before had two devils, (Mr. Forbes thinks the Hindoo translator of the petition should probably have employed the word demons, genii, or spirits, two devils inhabiting her person, said devils being sisters; that one of these sister devils had taken a fancy to shift her abode to the person of his, the petitioner's daughter, causing her at first great uneasiness; that, however, now his daughter and her inmate were on excellent terms, insomuch that the latter had resisted all the lures and coaxing with which she had been solicited by the other merchant's wife to return to rejoin her sister in her old lodgings; that his daughter's life depended on the continuance of this friendly demoniac residence in her; and that the petitioner prayed his worship to frustrate certain wicked machinations which the other merchant's wife, in revenge for her disappointment, had devised against certain of his, the petitioner's, relatives.

In t'exercise of his judicial functions, our Author availed himself, he says, to great advantage, of the ancient institution of the country called panchant, a jury of five persons. Two were chosen by the plaintiff, two by the defendant, and the fifth by himself. I had,' he says, by this means, the satisfaction of pleasing a hundred thousand inhabitants. I was delighted with the simplicity of this mode of proceeding.' This sort of apparatus rendered him officially competent to a multitude of questions of which he could in his own person be no judge. He had very rarely cause to disapprove their decisions, except in cases where some whimsical and superstitious ordeal was awarded. Even in these, however, he seems to have often thought it most prudent to acquiesce; and he gives some truly strange accounts of what he vigilantly witnessed of the mode and result of some of these trials. These ordeals are by fire, water, poison, rice, the balance, and boiling oil.' In this last the accused is ordered to take out a ring or coin which has been placed at the bottom of the vessel. There are instances where the prisoner has been terribly burnt; and there are many others, equally well attested, when the hand and arm received no injury. I know that every possible care was taken to prevent deception.'

We must here close an account of this highly entertaining work, though we are very far from having gone over its whole extent for our quotations. Our whole number might have been filled with things as remarkable as those we have so copiously cited.

We have but little to add respecting the general character of the performance. As to the style, the reader will see, in these selections, that it is loose, negligent, and sometimes palpably incorrect; but it is easy, lively, and expressive. We cannot help again complaining, rather strongly, of the quantity of quotation, chiefly, as it must of course be, from books much more easily obtained than the Oriental Memoirs, and chiefly too from books very likely to be previously in the possession of most of the persons who will purchase this.

We should have noticed that there is a considerable portion of statistical information in the work; but we thought we should render our readers a more acceptable service, by making such quotations as should give a striking and picturesque display of the appearance of the country, and the manners of its rational and animal inhabitants.

A large share of the latter half of the book is occupied with the substance, but especially with the anecdotes, of the political and military transactions, which, during the long period of our Author's residence, were advancing the British dominion in Asia towards its present ascendency and vastness. We should be disposed to think the Author somewhat too lavish and undiscrimiñating in his eulogies of the successive administrations. With regard, however, to the horrid iniquities which, at some periods within remembrance, both men of benevolence and men of party, were led to charge on our Indian government, as to its conduct towards the various princes of the country, the present work will powerfully concur with most of the information so amply supplied to us, of late years, to augment our scepticism and lessen our sensibility. Indeed it would be difficult to decide exactly what should be called injustice toward such a set of vile and pernicious miscreants as the generality of the native powers are proved to be,-powers whose dominion it would probably be the dictate of universal morality that any more righteous power that is strong enough should destroy-provided that in point of time and circumstances it were expedient.

The general effect of our Author's multifarious representations of matters of fact is, to confirm that estimate of the state and character of the people of Hindoostan which has been maintained by the advocates for an earnest effort to diffuse Christianity among them. And this confirmation is the more striking and valuable from the manner in which it grows by progressive aggravation. At his first residence in the East, Mr. Forbes

was much disposed to be delighted with the gentle, the pure, the benign, the devout' adorers of the Triad. He fancied he saw something about them congenial with the beauty and the solemnity of the scenery of nature amid which they were placed. It was slowly and reluctantly he admitted evidence to break up the pleasing fascination. He clung to this favourite race of some of our modern poets and philosophers with a fond, lingering partiality. He had momentary relapses toward the same feeling even after experience had brought irresistible truth upon him. And he has permitted his work to retain, in places considerably advanced from its commencement, passages which we consider as reprehensibly lenient to points and rites of the Hindoo superstition, and the devout feelings of its miserable slaves. He also justly seizes with pleasure and even zeal any opportunity of bestowing the commendation due in any particular point or instance, to the people or to individuals. But in spite of all this, the work is throughout its progress, and the more decidedly as it advances, a mighty and overwhelming testimony to the practical effect of the Paganism so extolled recently in our Senate, and in the productions of a swarm of our writers, an effect equalling in malignity the boldest calculation that might have been formed on the cause, and justifying the strongest of the representations, and all the representations, of the most earnest advocates of missions and proselytism. Mr. F. is himself among the number of these; and toward the end of his book enlarges on the subject with great animation, and with an untired prolixity, which the reader will excuse only on account of the excellence of the spirit and the object.

Of the embellishments of this work, we should say, speaking collectively, that they are very splendid and valuable. With their recommendations as simply works of art, they have the merit of being all really illustrative: all the rich variety they exhibit strictly belongs to the foreign climes with which the book aims to make us familiar The coloured prints, bearing the fecit' of Hooker, represent birds, fruits, flowers, and reptiles, and most of them are admirably delicate and rich. There is much taste in the disposition and intermixture of the several objects often exhibited in one plate. Of the engravings by Greig, C. Heath, Angus, Storer, &c. it is not necessary to say a word, except that they appear to be in the best manner of those artists. There are a number of elegant ones in a rather peculiar style by Wageman. Of a very considerable number by another artist we cannot speak so favourably, and we wish that a smaller proportion had been assigned to his graver. Some of them have considerable merit, but they are generally distinguished by an excessive dry and hard manner; and especially the clouds sometimes suggest the idea of a solid massy substance.