the acquisition of classical literature, devoted to a sound rudimental instruction in those languages of India which the Civilian will hereafter be called upon to master, the rules we are reviewing would be deserving of our warmest approbation and be productive of the happiest results. Let the successful competitor enter Haileybury at seventeen and remain till twenty-three. During that time (a period of six years) let him be instructed in Law, Mathematics, History and those languages which will be useful to him in the Presidency to which he is appointed. If practicable, let Geology be one of the subjects on which lectures are delivered and examinations held; but in the name of common sense, let us protest against Sanscrit as indispensable; and by no means thrust Persian on the youth destined for Bombay, or Telogoo on the future Administrator in the North West Provinces. By some such simple system, we shall do much towards removing the present sneering reproaches against the Service; while the race of Heaven-born Judges and incapable Collectors will be speedily removed-destined no longer to fatten idly on the Revenues drawn from the miserable cultivators.

For if any man will look earnestly around him, he will detect at least one great want in India-we mean the want of sympathy between the rulers and the ruled. Of the domestic habits, feelings, and under-current of native character we (at least in this Presidency) know absolutely nothing; nor have the people, especially the lower orders, that trust, confidence, and affection for us, which it should be our cherished duty to inspire. Has the Ryot some trivial complaint to make about a field-trivial to us, but to him of incomparable importance-some story to relate about the grinding oppression of village Officers, or secret to whisper anent fraud on the part of our native subordinates, he draws back, feeling that between him and the great fountain of justice, there is a wide gulf fixed in the shape of a portly Sheristedar, or some other Brahman go-between. His language is not the language of Oriental translators to Government or Examination Committees, and his provincialisms must be translated into the Mahratta of the Cutcherry and of the Sahib logue. In fact he is by stern necessity shut out from the benevolence of the European Satrap, who must waste his philanthropy upon the class, which least deserves it, leaving the poor peasant with his bare skin, his scanty crops, and his rural simplicity to the mercy of Brahmans, Banians, and Marwadees! This state of things, the reader will admit, can only be very partially remedied by a Persian Education at Haileybury; followed by a notification, which insists on a competent knowledge of the languages of Bombay, within eighteen months of the youth's arrival in the country.

In this little article we have argued on the grounds that no knowledge is more practically useful to an Anglo-Indian Civilian than

a knowledge of the Vernacular languages. We have attempted to shew, that without some previous preparation in England it is idle to expect the masterly knowledge contemplated by the Rules,' within the period laid down by the framers. We have further pointed out that at Haileybury young men are somewhat prepared for every Presidency except Bombay, and while we appreciate with gratitude the spirit which dictated "the Notification," and the moral benefits (to the Service) that will, undoubtedly, result, we hold that it is too exacting and in some respects positively unjust. In conclusion, being of a sanguine spirit, we cheer ourselves with the hope that some measures may yet be adopted at home to extend to Bombay the same advantages that are enjoyed by the sister Presidencies. Meanwhile let the young Civilian recently arrived with his Oordoo' and Persian' literature read the "Notification," and look at the trials which stare him in the face for several months to come with pious resignation. He will doubtless derive some consolation from the following lines:

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing

The grief that must have way.

Or, as poring over the interminable subjects in which he has had no previous education, he finds the "ordinary cursive character" running obstinately out of his head, and his hopes departing as the dreaded sixth month fearfully approaches with rapid wings, let him, if it so please him, recall to mind the following:

And thou too whoso'er thou art,

That readest this brief Psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.

Oh! fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long;
Know how sublime a thing it is,

TO SUFFER AND BE STRONG!

ART. V. THE ENGLISH IN WESTERN INDIA.

The English in Western India; being the Early History of the Factory at Surat, of Bombay, and the subordinate Factories on the Western Coast. From the Earliest Period until the commencement of the Eighteenth Century. Drawn from Authentic Works, and Original Documents. By PHILIP ANDERSON, A.M.Bombay Smith, Taylor & Co. 1854.

OUR labours in connexion with a New Review, published in the Capital of Western India, could hardly be more appropriately inaugurated than by bringing to the notice of our readers a work, emanating from our local press, devoted to the early history of our countrymen in this important part of our Indian Empire, and commending itself to our attention from its own intrinsic merits, as well as from the interest belonging to the hitherto obscure, yet curious and not uninstructive events which it describes.

When we speak, however, of introducing the work to the notice of our readers, we would not be understood as reflecting on the general intelligence of such as are in our more immediate vicinity, by presuming that they are not already conversant with its contents; or that a picture so fresh and lively as Mr. Anderson has given us of the pioneers of English Dominion in the East, can have so little interest for them, that they have yet to make acquaintance with it. At present we have in our " mind's eye" those more distant readers, scattered it may be over the length and breadth of India, who, though beyond the pale of our local questions, are yet concerned in imperial ones. An Englishman cannot fail to be specially interested in whatever tends to throw light on the beginning of a rule, which from the meanest origin, and after numerous death struggles to preserve its very existence, at length became so potent that, like an Aaron's rod, it has swallowed every other power with which it has come in contact.

Prior to the publication of Mr. Anderson's work, the subject which he has treated so pleasantly, without any sacrifice of accuracy and research, was left almost untouched in every existing History of India, if we except a meagre and rapid survey in a few introductory Chapters of the otherwise excellent volumes of Mill. The learned and scholarly History by the late William Erskine recently given to the world, is but an instalment, though an important one, of that with which its lamented Author intended to present us. Had he lived to complete his design of narrating, with the fulness of the portion recently published, the History of India from Baber to Au

This subject untouched by previous writers.

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rungzeeb, it would have left nothing to be desired. The clear, comprehensive, and masterly survey of the Hindu and Mahomedan periods of Indian History by Mountstuart Elphinstone is, we fear, the whole of his work, although when these two volumes appeared fourteen years ago, a continuation was fondly looked forward to. Indeed all who took an interest in India and its History, hoped that the book would be an English classic which would take the place of, and supersede every other of the kind. It was a pleasant expectation, that the honoured name of Elphinstone, occupying as it did the first rank amongst Indian Statesmen, should also be the first amongst Indian Historians. As regards the completion of the History, this we apprehend will never be more than an expectation-in truth, judging from the Preface, it hardly appears that the writer had any intention of carrying it further. As it is, it is complete in itself; and for the period of which it treats, is likely to remain without a rival. A Master of historic composition has indeed indicated one defect in it: "We are doing Elphinstone in the sixth," says Arnold in a letter to the Rev. H. Fox, one of his old pupils, and then a Missionary at Madras, " for our modern History on Thursdays as I wished to make the fellows know something of India, of which they know next to nothing. It is a pity that Elphinstone had not a more profound knowledge of the ancient Western World, which continually illustrates and is illustrated by the state of things in India." We sympathize with the regret of Arnold, but it is hardly fair to Mr. Elphinstone to consider it as implying any reproach. The early age at which he joined the public service in India, and the arduous and absorbing nature of his subsequent labours, left him but little leisure for acquiring, or, if he had acquired, for pursuing and perfecting a knowledge either of the ancient Western World, or of any other subject not intimately connected with, or bearing on his public duties. The respectable mediocrity of Mr. Thornton, and the heavy periods and dull knowledge of the learned Professor of Sanscrit, who has written a continuation of Mill, are confined to the more recent portion of our Indian History; whilst in popular compilations like those of Gleig, Murray, Taylor, Macfarlane, and others, information about our earliest times was of course not to be expected. The able Historian of the Afghan War approached the subject in his "History of the East India Company," but in that hasty, and on the whole unsatisfactory work, he has neither opened it up nor discussed it. No doubt his plan did not embrace minute details of early Anglo-Indian History, yet we might have expected a more interesting and skilful narrative, in a book bearing such a title, and coming from a writer with such a well earned reputation on subjects of Indian Biography and History, as Mr. Kaye.

The deeds of our first predecessors deserved a better fate than they have met at the hands of Historians, for without a more accurate knowledge of them than can be obtained from ordinary histories, we learn but imperfectly the strange story of the rise and progress of the British Power in the East. It is well to remember that there were English in India before the days of Clive; and that even the obscure trading Factors of Surat and Bombay in their early fights with the Moguls and Mahrattas, the Dutch and Portuguese, displayed an energy, perseverance, and courage, as indomitable as that which subsequently conquered at Plassey and Assaye; albeit they have not been so fortunate as to be painted by a brilliant Essayist. Entertaining these opinions as to the importance of the subject before us, we are delighted to welcome Mr. Anderson's contribution to the elucidation of our early Anglo-Indian annals. He has accomplished the object he had in view with such pains-taking accuracy and research, and composed his curious narrative in such a lively and spirited manner, that it falls little short of what we were looking for, and it may be considered not merely a supplement to other Histories, as the Author modestly terms it, but in itself the History of the period of which it treats.

What we are inclined to find fault with in the work is, that the Author has not been more copious in the use of the rich materials at his disposal. If he had employed them more freely, his book would certainly have been more entertaining and not less instructive than it now is. We fear he has been hampered somewhat in this respect, by the theory he appears to hold as to the manner in which a History should be written, for he says in his Preface that "some modern Historians have converted history into romance, and set off facts with ornaments of imagination," and that he himself "has not endeavoured to walk on the stilts of fancy; but has been satisfied with the secure footing of plain dealing and truth." He also illustrates his meaning by quoting Bacon's observation, that "a mixture of a lie, doth ever add pleasure," thus implying, as we apprehend, that the "lie," and the Historian's " ornament of imagination," are nearly convertible terms.

Surely there is mis-apprehension in this. When Bacon indicated a truth so sad and general, but, we firmly believe for the honour of human nature, not universal, he had in view, principally, the corruption of the moral feelings, and not the exercise of any intellectual quality, as the impressive sequel of the above quotation proves. "Doth any man doubt," he asks, "that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and in