PICTURESQUE GROUPING OF THE VILLAGES OF JAVA. 509

a human dwelling can be discovered, and the residence of a numerous society appears only a verdant grove, or a clump of evergreens. Nothing can exceed the beauty or the interest, which such detached masses of verdure, scattered over the face of the country, and indicating each the abode of a collection of happy peasantry, add to scenery otherwise rich, whether viewed on the sides of the mountains, in the narrow vales, or on the extensive plains. In the last case, during the season of irrigation, when the rice fields are inundated, they appear like so many small islands rising out of the water."

All the large towns, even the capitals, are formed on the same plan. The metropolis of the chief native government, with more than 100,000 inhabitants, may be termed an assemblage or group of numerous villages, rather than what in European countries would be called a town or city. The villages, whether large or small, are fenced in by strong hedges of bambu, and other quick growing plants.

THE JAVANESE AN AGRICULTURAL PEOPLE.

The Javanese are decidedly an agricultural people, and the proportion of them so employed, as compared with those occupied in all the other branches of industry, is calculated to be nearly four to one.

"To the crop the mechanic looks immediately for his wages, the soldier for his pay, the magistrate for his salary, the priest for his stipend, and the government for its tribute. The wealth of a province or village is measured by the extent and fertility of its land, its facilities for rice irrigation, and the number of its buffaloes. When government wishes to raise supplies from particular districts, it does not inquire how many dollars or rupees it can raise in taxes, but what contribution of rice or maize it can afford, and the impost is assessed accordingly.

"Yet over far the greater part, seven-eighths of the island, the soil is either entirely neglected or badly cultivated, and the population scanty. It is by the produce of the remaining eighth that the whole nation is supported; and it is probable, if it were all under cultivation, no area of land of the same extent in any other quarter of the globe, could exceed it, either in quantity, variety, and value, of its vegetable productions."

THE COMMERCE OF JAVA.

The exposition which our author has made of the commerce of Java and the other eastern islands, is a display

of very great natural and local capabilities, and of almost all manner of bad policy, perversity, iniquity, and ill success. He exhibits the Dutch commercial system as founded on the most stupid and barbarous principles, and prosecuted in a spirit and manner the most cruel and mischievous to the inhabitants of these islands, while it was justly unprofitable, on the whole, to its prosecutors. We behold monopoly, interference, and extortion, in all their worst forms; the villany of Chinese management; the immense faculties, so to call them, for the production of the materials for commerce, lying dormant; the people deterred from industry, and arrested and stopped, age after age, at the limit of a mere physical subsistence; the surrounding seas swept by pirates the shores occupied by their forts, or ravaged by their inroads; and an active slave trade forming a leading part of the commerce, and infusing its baneful quality into all the rest. The various subjects of traffic are enumerated, with a great deal of clear and useful information respecting them.

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EDIBLE BIRDS'-NESTS.

The most curious article in the account is, the edible birds'nests, so violently in demand among the epicures of China. Java is less productive of this luxury than some of the other islands of the archipelago, yet furnishes a very considerable supply. There are some highly entertaining particulars of information respecting this most singular production, as to the sort of situation chosen by the birds, the circumstances distinguishing the greater and less degrees of daintiness, and therefore money value, of the article, and the kind of management required for regulating the plunder so as to obtain a good quantity, and yet not provoke the builders to forsake their favourite haunts.

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The system of improvement introduced in Java during the short British administration there, was conspicuous in the emancipated and enlarging operations of commerce. dubious hope is expressed by our author, that the restored Dutch government may have the sense to proceed, in some degree at least, in the spirit of this improvement. But as to the general character of the traffic among these fine islands, there is a perfect certainty it will long continue to be a combination of all the roguery, adventure, restriction, extortion,

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and violence, compatible with its maintaining at all its diminutive existence.

THE GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION OF JAVA.

The constitution and operation of the government, in the portion of the island independent of European authority, is a matter utterly below all curiosity. An absolute monarch, sunk in voluptuous indolence, with a gaudy and profligate court arouud him, and a crafty miscreant of a prime minister to manage the affairs of the kingdom-is just the old Asiatic story over again. As to the judicial administrations, the courts have the Koran for their code of law, modified by some old usages of the country. That book is also the grand religious authority of the island. It is about three centuries since the Javanese were converted to Mohammedanism.

"Of all the nations who have adopted that creed they are among the most recent converts; and it may be safely added, that few others are so little acquainted with its doctrines, and partake so little of its zeal and intolerance. The consequence is, that although the Mohammedan law be in some instances followed, and it be considered a point of honour to profess an adherence to it, it has not entirely superseded the ancient superstitions and local customs of the country. They are thus open to the accumulated delusion of two religious systems."

To the more ancient portion of their superstition, we presume, are to be referred their solemn faith in omens, and their observance of lucky and unlucky times. That more

ancient superstition was the same that still enslaves the millions of Hindostan ; and it appears to have reigned supreme in Java, embodied in the temporal form of an empire, from an unknown age, till that late period when the Prophet assumed the ostensible ascendancy, but on such terms, it seems, of tacit compromise with the then reigning superstition, that it has remained to this day doubtful, whether the people may not more properly be denominated Pagans than Mohammedans. Without any serious misnomer, we may speak of them under either one denomination or the other. Our author thinks that a perfect freedom of foreign intercourse would draw to the island a great number of fanatical Arabs, who, assuming a character of sanctity, and exerting themselves with a sort of missionary zeal, would

easily acquire so imposing an influence over the yielding and credulous minds of the people, as to stamp a much more decidedly Mohammedan character on multitudes of them. In just this one point, therefore, he thinks the jealous exclusive policy of the Dutch, which kept those Arabs out, was beneficial to the island; not, as he remarks, that these Christian governors cared, as a matter simply of religion, how much more complete the Mohammedan character of their subjects might become; but they dreaded, with good reason, the political consequences of such an influence and confirmed faith.

POMPEII.*

THE disclosure to the light of day, of a city which was shrouded from human sight far towards two thousand years ago, with almost the suddenness of a curtain falling before a scene, is unquestionably one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of the world. It would have been so, even though the spectacle thus unveiled had consisted solely of objects of the same order as those which have remained in full view from ancient times,-the structures of a public character, which suggested to the imagination ideas of the people as viewed in the aggregate, as assembled in their civil or martial capacity, or in their games, or their superstitions. Such ideas come with great force on a contemplative mind while beholding the remains of the ancient temples, theatres, and massive fortresses, which have continued conspicuous on the surface of the earth, not enveloped in any shade but the mysterious gloom of ages. Still more striking would be the view of any monuments of this public class that should be disclosed to our sight after having been veiled from all human inspection for eighteen centuries. In their aspects thus presented to our contemplation, the character of high antiquity, with all its impressive associations, would derive an aggravation of solemn and magical

Pompeiana: the Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii. By Sir William Gell and John P. Gandy, Architect. Royal 8vo. 1817

effect from the idea of this long sepulchral seclusion from the gaze and knowledge of man. Their having existed in perfect separation from forty generations of men, inhabiting the tract around them and over them, would seem to exhibit them in far more intimate and absolute association with the ancient race to which they had belonged.

REFLECTIONS ON THE SUDDEN REVEALMENT OF PAST AGES.

The accidental restoration to light of two Roman cities, but especially Pompeii, in so nearly the same state as when they were suddenly concealed from view, disclosed a scene in which the moderns might do all but literally hold converse with the ancient inhabitants. The wondering visitant, with his imagination full of the history of the proudest and mightiest of nations, might actually step into their shops, enter their most private apartments, and place himself on one of the seats, which was put just at that spot on the floor when the empire was in the zenith of its magnificence, and has not been moved since that time. He might take up one of the domestic utensils, as a jug or a cup for wine, a dish, a lamp, or one of the irons for stirring the fire, and reflect that it had been last handled and applied to its use, by a Roman, when the Cæsars and the legions commanded the world. He might take up a mirror, or some ornaments of dress, just as they had been laid down out of the hands of ladies, since the moment of whose handling them ten thousand millions of their sex have bloomed and gone to the grave. We are sup

posing him to enter one of these habitations before any of its ancient contents have been removed; and we really can believe that a man of strong imagination might, for some moments, be so beguiled by the scene, that he should feel as if taking advantage of the absence of the family, and as if some of them might happen to return and find him intruding into their apartments. The rooms and utensils seem waiting for the return of the owners; meanwhile, the whole vast series of the events of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire has been accomplished, and even become remote history. The stools, the cups, the rings, the pins, the box for ointment, have remained just where they were put down, while Eternal Rome has dwindled to a melancholy and inconsiderable town.

LL