the lower parts of which have by degrees emerged from the water to such an extent that the edifice is now ascertained to have been a vast caravansera. How greatly it is to be regretted that, during M. Gamba's stay at Bakou, a fever, which had seized his son and his interpreter, should have prevented him from obtaining ocular proof of the existence of 'le caravanserail découvert par les eaux, et les îles nouvelles'! Of the existence of the former of them we must take leave to express our doubt, till the information comes in a less questionable shape: we suspect it is nothing more than the repetition of an old story told to Jonas Hanway, that the tops of houses might yet be seen where the water is several feet deep.' And as to the islands, here the explanation is easy enough, when we remember the shifting and accumulation of the vast quantities of mud and sand brought down by the Volga, the Oural, and other large rivers, and the violent storms that sometimes agitate the Caspian Sea. It may, too, happen,-nay, undoubtedly does happen, that the quantity of water thrown in by these rivers in different years, and the quantity of the evaporation, are not so nicely balanced as to preserve the surface at one uniform level; as, indeed, is proved by the fact of that level being highest in winter, or early spring, when the evaporation is least, and the influx of water greatest; and lowest in dry summers like that which is just passed, when the evaporation is greatest and the influx of water least.

But we believe we have exhausted our limits. If any one should think it impossible, that forty thousand persons, of forty different modes of faith-Jews, Christians, Mahomedans, and Pagans-ever could be found living together under the same government, and in the same town, each worshipping the Deity after his own manner, all tolerated, nay protected, by one presiding nation, and all tolerating each other, without hatred, or malice, or uncharitableness, on the score of their respective religious opinions-let the sceptic go to Astrachan. He will there find Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Hindoos, Calmucks, Cossacks, Mongols, Chinese, Bucharians, Turcomans, Poles, Germans, Italians; in short, representatives of every nation and every horde, from the wildest steppe of Asia to the most civilized kingdoms of Europe-and among the rest, three English, or rather Scotch families, sent by the Bible Society of London to convert the Bucharians, Calmucks, &c., to the Christian faith. For this end,' says M. Gamba, they distribute Bibles translated into the languages of these different peoples; but the greater number, unable to read, can make no use of them, and those who can read are hardly disposed to change their creed for a religion deprived of all ceremony and exterior worship.' Mr. Henderson says, in substance, nearly the same thing:-Sometimes they found

VOL. XXXV. NO. LXX.

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few of the inhabitants at home; at others, those whom they did meet would scarcely listen to them. Sometimes they treated their message with mockery and scorn, hooted them with the utmost rudeness, and ordered them away.' And yet it is stated by both our authors, that these Scotch families inhabit, (we need not say at whose expense,) beyond comparison, the best-looking house in Astrachan!'*-Nobody can attach importance to the coldness with which professed proselyte-makers may happen to be received anywhere. But perhaps we ought to distinguish from the state of general harmony we have been applauding, two sects of Christians-the Rascolnicks, a kind of Russian Roundheads, and the Roman Catholics, whose priests are here, as they too often are elsewhere, ignorant, bigoted, and intolerant. Both these sects bear a hatred, plusquam theologicum, towards the established Greek church.

We cannot conclude without saying that the perusal of these two works, from the pens of two apparently impartial and dispassionate men, who have no grievances to complain of, no angry and disappointed feelings to gratify, no favour to ask or expect, and, in short, no other objects in view than the promulgation of truth, (always excepting that little share of vanity which attaches, more or less, to authorship,) must, we think, leave on the mind of the dispassionate reader an impression eminently favourable to the character of the Russian government. So little does there appear of the exercise of what Englishmen think of when they hear the mention of despotic power-jealousy, and unnecessary interference in private concerns-that, on the contrary, a spirit of forbearance, of kindness, and consideration, is everywhere manifested towards those who have sought protection under the imperial crown-whether it be to those hordes of barbarians which, in thousands and tens of thousands, have intruded themselves, most inconveniently sometimes, into parts of the Russian territory already occupied by Russian subjects, or to those restless and infatuated beings, whom disordered imaginations concerning points of religion would not permit to remain quiet in more civilized countries.

The government of Russia is no doubt arbitrary and despotic; but, as in Denmark, where the subjects are almost proverbially happy, the despotism is a mitigated and a mild one. It is one also in which the abuse of power carries with it its own corrective. Much unquestionably depends on the personal character of the sovereign; but he cannot, if so inclined, long play the tyrant with impunity. A Russian of high rank, being present at a conversation in England, which turned upon the unceremonious manner in which they get rid of an obnoxious autocrat in Russia,

* This useless mission, we believe, has since been abandoned.

is said to have sottovoce observed, It is very natural for you to disapprove of it; but we consider it as our Magna Charta.' Russia has shown, indeed, that she has no wish, like the two great Mahomedan states of Turkey and Persia, to keep her subjects in a state of hopeless slavery and stupid ignorance: she is, on the contrary, proceeding, with a rapidity that could hardly be expected, to alleviate, with the view of eventually abolishing, the one-and, with a liberality almost unexampled, to afford the means of enlightening the other, by the endowing of free schools for the children of the poorer citizens and the military, in every city and town throughout the empire-while excellent seminaries for the higher classes, at which the superior branches of education may be had at a trifling cost, are also to be found everywhere encouraged and protected by the government. The spiritual schools, as Mr. Henderson calls those for the education of the clergy, are perhaps too numerous and educate too many students. The papas, or parish priests, are miserably poor, and the number of churches is far beyond what can be required for the purposes of religion. It can scarcely be necessary, for instance, that a town of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, not half of them Russians, should have fifty or sixty churches, and yet such is often the case. There is nothing, perhaps, more detrimental to the cause of true religion than to see its teachers degraded in their circumstances below the bulk of their fellow-citizens, whom it is their office to instruct. The same remark as to numbers may be applied to the military schools, as means for recruiting the army. In fact, the church and the army of Russia absorb a far larger portion of the population than sound policy would seem to warrant; and the stop which has been put to General Aratcheef's plans of military colonization would appear to show, that-in regard to one of these departments, at least― the imperial government have perceived, and are anxious to amend, the evil.

ART. IV.-1. English Synonymes discriminated. By W. Taylor, jun., of Norwich. 12mo. London. 1813. pp. 294. 2. English Synonymes explained in Alphabetical Order; with copious Illustrations and Examples, drawn from the best Writers. By George Crabb, A.M., &c. 8vo. London. Third Edition. 1824. pp. 813.

THE

HE field of synonymy, in England, has been but little culti vated; it displays, indeed, few flowers, and, it may be thought, promises still fewer fruits to repay the cultivator; but a nicer examination will prove that the flowers, like those of the grass

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tribe, though little showy, cover the germs of most important fruits. For all the finer and more complicated classes of ideasfor all of sentiment and ratiocination-mind can only look into mind through the medium of language. Nor is this a general medium for the purpose of general intuition, but a collection of media called words, each of which is appropriate to some one idea, or corporate set of ideas, whose unaltered image that medium alone is formed precisely to transmit. The image conveyed through any of the other media would be dimmed, distorted, multiplied, magnified, or diminished, and the purpose of language not only frustrated but perverted. Now the object of synonymy is to collect sets of media, or of words, which have such a general resemblance as frequently to be interchanged and misapplied; then to assort them, and stamp each respectively with the mark of its intellectual correlative. Were this generally effected, and the use of it generally adopted, it is not possible to convey any idea of the consequent rapidity and forcible impression in mental communication, and of the reflex influence of these on the precision and energy of thought itself, that would follow. To expect the full accomplishment of this, even in one country, would resemble the scheme of an English bishop for counteracting the curse of Babel, by the establishment of an universal language. Yet the present uniform systems of musical and arithmetical notation adopted throughout Europe, may teach us to hope for partial success, and encourage us to fix our attention upon a good to to which, though unattainable absolutely, we certainly may approximate. Come gli arcieri prudenti, a' quali parendo il luogo dove dissegnano ferire troppo lontano, e conoscendo fino à quanto arriva la virtù del loro arco, pongono la mira assai più alto che il luogo destinato, non per aggiungere con la lor forza, ò freccia, à tanta altezza, ma per potere, con l'aiuto di si alta mira, pervenire al disegno loro.'

In proportion to the advancement of society in science, arts, literature, and general refinement, the task of the synonymist becomes more difficult, but at the same time more requisite, for the growing complication of ideas increases as much the danger of confusing as the difficulty of unravelling them. In the early stages of society, combinations are few and language scant; principally, too, limited to sensible objects, their qualities and effects. The labour of a synonymist would be very slight among a people like those noticed by Locke, having no names for numbers exceeding five; or among those other American tribes so little skilled in the use of language as to have encumbered themselves with the word poetarrarorenconröac to express the number three. But as civilization

civilization proceeds, and language becomes copious, if some general writers of pre-eminent fame, or philologer of acknowledged authority, do not arise to fix a standard, there is great danger, from laxity in the application of words—the fruit of ignorance, negligence, and caprice-that they may gradually contract more and more vagueness of import. The excess to which the unchecked use of redundancy tends, may be imagined from what the Arabian authors tell us, as a boast, of their tongue. The lexicographer Mohammedes Al-Firauzabadius reckoned above fourscore names for honey, and a thousand for a sword; and Ebn Khalawih composed one volume on the two hundred words expressing serpent, and another on the five hundred signifying a lion. The influence of language is wholly dependent on association; the liveliness, therefore, with which any given idea is excited by any given word is (the force of impression remaining the same) proportioned to the frequency and uniformity with which that word and that idea have been conjunctively presented to the mind. But when either has been often seen with other associates, the appearance of the one does not necessarily suggest the individual image of the other, but only an indefinite notion of the kind of company we have been accustomed to see it in. It is this progress to indistinctness, through the multiplicity of relations in which words are used, that debars later authors from that pith and raciness of style peculiar to the early writers of a nation; when the currency of language, yet fresh from the mint, presents the image as distinct as the superscription is legible.

Much has been already done to fix the English language; and complete fixity is now all that it requires. The original copiousness of our Saxon was for centuries increased by importations from the continent, and enriched from the treasures of Greece and Rome, till English, thus formed, became fully competent to express all that antiquity had conceived, or the improvements, refinements, and abstractions of modern times could suggest. Shakspeare and Jonson in dramas, and Bacon in essays, that 'came home to men's business and bosoms,' had familiarized to the popular mind and ear this language, in all its richness, indigenous and exotic. Milton had proved it equal to the most sublime conceptions; and Addison and his contemporary essayists, by sliding into the discussion of common topics the concentrated phraseology of the language of abstraction, gave dignity and elevation to general style, and tuned the public ear to the perception of harmony in prose. To this latter object, Addison, in particular, too often sacrificed condensation and precision, and polished, and rounded, and enfeebled his periods by tautology and periphrastic

diffuseness.