to convert four hundred and twenty millions of pagans !' It was all sheer folly, and so the scourge was prepared and was vigorously wielded by a reverend hand; but alas! the drivellers who were bent on converting the mild, the gentle, the innocent Hindoos, were an incorrigible set. The miserable creatures whose hearts were set on introducing the gospel into India, were quite insane ' and ungovernable: they would deliberately, piously, and con'scientiously, expose our whole Eastern empire to destruction for 'the sake of converting half a dozen Brahmins, who, after stuff'ing themselves with rum and rice, and borrowing money from 'the missionaries, would run away, and cover the gospel and its 'professors with every species of impious ridicule and abuse.' Remonstrances, very pathetic and very indignant, were made against the unhappy exhibition of Christian truth which would be inevitable in such hands. Who wishes,' it was touchingly demanded, 'to see scrofula and atheism cured by a single sermon in 'Bengal? Who wishes to see the religious hoy riding at anchor in the Hoogly river? or shoals of jumpers exhibiting their nim'ble piety before the learned Brahmins of Benares?'

But thirty years have elapsed since these sentences were penned; and the laugh and the sneer at Indian Missions,' in which a reverend reviewer deemed it befitting to indulge, have happily died away amid the prayers and rejoicings of the church. But we must drop this strain, and proceed to notice the volumes before

us.

Our readers will allow us, then, to introduce to their notice Mr. Massie, a gentleman with whom his book seems to have made us acquainted as with a friend; and having passed some pleasant and profitable hours in his society, we wish to communicate the pleasure we have received. Without intruding personal or relative circumstances on our notice, Mr. Massie succeeds in interesting the reader at the first introduction, and securing his confidence and sympathy. He sailed from England in the year 1822 we sigh with him as the last farewell is pronounced, and when, after the lapse of a few months, the second volume opens with a touching reference to the desolation of his heart, as the desire of his eyes was removed as by a stroke, we turned back to the page which recorded their embarkation, all in all to each other, and closing the book-but no matter; the communion of saints is more intimate than some imagine.

The fourth chapter, devoted to the antiquity and commerce of the East, affords a valuable epitome of the proofs which illustrate the claims of the Hindoos to be considered among the earliest, if not, indeed, the earliest, civilized nation on the earth; their antiquity rising to a period which throws us back almost upon the infancy of the world. Comparatively unchanged, they are the living mummies of long past ages; for the city we read of in 'The

Arabian Nights,' whose inhabitants were turned to stone, has, to a great extent, its parallel in all India, which is one unburied Herculaneum, offering to the eye of an observer in the nineteenth century, the same appearances as when the Macedonian madman pushed his conquests thither. The reader who is not acquainted with the works of Heeren and others, will be much interested by our author's able condensation of the various illustrations of Indian antiquity. Mr. Massie, however, has had the advantage which the German philosopher had not, of investigating the subject on the spot, and is, moreover, an independent witness. His chief references are to its articles of merchandise,-the same when Ezekiel mused by the river Chebar, when Moses prescribed the use of certain spices in the religious offerings of the Jews, and when the son of Jacob was transferred to a company of merchants bearing the spices of India into Egypt, as they are now; to its literature, for the language which is now the depository of their ' religion, and the organ of their institutes, was a dead language 'long ere any modern European language was spoken; while the 'dialects now used by the Hindoos contain works of undoubted 'antiquity, not as translations, but original productions:' to its religion, the innovations on which may be traced in the transmu'tations of their sculptured monuments, in their obsolete temples, and their scattered and persecuted sectaries, pointing to a very ' remote antiquity.' Temples are there, deserted and time-worn, whose sculptured figures bear no resemblance to any of the idols that have for ages received the homage of the people, and whose inscriptions are in characters which none can decipher, even the Sanscrit itself furnishing no key. Other temples exist, reared or excavated from the solid rock, to Buddha, and in which Buddhist emblems are found exclusively. Another class, long fallen into disuse too, presents a mixture of Brahminical emblems with the former ones, denoting the transition stage; while in a fourth class every thing is purely Brahminical.

The commerce of India is then treated of, and the sketches are indeed interesting, not merely as the subject of antiquarian re'search, but as links for connecting the wide spread nations with 'their common birth-place, and their primeval parentage; for 'putting in stronger relief the changes which have passed on eastern nations; and for developing the causes which have fixed 'the character of oriental society in the fashion of olden time, and stamped the lineaments of modern Asia with the mould of antiquity.'

Mr. Massie proceeds to make us acquainted with the aspect of the country. Our readers will be struck with the confirmation afforded by the following extract of the view we gave last month of the Present Condition of British India.' It is, moreover, the testimony of an eye witness.

'It was a fond conceit with some sinister adversaries of Christian missions, to represent the people of India as innocent Hindoos, and to speak of them either as of one family or of one religion. A better acquaintance, or a more impartial testimony, will variously describe their separate tribes as cruel, insidious, and sensual, though cunning, ambitious, talented, warlike; as roving, thieving, murdering, freebooting, and vindictive; sanguinary, untameable, and haughty; as filthy, mercenary, piratical, turbulent, bigoted, and degraded; ferocious, depraved, dissolute, restless, mendicant, and avaricious.... Their habitations are more wretched than can be conceived by Englishmen, so that I have often passed through agricultural villages, and found the people preferring the road side as their place of midnight rest; their food is of the coarsest fare, and insufficient to sustain animal strength; while even of this, their supply is far less than appetite required...... The clothing of the laboring poor is not so much as will be a veil to cover the shame of nakedness: a rag not worth threepence is often the only garment for tender and feminine delicacy, for the aged parent, and the man of gray hairs. Native laborers work for native masters sometimes for so low wages as a penny or twopence per day; and they are deemed well paid if they receive as servants to Europeans fourpence daily.'

-Massie, vol. i. pp. 254, 255.

We must give the statement which follows, anxious that correct information respecting the condition of our conquered tribes should be widely diffused.

'It is, however, in the oft-recurring scenes of famine, of dry seasons, and partial crops, that the physical wretchedness of Hindoos is fully developed..... The land-owners and land-agents, provisiondealers, and corn-merchants, prey upon the poor and needy, traffic in famine, and enrich themselves by wants and woes, by the despair and deaths of the famished myriads..... I have stood among them when the dead were lying at my feet, and when the dying fell by my side; when the leprous, maimed in hands and feet, exhibited their loathsome extremities; when old age and childhood were covered by the ulcers and pustules of the small-pox; when haggard famine sat upon the wan and sunken cheek, and the hollow eye of thousands..... To prevent the tens of thousands, perishing in one country, from passing into neighbouring districts, it was deemed expedient to erect barriers, and place an armed force, lest they should paralyze the local benevolence which was struggling to mitigate the sufferings of the surrounding poor. I have seen the miserable and emaciated victims of famine searching among the excrements of camels, elephants, and cattle, for particles of grain which had passed undigested. Such scenes, if they occurred only once in the history of a nation, were enough to excite the commiseration of mankind, and bring suspicion upon the wisdom of the men by whom the people were governed. Unhappily, however, they have been of frequent recurrence in British India; periodically have they been experienced; three times within fifteen years. Private

letters, official accounts, and other sources of information, unite with my evidence in representing that people subject to such alarming and consuming destitution; famishing myriads depending on the scanty supplies of charity; hundreds and thousands perishing from want and attendant diseases; villages and rural districts depopulated by migration and death; the streams and rivers choked or poisoned by the putrid carcases of a people dying in too great numbers to be buried by surviving relatives: death not only arrayed in its most ghastly form, but also serving to generate diseases at which trembling mortality shudders, and over which human courage and science exercise no control. Cholera, with all its terrors, has been rendered even desirable, compared with the more fearful and resistless ravages of hydrophobia. Gaunt and squalid wretchedness, emaciated and skeleton forms, endued with a vigor which despair and rabid disease impart, have peopled the streets and hovered round the dwellings of European residents to indicate the misery which Hindoo subjects of the British crown endure.

'In 1833, famine prevailed in the Bombay and Madras presidencies, during which the destruction was awful. More than 150,000 miserable creatures fled from their country to seek in the neighbourhood of the capital the means of sustaining life. Myriads perished at home and on the roads, and the remnant who did not abandon the country parts, and yet continued to sustain life, were reduced to a state of emaciation which defies description. Their personal appearance was scarcely human; their anatomy was nearly as much developed as that of actual skeletons; the articulation of each joint but for the skin might have been traced their bellies were unnaturally swollen, and their colour was of the deepest jet.

'These were British subjects, who had been taken under control, and made tributaries to the support of government; whose land was taxed so highly that no more than seven-sixteenths of the produce went to the husbandmen; and whose fruits of industry could be sold to no other merchant than their irresponsible government; while they had been able to purchase goods in no market but what their rulers furnished. It is a country where the tax and land collector, where the judges and arbiters in all contests or disputes, are the armed conquerors and rulers of the region. Are these rulers, to whom have been committed the destinies of alienated myriads, sufficient for so onerous a responsibility, while politicians and statesmen at home may be alike ignorant and indifferent to the immense interests at stake? Wise men would fear to assume the power and ascendency with which eastern rulers, not peculiarly gifted or experienced, have been invested.' —Massie, vol. i. pp. 256-259.

Mr. M., after furnishing us with an abstract of some of the exploits of their gods, from the Puranas and minor Shastras, and painted in colors most appalling, but alas! too true, indignantly asks, And what have we, as a people, done to alter or amend their state?' Aye, what have we done? we so exalted in the scale of nations, so jealous of our honor, so devoted to religion that our government prescribes every prayer that may be offered in all the

parish churches of our land? What? Why, as on the stage an actor utters some fine sentiment with earnestness and apparent sincerity, and then, aside, and in a lower tone, discloses a totally different feeling-so have we as a nation prated about our attachment to Christianity and to Protestantism; we have placed our hand upon our heart, and with abundant emphasis have professed our willingness to make the last sacrifices for our venerable faith; the stake and the gibbet would be cordially embraced for our beloved religion; the finest sentiments have been uttered, ore rotundo, and then-we have stared with infinite contempt, or laughed outright, at the simpletons who took all this profession for any thing more than clever acting, or stage effect.

Oh, England, shame on thy national hypocrisy! How long shall thy rulers be but a company of players, and thy most renowned edifices be too deservedly looked upon as playhouses? Why should British Protestantism be for a taunt and a by word among the nations, like the Punica fides of ancient times?

The government of Britain, as exercised in India, have upheld the sacred places-the mosques of their Moslem predecessors; they have sanctioned and regulated, as by a legal calendar, the great feasts of Hindoo idolatry; the temples held most sacred, the gods most honored, and the festivals most generally observed, have been protected, represented as sacred, and made a source of government revenue. Solemn treaties have been made between British rulers and Hindoo gods; the great idols have been clothed, under the orders and subject to the directions of government, with English broad-cloth, and their table furnished with a daily provision from the Company's godowns. Missions, to arouse the fervor and increase the number of their devotees, have been sent forth and rewarded under the arrangement and presidency of the British; the priests have been paid, and their licentious orgies and courtesans have been provided for from the treasury of the government. The highest and most officially dignified functionaries have been seated at the gates of idol temples, and received the revenue -the pilgrim tax; and men called Christians have been required to do honor to the stocks and stones; to fire salutes, and walk in processions, when these images were carried forth, reverenced, and adored. Christian worship has been neglected, in some cases set aside, and the day which God has made for himself has been prostituted to the services of the mock deities by British authorities, civil and military. An ignominious brand has been fixed on the name of Jesus; and converts to his faith from among the Hindoos have been removed from offices of trust, have been excluded from the Indian army, and refused the distinction or emolument of government service.'

-Massie, vol. i. p. 278.

With facts like these engraven upon our minds, the finest