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"An armed multitude had assembled at Lobenar, situated on the westerly bank of the river Gemanok, being commanded by a certain Bagoes Jabien, who is the son of the former chief of robbers. He endeavoured, through the promulgation of seditious writings, to increase the number of his adherents; ineffective were all the means employed by the acting residents of the Preanger Regencies and Cheribon, and other persons of consideration, to prevail with these mutineers to state their complaints, and to come to an agreement: wherefore it became highly necessary to employ the military force, consisting of about 160 men, of which 36 were Europeans, who had come from Samarang, under the command of Captain Van Driel, of the 21st battalion of infantry.

"A plan of operation was laid down in concert with the civil authorities, which especially had in view to surround the mutineers, and not to let them escape if possible. New proposals having once more been made in order to reconcile them, which were again obstinately rejected, the 20th instant was fixed upon for a general attack.

"Unforeseen circumstances caused that the attack, which ought to have been made at the appointed moment from Indramayo, Odjoeng, Losserang, and Lobenar, did not take place at the same time, and that the small detachments which attacked the enemy separately, for want of support, notwithstanding their bravery, could at that moment make no impression. However, and notwithstanding all obstacles, the victory was gained by our people; and when the armed force, commanded by the Resident of the Preanger Residencies, at last arrived from the district of Losserang, victory was no longer doubtful: upwards of 60 mutineers were killed, 100 severely wounded, and the number of those who were disarmed and made prisoners amounts, according to the latest report, to no less than 500 and upwards. We lament on our part the loss of four European and eleven native soldiers, besides the wounded.

"Government, we understand, is going immediately to investigate what reasons could occasion such a dangerous insurrection; and especially to examine if no extortions or vexations of the inhabitants of these distant districts have given rise to these criminal proceedings."

But this, if we may credit another account, which appears to be more authentic from there being less temptation to disguise the facts, is neither a correct nor a full narrative of the transaction. The multitude assembled amounted to about 900; they met to petition for a redress of grievances, or a protection against exactions: and when the victory was gained, the tragedy began which furnishes a parallel to the massacre of the English at Amboyna, and of the Chinese at Batavia.

"When the prisoners were disarmed," says the other account, "Mr. Motman, the Dutch resident, delivered them over to the military, in order that they might be securely guarded to Indramayo. On their ar rival there they were all put into a coffee storehouse within the fort, and the storehouse was surrounded by sentinels. In the course of the

night, it is stated, that an attempt was made on the part of the pri soners to escape from confinement: the soldiers on guard fired upon them, and, horrible to relate, it ended in the massacre of about 300 souls in cold blood, by the military, under the orders and in the presence of their own officers!

"Mr. Motman, I am told, did all that was in his power to stop this dreadful sacrifice of human blood, but without effect: no attention seems to have been paid to his representations, and he was obliged to submit, as he himself declares, with feelings not to be described, to the spectacle of an unarmed multitude of poor misled creatures, whom he had vanquished and made prisoners in the morning, massacred by their own guards, commanded by two officers, one bearing his Netherland Majesty's commission of captain, and the other of lieutenant, under the weak, inconceivable, and inhuman pretext that they could not be otherwise responsible for the security of the prisoners, or for their own safety, as the prisoners intended to runa-muck!'

"Will it be credited that a number of unarmed wretches, confined in a secure teakwood building, within a fort, should ever think of attacking a military force surrounding them as guards, and to whom they had but a few hours before surrendered themselves as prisoners, while they yet had arms in their hands? He must be credulous indeed who can bring his mind to believe this! If ever the truth comes to light, it will then, I am convinced, be found that an effort to give themselves fresh air, quite natural to so large a body of men confined in a building of comparative small dimensions, the doors and windows of which were no doubt closed for security, was, by the pusillanimity, if not the cruelty, of their guards, considered as an attempt to escape; and the scene of blood once begun, the prisoners, apprehending what was to follow, made such resistance as they had in their power, in the vain hope of saving their lives.

"But let this be as it may, those who remained alive from the massacre were embarked in coffee prows, and despatched up the river to Canony Sambong; and while on the river the second act of the tragedy took place. An attempt is said to have been again made by the prisoners to escape; and on this occasion many more were sent to the other world to join their companions in misfortune. Indeed so insatiable appears to have been the thirst for Javanese blood, that of 594 taken prisoners by Mr. Motman on the day of the engagement, but 113 arrived alive at this place, where they are now in confinement!"

The King of the Netherlands, we are told, is continuing to send out reinforcements to protect his Indian empire; but a handful of troops will be no security to a government whose subjects, amounting to several millions, are first excited to arms by intolerable oppressions, and then reduced to temporary obedience by such barbarities as these.

In conclusion we have to observe, that we have derived much amusement and instruction from Sir T. Raffles' book. Though it contains no marks of profound penetration or extensive knowledge, no felicities of diction or able combinations of reasoning,

it is every where replete with information and detail, and conveys the impression of an active, observant, and benevolent mind. We are sorry to see that, by the size of the volumes, the matter of which might have been compressed into a much smaller space, and by the number of the plates, many of which, though well executed, are unnecessary, the price of the work, like most others upon the settlements or transactions in India, places it beyond the reach of general readers. The authors of such works, and their publishers, should recollect that many persons have a laudable curiosity to know something of our Indian empire, who have never made fortunes in India.

ART. IV.-Select Pieces in Verse and Prose. By the late John Bowdler, Esq. Junior, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 683. Cadell and Davies. London, 1817. WHILST these volumes were circulated only as a sort of legacy among the intimate friends of their interesting and distinguished author, we could not venture to drag them from the privacies of friendship, and force them on the public stage of periodical criticism. And even now that the editor has given them the publicity they deserve, we have felt a momentary doubt whether it became us, in our peculiar circumstances, to deal with these as with the other volumes which are daily accumulating upon our table. It will be obvious to every one who is at once a reader of our work and of the volumes before us, that in criticising these volumes we are, in a measure, criticising ourselves: one of the most valuable criticisms in the British Review was the production of Mr. Bowdler's masterly hand; and this article is reconveyed, in the present publication, to its lamented proprietor. This circumstance, then, had suggested the doubt to which we allude. But more mature consideration has disposed us to think, that any forbearance on this account from noticing the rest of the collection, and giving to it all the additional publicity we are able, would be to repay our obligations to the author by denying him the last tribute an anonymous critic is able to render. Besides, the public ought not to suffer on account of the kindness of Mr. Bowdler to ourselves. And they would deeply suffer if, by our silence, one copy less of these valuable volumes should be introduced into the library of the young student; of the self-sufficient philosopher; of the rationalist, who is exalting a lean and imperfect logic over the

lessons of heavenly wisdom; of the proud professor of religion, who is substituting a dogmatic creed for a holy life; of the legal pedant, who imagines that progress in his profession demands such absorption of the life and faculties in its pursuits as leaves no leisure to be good, no time nor strength for that which, after a few hurried years, will be the only question of real importance to responsible creatures. Nor are these, however strong, the only reasons for giving all possible circulation to these volumes. A critical work, for nothing more conspicuous than for its theological delinquencies, has combined with a liberal eulogy on the talents and personal virtues of Mr. Bowdler, a strange attack upon his religious opinions. It is desirable, therefore, to allow him the privilege, denied him by the critic, of speaking somewhat at large for himself.

On the whole, then, we venture to hope, that this subject will not be without considerable interest for many of our readers. The death of a good man, even though not an able man, is a public calamity: but the talents of Mr. Bowdler were on a level with his virtues; and when we remember the influence exercised by him upon the whole sphere in which he moved, even if we felt little sympathy for the friends of this distinguished young man, we should feel deeply for the blow which the country has sustained in his premature removal. We love to encourage the expectation that this endeavour to erect in our pages a humble monument to his honour may serve to fix the eye of his young successors upon his example, and may inspire them with the ambition (if ambition it may be called) of treading in the steps by which he was so rapidly rising to usefulness and glory. He lived long enough to teach us what may be achieved by those whom Providence may permit to conduct, for a longer period, that struggle of virtue upon earth the triumph of which he is gone to celebrate in heaven.

We shall preface our extracts and observations on these volumes, by giving a brief history of Mr. Bowdler's early life, his progress in his profession, his sickness, his wanderings, and his death. The memoir from which this abstract is taken is that prefixed to the volumes originally distributed among Mr. Bowdler's friends. Part only of this memoir is inserted in the volumes now published; but we trust that we shall be pardoned for availing ourselves of the whole of it. We unfeignedly wish it had been more copious and minute; as there are few points of greater interest than the early actings of a vigorous and virtuous mind. It is delightful to trace these high qualities to their source, and discover the original elements from which they were compounded.

Mr. Bowdler was the son of John Bowdler, Esq. of Hayes, in

Kent, and was born in the year 1783. Even from his earliest years he appears to have given indications of his future eminence. Before he could stand alone, a relation of much sagacity said of him-" If he is a fool I will never trust physiognomy again." When a mere child, he discovered those thoughtful and contemplative habits which distinguished him at later periods of his life. He received every kind of instruction with avidity; and early displayed that bias to religion which constituted the highest ornament of his future life, and the strong anchor of his dying hours. Not merely a decided progress, but a change, is discernible in the current of his religious opinions, as traced in the pages of the work before us.

Mr. Bowdler was sent early as a day scholar to the Grammar School at Sevenoaks, where his parents then resided; and was thence removed to Hyde Abbey School, and thence to the College at Winchester, though not on the foundation. The writer of the memoir, the truly respectable father of Mr. Bowdler, attributes much of his success in that institution to the kind and judicious treatment of the then master, Dr. W. Stanley Goddard; and considers that an instructor of a less kind and courteous spirit would have been dangerous to a boy of his naturally irritable temperament.

Mr. Bowdler, sen. had proposed to fix his son with a proctor; but to this the son objected, as giving him no prospect of becoming "Lord Chancellor;" an object which, it may be presumed, quickens the legal zeal of not a few hundreds in this realm who have not the same reasonable hopes of attaining it. He was accordingly placed with a solicitor; a destination to which, though it deprived him of the benefits of a university education, he cheerfully submitted, when informed that it best suited the finances of his father. This situation, however injurious it might have proved to ordinary minds, opposed no effectual barrier to his rising genius. It is unquestionably of the highest importance, as a general rule, that a mass of information should be collected, and a habit of thinking acquired, by various reading, and by the ardent pursuit of some abstract subject, before the mind is compelled to concentrate its powers upon professional studies. A division of labour is more favourable to the accomplishment of the object pursued, than to the mind of the individual pursuing it. And he who is driven too early to walk the narrow round of professional study, will, in many instances, like another drudge about as happily circumstanced, grow blind to every object around him. The four years, therefore, spent in the university, are of inestimable value to common minds, by detaining them in the walks of general science or literature before they put on the harness of the

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