sions, for himself; his arrangement and his language are uniformly his own; and he seems to admit nothing that he borrows, but through the rigid medium of scrutiny and conviction.

The parts of this work which will be found most generally useful, are those passages in which the author appears to make a temporary departure from the strict object of his course: we mean such as the delineation of celebrated characters; the developement of the policy of nations; the progress of human knowledge; the means of advancement in the liberal professions. In all these, we recognise a mind rich in comprehensive views.

The chief merits of the style are animation and precision. No endeavours are made to win the attention of the reader by artificial preambles. Every Lecture begins with a direct appeal to the understanding; and fresh materials for intellectual exercise, are supplied in every succeeding sentence.

To the Lecture on Belles Lettres is added, a compendious system of Logic, divided into three parts-ideas, propositions, and reasoning. Here will be found several shrewd and accurate observations, interspersed with the usual elementary principles and practical details. Mr. B. is no partizan of the syllogistic forms, which at one time constituted half the theory and practice of the European literati; hè reduces them to one obvious principle, that of arguing from genus to species. He shews as little mercy to the mathematical axioms. We think, however, that it is desirable for many purposes to generalize self-evident truths, and throw them into the most comprehensive, forcible, and abstract form; it may also be expedient, for the sake of precision, to mark distinctly, by a syllogistic process, the nature of an argument, and the continuity of a schenie of reasoning.

The View of Human Knowledge, in these Lectures, which terminates the course, is a vague but comprehensive outline. The author carefully excludes Revelation from the sumuary, and refers whatever he admits that we know concerning our Maker and our duty, to natural religion and morality. He speaks of the scriptural statements respecting the Creator and the Saviour of the world, as " those sentiments which we have always been taught to consider as their own ;" p. 296. "Of the world of spirits," he assures us, "we know nothing, except what we learn from the experience of the operations of our own minds, and from the general analogy which we are apt to infer subsists among spirits of all orders," p. 568. The excellence of the author's moral creed will be appreciated from the following definition, in connexion with his frequent intimations of esteem for the subject of it; "Honour includes an unalterable regard to truth in words, humanity and gene

rosity in actions, candour and forgiveness in thoughts, and resentment of insult or affront."

We shall not notice any more of the symptoms of aversion from serious and sincere religion which Mr. Barron occasionally betrays; we could not invoke upon him more certainly the contempt of every intelligent reader, than by quoting his remark on JAMES HERVEY, whose style he justly èensures : "it would be uncharitable to suspect his piety!!"

We consider the work however, as on the whole a valuable manual for the student; displaying generally a correct taste in criticism, though not without an admixture of objectionable sentiments; and furnishing, in a clear method, and an agreeable style, much useful information and advice on the various departments of literature.

Art. VII. Observations on the Present State of the East India Company ; with Prefatory Remarks on the alarming Intelligence lately received from Madras, as to the general Dissatisfaction prevailing amongst the Natives of every Rank, from an Opinion that it is the Intention of the British Government to compel them to embrace Christianity; the Proclamation issued by the Governor and Council on this Subject; and a Plan humbly submitted to the Consideration of his Majesty's Ministers, the East India Company, and the Legislature, for restoring that Confidence, which the Natives formerly reposed in the Justice and Policy of the British Government, as to the Security of their Religion, Laws, and local Customs. 3d Edition, 8vo. pp. lxxvi. 78. Price2s. 6d. Ridgway, 1807.

Art. VIII. A Letter to the President of the Board of Controul, on the Propagation of Christianity in India. To which are added, Hints to those concerned in sending Missionaries thither. Svo. pp. 23. Price 1s Hatchard. 1807.

Art. IX. Candid Thoughts, respectfully submitted to the Proprietors of East India Stock; occasioned by Mr. Twining's "Letter to the Chairman," and "Observations on the Present State of the Company.” Folio. pp. 4 Gratis, Hatchard. 1808,

Art. X. A Statement of the Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society 24. Gratis. Burditt. 1807.

18vo.

pp.

WE must be permitted to congratulate Mr. Twining on the good luck that put him the first on this respectable business. It seems to have been almost an even chance, that he had lost this point of precedence to the author of the Observations; but he came in foremost by half a neck or so. And in a case like the present, the mere fact of priority is every thing, with regard to the prize of fame; the fact has in itself a species of merit, which puts all other merit, that may appear in the later efforts for the same object, almost out of com→ parison. The utmost ability coming after, loses all pretensions to rivalship, and can only fall subordinate into the train,

and swell the honours, of the leading individual. We may hope, therefore, that Mr. Twining has not suffered his com placency to be disturbed by hearing from so many quarters, that his production was but a drivelling specimen of authorship, and that the writer of the Observations is the best man. Though it were true that a more sorry half dozen of pages was never eked out into a pamphlet with a more unhappy choice of extracts, yet this should not lessen the satisfaction justly arising from having boldly performed the first exploit, and thus gained the privilege of giving his name to stand for a kind of generic denomination to whatever thing may write, or be written, or be done, against the extension of Christianity. This is the name that will recur, with honourable mention, any time this twenty years to come, as often as people hear that any person of the same sort is moved to utter the praises of bloody superstitions and wooden gods, and to instigate the suppression of bibles, and of all plans and efforts, for the instruction of pagans. Others may do the thing better, and so, no doubt, the making of guillotines was materially improved after the exhibition of the first; but the contrivance of the first was the merit, and therefore (as the story goes) every subsequent machine of the kind honourably bore, and assisted to perpetuate, the contriver's name. Succeeding abler writers in support of Mr. Twining's opinions may be vexed, that so feeble a personage was put at their head to monopolize the honours, and may "wonder how he got there" but they cannot help themselves; it was his des tiny to lead them, and it is theirs to follow, resembling pretty much in respectability what a few years since was termed "la queue de Robespierre." We can see no resource for their mortified pride, but that which the writer of the observations has shrewdly fallen upon; that is, to make themselves conspicuous by far excelling their principal in atrocity and impiety.

We feel a tranquil confidence in a Power that derides all human and all inferual opposition to the progress of Christianity, and will reach them with its vengeance when their time is up, that the effects of missions and bibles in the East will be extended in a ratio increasing every year. And as a subordinate ground of confidence, we are happy to believe, that there are too many men of sense and moral principle in the Directory, to permit any material interruption or restriction of the labours of the Indian missionaries, and the diffusion of the Scriptures. We could not be sincere, therefore, if we pretended to feel any extraordinary solicitude for the Christian cause, in bestowing a few pages on an anonymous infidel, whose merits, in this particular capacity indeed, are of the

first rank. A few remarks on his production seem a debt which our vocation owes to the character of the missionaries, and to the police of literary decency. It is chiefly with the former half of the book, printed under the title of a Preface, that we are at present concerned.

It is not unusual, we know, to depreciate the ability of any book which, on any account, the critic does not like; but we are really not conscious of injustice in affirming, that the article before us indicates a very middling quantity of talent. And we are the more confident of being right in this opinion, from our being forced to entertain it even after having read Mr. Twining, whose mental poverty had prepared us to regard any tolerably endowed man, on the same side, as rich. There is an occasional shrewdness in making an inference from some particular fact, but not the shadow of any thing like a regular and comprehensive induction. The man is evidently versed in details, and is not much at a loss in a reckoning of rupees and cowries: what details, whether civil or military, it is not worth while to inquire; they are much of the same quality as to their effect on the mind in India, because there, we all know very well that rupees and cowries are the grand objects of both. We think, notwithstanding, that he could write rather better, if he were to try, than he has taken the trouble to do in the pages before us. But it is the fashion, of late, to think the most poor and slovenly efforts of authorship the fittest for an attack on religion. For religion this is perhaps no bad omen; for whatever is decried only by the vulgar sort, either of men or books, is not far from its triumph. The performance is quite as ill done up as any job we have ever happened to see, or pay for; it is totally without method or connexion, often very awkward in the parts meant to have been put into the appearance of reasoning, and sometimes breaking out into a coarse violence, which would seem to betray that ink was by no means the only fluid concerned in the composition. Without this surmise, we should be quite at a loss to account for the lapses of memory, apparent in the repetition of the very same observations, nearly and sometimes precisely in the same words, every three or four pages. The reader will soon be tired of trying to keep account of the number of times it is repeated, that a certain opinion was universal in the year 1781, that bibles and missionaries have excited alarm throughout Hindostan, that the prodigious increase of them was a chief cause of the disaffection of the troops at Madras, that if they are not immediately suppressed and expelled, there is an end of our eastern empire, that it is impossible to convert the Hindoos, that it is unjust to interfere with their religion,

laws, and customs. And the positions and phrases, so incessantly reiterated, do not recur in the way of forming parts or inferences of new successive arguments, but, as detached sentences repeated again and again, in the manner of a person who is fierce to carry a point, but, not having furnished himself with any regular course of reasoning for the purpose, is reduced every moment to say, and at length to vociferate, the very same things he forgets he has been saying twenty times before.

The pamphlet begins with the proclamation issued in December 1800, by the governor and council of Madras, to the native troops in the British service, holding forth," that in some late instances an extraordinary degree of agitation had prevailed in several corps of the native army on the coast," caused by an opinion, insinuated among them" by persons of evil intention, for malicious purposes," that it was the wish of the British government to convert them by forcible means to Christianity;" and to remove all apprehensions of this kind, a positive assurance is given" that the same respect which had been invariably shewn by the government for their religion and for their customs will be always conti nued; and that no interruption will be given to any native, whether Hindoo or Mussulman, in the practice of his reli gious ceremonies." p, iv.

Now this explicit and public assurance from so high an authority did not, our author asserts, produce the desired effect; since at a period three months subsequent to this proclamation, there was at Madras a strong apprehension of a general revolt of the native troops, and at the present time, as he would have us to believe, a great dissatisfaction prevails, not only among them, but throughout all Hindostan. What therefore is the cause, and what is the proper remedy? The cause is precisely this, that there is such a number of English missionaries spread over the whole country, and such a number of bibles and religious tracts circulated, that both the troops and all the people are rationally and unavoidably convinced, the government intends to compel them to become Christians. So plain a statement of the cause will obviously suggest the remedy, the instant recall of every missionary and an interdiction of the distribution of the Scriptures.

Amidst these representations, however, it was impossible to forbear some reference to the tragical affair at Vellore; and the use which the writer endeavours to make of this event, gives at once the measure of both his honesty and his dexterity: a man should be very sure how much he possesses of the latter, before he quite dismisses the former. Near the

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