frinds,)-instead of merely obtaining an impunity conceded by the deficiency of power to restrain them, or by a professed respect for what would be called liberty of conscience-that these idolatrous abominations are legislatively sanctioned by an adoption into the regular arrangements of the English Government, and made almost as formally a part of the system of state as the established church in this country, by the appointment of persons of talents and consideration (such the British superintendant of Jaggernaut is described by Dr. B.) to inspect and manage the business of the temples, and take account of the dresses and carriages of the idol, nay even of the keeping of the companies of wretched females devoted from their childhood to the pollutions of these infernal dens. To shew with what a perfect knowledge of the nature of these rites, the government has thought proper thus to sanction them, Dr. B. states, that the appropriate services to Jaggernaut are solemnized at the very doors of the English, almost under the eye of the Supreme Government.' Close to Ishera, a beautiful villa on the river's side, about eight miles from Calcutta, once the residence of Governor Hastings, and within view of the present Governor General's country-house, there is a temple of this idol, which is often stained with human blood.' The author visited it at the grand festival in May, 1807, celebrated by a concourse of about a hundred thousand persons; and gives an extract from his journal descriptive of the orgies, which were exactly of the same quality as those at the grand temple in Orissa.

It would not, we should think, betray much superstition in favour of past times and legislatures, to fancy, that there have been periods when the publication of facts like those in question, would instantly have produced an inquiry and remonstrance in an English Parliament. But at any rate, turning from the past to the future, it would be the blackest of all the gloomy omens that darken our national prospects, if it were certain that the legislative wisdom of a Christian country, should continue to deem a matter like this too unimportant for its attention. The serious reader, it must be confessed, will find every thing the reverse of a happy presage, in the description which Dr. B. gives of the effect of a protracted residence in the East on the minds of our countrymen. His words, which we have already quoted directly import, that those who go in early youth (beyond comparison the greatest number) are apt to become, in their feelings-and then who will answer for their practicesliterally pagans. (p. 32.) And how melancholy it is to reflect, that it is with this very state of feeling, gradually wrought and consolidated, that numbers of them will return to England to

exert all the influence attendant on wealth, and both enter into Parliament themselves, and obtain an influence over the election of many other of its members.-After all, however, there is something so eminently monstrous in this compact with the gods and priests of paganism, that we would still wish to think it impossible the legislature should not one day rise up in a mass, with the exception of nabobs and their dependents, to purify itself from this stain. It is evidently with the legislature that the primary responsibility rests.

The striking character of Dr. Buchanan's descriptions of heathenism, and the very strange nature of the topic connected with them, must be our apology for having dilated so much on this part of his book, as to be reduced to a disproportioned brevity in noticing the remainder. Our readers will readily acknowledge, that an exhibition more wonderful was never presented to their contemplation.

From the performances of the temple, Dr. B. passes to those of the funeral pile; and adds one more to the many descriptions which have not even yet, by familiarity with the subject, cured us of wonder.

A horrid tragedy was acted, onthe 12th instant (September, 1807) near Barragore, a place about three miles from Calcutta. A Koolin Brahmin died at the advanced age of ninety-two. He had twelve wives; and three of them were burned alive with his dead body. Of these three, one was a venerable lady, having white locks, who had been long known in the neighbourhood. Not being able to walk, she was carried in a palanquin to the place of burning; and was then placed by the Brahmins on the funeral pile. The two other ladies were younger; one of them was of a very pleasing and interesting countenance. The old lady was placed on one side of the dead husband, and the two other wives laid themselves down on the other side; and then an old Brahmin, the eldest son of the deceased applied his torch to the pile with unaverted face. The pile suddenly blazed, for it was covered with combustibles; and this human sacrifice was completed, amidst the din of drums and cymbals, and the shouts of Brahmins.-A person present observed, "surely if Lord Minto were here, who is just come from England, and is not used to see women burned alive, he would have saved these three ladies.". The Mahomedan governors saved whom they pleased, and suffered no deluded female to commit suicide, without previous investigation of the circumstances, and official permission.'

He insists on the practicability of abolishing this custom, without any violent interference of power; and he asks, but without seeming in any confident expectation of an answer,

'Have the Court of Directors at any time sent instructions to their Government in India, to report on the means by which the female sacrifice might be diminished, and the practice itself eventually abolished? Or have the Proprietors of India Stock at any time instructed the Court of

Directors to attend to a point of so much consequence to the character of the Company and the honour of the nation?"

The complete extirpation, by a decisive enactment of the Government, of the sacrifice of children, is cited and celebrated, partly as a proof that an inveterate cruel custom may safely be annihilated by authority, and partly as a topic of eulogium on Marquis Wellesley,-to the character of whose, government this act of salutary innovation may indeed set off against the famous Major's zealous applause of the same Governor for giving instructions which', said the Major, do infinite credit to him,' for confirming and extending the Mahometan and Hindoo religious endowments.'

From the odious view of abominations which were but too likey to maintain, for ages to come, their prevalence among the miserable tribes of Hindoostan, even without any aid of English regulation and patronage, our author turns gladly to contemplate the moral condition of a favoured portion of the same race in the southern parts of the peninsula. —At Tranquebar he indulged the pensive, but clevating emotions which every man of high Christian ambition would feel at beholding, placed near together in one church, the sepulchres of the first protestant missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Grundler. A few days after, he entered Tanjore; heard for the first time the name of Swartz pronounced by a Hindoo; and was received with friendly politeness by the Rajah,--a considerably intelligent man as it should seem, but a melancholy illustration of human nature and of the power of error: for neither a long friendly intercourse with Swartz, nor a deep veneration for his memory, have availed to withdraw him from the worship of an object which Dr. B. thus describes :

On the following day, I went to view the Hindoo Temples, and saw the great BACK BULL of Tanjore. It is said to be of one stone, hewn out of a rock of granite; and so large that the Ten ple was built around it. While I surveyed it, I reflected on the multitude of natives who during the last hundred years, have turned away their eyes from this idol.'

Dr. Buchanan preached, in English, in Swartz's pulpit :

'After this service was ended, the congregation of Hindoos assembled in the same church, and filled the aisles and porches. The Tamul service commenced with some forms of prayer, in which all the congregation joined with loud fervour. A chapter of the Bible was then read, and a hyn n of Luther's sung. After a short extempore prayer, during which the whole congregation knelt on the floor, the Rev. Dr. John delivered an animated discourse in the Tamul tongue. As Mr. Whitefield, on his first going to Scotland, was surprised at the rustling of the leaves of the Bible, which took place immediately on his pronouncing the text, so was I surprised here at the sound of the iron pen engraving the Palmyra leaf. Many persons had the Ollas in their hands, writing the sermon in

the Tamul short-hand. Mr. Kohloff assured me, that some of the elder students and catechists will not lose a word of the preacher, if he speak deliberately.'

• Another custom obtains among them which pleased me much. In the midst of the discourse the preacher son etimes puts a question to the congregation; who answer it without hesitation, in one voice. The object is to keep their attention awake, and the minister generally prompts the answer himself. Thus, suppose that he is saying, "my dear brethren, it is true that your profession of the faith of Christ is attended with some reproach, and that you have lost your cast with the Brahmins. But your case is not peculiar. The man of the world is the man of cast in Europe; and he despises the humble and devout discip'e of Christ, even as your Brahmin contemns the Sooder. But, thus it hath been from the beginning. Every faithful christian must lose cast for the gospel; Christ himself, the forreunner, made himself of no reputation, and was despised and rejected of men. Be of good cheer, and say, "though we have lost our cast and inheritance anong men, we shall receive in heaven a new name and a better inheritance, through Jesus Christ our Lord." He then adds, "what, my beloved brethren shall you obtain in heaven?" They answer, "a new name and a better inheritance, through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is impossible for a stranger not to be affected with this scene. This custom is deduced from Ziegenbalg, who proved its use by long experience.' p. 56.

even as

The contrast, to be sure, between this and the scene at Jiggernaut, is more consummately perfect than any thing the powers of fiction could have created. And this is the dif ference at two points on the same line of coast, effected among a people substantially alike at the beginning of that century, at the close of which there has been, among pretended Christians in England, a loud and prolonged cry for the suppression of the peaceful efforts for converting more of such people as those at Jaggernaut, into such people as these in Tanjore. The author was gratified by every thing he saw and heard among this pure and amiable section from the vast and degraded population of India-excepting their distress from the insufficient supply of teachers and bibles, and the deficiency of pecuniary means for extending Christian knowledge, through the medium of schools and other modes of instruction, further into the country. Mr. Koh.off stated, that there were 'upwards of ten thousand Protestant Christians belonging to Tanjore and Tinavenly districts alone, who had not among them one complete copy of the bible; and that not one Christian perhaps in a hundred had a New Testament; and yet there are some copies of the Tamul Scriptures still to be sold at Tranquebar; but the poor natives cannot afford to purchase them.' When Dr. R. mentioned the designs of the Bible Society in England, they received the tidings with very sensible emotions of thankfulness.' The

war in Europe has dried up two of the sources of supply, the Royal College at Copenhagen, and the Orphan-house at Halle in Germany. Their remaining resource from Europe is the stipend of the "Society for promoting Christian Knowledge," whom they never mention but with emotions of gratitude and affection. But this supply is by no means commensurate with the increasing number of their Churches and Schools. The chief support of the Mission is derived from itself.'

We have next, some extracts from the Doctor's Journal of Observations in Ceylon, which he describes as a subject for more lively regret than perhaps any other part of our eastern territories. With circumstances and predispositions beyond all comparison more favourable to Christianity than any of them, it is left almost totally without protestant religious instruction; to the astonishment of the Roman Catholic priests from Goa, who are profiting, in one part of the island, by the omission, and of the Dutch-even the selfish and moneyworshipping Dutch, who, when masters of the island, took great pains for the religious instruction of the natives, and built many churches which are now falling in ruins. There are computed to be 500,000 natives professing Christianity. But it may well be believed that two clergymen, and the missionaries sent by the London Society, with but a part of a translation of the Bible into a language these people can understand, and with no copies even of this part for their use, can do comparatively but little to prevent that continual relapse into Heathenism, which the Doctor states to be taking place among the eminently well-disposed but ill-fated Cingalese. We retain strongly the favourable impression given us of this people by Mr. Cordiner; and combining his account of the withdrawment, by their new masters, of an annual sum which had been applied, with incalculable benefit, by the Dutch government, to the support of schools for the natives, with Dr. B.'s description of the melancholy destitution of religious instruction, we do, with him, most emphatically deplore the fate of the inhabitants of Ceylon.-Sir Alex. Johnstone, Chief-Justice of the island is mentioned as ready to co-operate zealously in any thing that may contribute to their seeing better times. But the most pleasing example. Dr. B. has given of benevolence and spirit, is Mrs. Palm, the missionary's wife. He says, she has made as great progress in the Tamul language as her husband, and is extremely active in the instruction of the native women and children. I asked her if she had no wish to return to Europe, after living so long among the uncivilized Cingalese. "No," sh "she was all the day long happy in the communicatio

said;