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Schlegel and his brother have bitterly reproached the English-the architectural antiquities of Hindostan.

I had myself (says he) heard much of these before I set out, and had met with many persons, both in Europe and at Calcutta (where nothing of the kind exists) who spoke of the present natives of India as a degenerate race, whose inability to rear such splendid piles was a proof that these last belong to a remote antiquity. I have seen, however, enough to convince me both that the Indian masons and architects of the present day only want patrons sufficiently wealthy or sufficiently zealous to do all which their fathers have done, and that there are very few structures here which can, on any satisfactory grounds, be referred to a date so early as the greater part of our own cathedrals. Often, in Upper Hindoostan, and still more frequently in Rajapootam and Malwah, I have met with new and unfinished shrines, cisterns, and ghâts, as beautifully carved and as well proportioned as the best of those of an earlier day. And though there are many buildings and ruins which exhibit a most venerable appearance, there are many causes in this country which give this appearance prematurely. In the first instance we ourselves have a complex impression made on us by the sight of edifices so distant from our own country, and so unlike whatever we have seen there. We multiply, as it were, the geographical and moral distance into the chronological, and can hardly persuade ourselves that we are contemporaries with an object so far removed in every other respect. Besides this, however, the firmest masonry in these climates is sorely tried by the alternate influence of a pulverizing sun, and a continued three months' rain. The wild fig-tree (pupul or ficus religiosa), which no Hindoo can root out, or even lop, without a deadly sin, soon sows its seeds and fixes its roots in the joints of the arching, and being of rapid growth, at the same time, and in a very few years, increases its picturesque and antique appearance, and secures its eventual destruction; lastly, no man in this country repairs or completes what his father has begun, preferring to begin something else by which his own name may be remembered. Accordingly, at Dacca are many fine ruins, which at first impressed me with a great idea of their age. Yet Dacca is a modern city, founded, or at least raised from insignificance, under Shah Gehanghise, in A.D.1608; and the tradition of the place is, that these fine buildings were erected by European architects in the service of the then governor. At Benares, the principal temple has an appearance so venerable, that one might suppose it to have stood unaltered ever since the Treta Yug, and that Mena and Capila had performed austerities within its precincts. Yet it is historically certain that all the Hindoo temples of consequence in Benares were pulled down by Aurungzebe, the contemporary of Charles the Second, and that the present structure must have been raised since that time. The observatories of Benares, Delhi, and Jagepoor, I heard spoken of in the careless ness of conversation, not only as extremely curious in themselves (which they certainly are), but as monuments of the ancient science of the Hin

doos.

doos. All three, however, are known to be the work of the Rajah Jye Singh, who died in 1742!

A remote antiquity is, with better reason, claimed for some idols of black stone, and elegant columns of the same material, which have been collected in different parts of the districts of Rotas, Bulnem, &c.-These belong to the religion of a sect (the Boodhists) of which no remains are now found in those provinces. But I have myself seen images exactly similar in the newly-erected temples of the Jains, a sect of Boodhists, still wealthy and numerous in Guzerat, Rajapootam, and Malwah; and in a country where there is literally no history, it is impossible to say how long since, or how lately, they may have lost their ground in the more eastern parts of Gundwana.

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In the wilds which I have lately been traversing, at Chittore Ghur more particularly, there are some very beautiful buildings, of which the date was obviously assigned at random, and which might be five hundred or one thousand, or a hundred-and-fifty years old, for all their present guardians know about the matter. But it must be always borne in mind that one thousand years are just as easily said as ten, and that in the mouth of a Cicerone they are sometimes thought to sound rather better. 'The oldest things which I have seen, of which the date could be at all ascertained, are some detached blocks of marble, with inscriptions, but of no appalling remoteness; and two remarkable pillars of black mixed metal, in a Patan forest near Delhi, and at Cuttab-Misar in the same neighbourhood; both covered with inscriptions, which nobody can now read, but both mentioned in Mussulman history as in their present situation at the time when "the Believers" conquered Delhi, about A.D. 1000. But what is this to the date of the Parthenon? Or how little can these trifling relics bear a comparison with the works of Greece and Egypt?

Ellora and Elephanta I have not yet seen. I can believe all which is said of their size and magnificence; but they are without date or inscription: they are, I understand, not mentioned, even incidentally, in any Sanscrit MS. Their images, &c. are the same with those now worshipped in every part of India, and there have been many Rajahs and wealthy individuals in every age of Indian history who have possessed the means of carving a huge stone-quarry into a cathedral. To our cathedrals, after all, they are, I understand, very inferior in size. All which can be known is, that Elephanta must probably have been begun (whether it was ever finished seems very doubtful) before the arrival of the Portuguese at Bombay; and that Ellora may reasonably be concluded to have been erected in a time of peace under a Hindoo prince, and therefore either before the first Afghan conquest, or subsequently, during the recovered independence of that part of Candeish and the Deccan. This is no great matter certainly, and it may be older; but all I say is, that we have no reason to conclude it is so, and the impression on my mind decidedly accords with Mill-that the Hindoos, after all, though they have doubtless existed from very

great

great antiquity as an industrious and civilized people, had made no great progress in the arts, and took all their notions of magnificence, from the models furnished by their Mahometan conquerors.'

He closes this letter with some remarks on the Burmese war. -We must repeat the date-March 14, 1825 :

We are now engaged, as you are aware, in a very expensive and tedious war, in countries whither the Mahometans were never able to penetrate. This tediousness, together with the partial reverses which the armies have sustained, have given rise to all manner of evil reports among the people of Hindoostan, and to a great deal of grumbling and discontent among the English. After all, I cannot myself perceive that there is anybody to blame. Everybody cried out for war in the first instance as necessary to the honour of the government, and murmured greatly against Lord Amherst for not being more ready than he was to commence it. Of the country which we were to invade, no intelligence could be obtained, and, in fact, our armies have had little to contend with except a most impracticable and unknown country. It is unfortunate, however, that, after a year and half of war, we should, except in point of dear-bought experience, be no further advanced than at the beginning; and there are very serious grounds for apprehending that if any great calamity occurred in the East, a storm would follow on our North-western and Western frontier, which, with our present means, it would be by no means easy to allay. Something, however, has been gained: if we can do little harm to the Birmans, it is evident, from their conduct in the field, that, beyond their own jungles, they can do still less harm to us. And the inhabitants of Calcutta, who, about this time last year, were asking leave to send their property into the citadel, and packing off their wives and children across the river, will hardly again look forward to seeing their war-boats on the salt-water lake, or the golden umbrellas of their chiefs erected on the top of St. John's cathedral. I was then thought little better than a madman for venturing to Dacca. Now the members of government are called all manner of names because their troops have found unexpected difficulty in marching to Ummerapoora.'

His sojourn at Bombay was rendered somewhat remarkable by the arrival, nearly at the same time, of a bishop from Antioch, to superintend that part of the Syrian church which refuses allegiance to the Pope. After a suspension, for some years, of all intercourse with the country from which its faith originally sprung, and which in later times, by a fresh supply of ministers, had enabled it to throw off, in a great measure, the usurpations of the church of Rome enforced by the Portuguese, it was now destined to rejoice, once more in a nursing-father from Syria. The favourable disposition of this branch of the Syro-Malabaric church towards our own had long been known. It is a curious fact, however, and one that may be new to our readers, that Principal Mill, in 1822, found their college and parochial schools at Cottayam, under the

direction

direction of three clergymen of the Church of England, who, without compromising their own views, gave no offence to the Metropolitan, who consulted and employed them; using for themselves and their own families the English Liturgy at one of his chapels; and condemning by their silence those portions of the Syrian ritual which, as Protestants, they could not approve, and which they trusted the gradual influence of the knowledge they were helping to disseminate would at length, and by regular authority, undermine. Nor was this friendly feeling less conspicuous in the readiness with which Mar Athanasius (the Syrian prelate) attended the service at Bombay according to the English forms, and received the communion at the hands of Bishop Heber. Neither was it likely to be diminished by a small viaticum for the prosecution of his journey to Malabar, and a donation to the poor students in theology at Cottayam, which the Bishop was enabled to bestow from the bounty of the Christian Knowledge Society,-an application of their funds which, if disapproved-(he writes with his usual modesty and disinterestedness) I will most cheerfully replace.'

We think it right to quote a passage from another letter, addressed, while at Bombay, to the same correspondent to whom the Bishop wrote from Burrecar :

The

'The attention of all India is fixed on the siege of Bhurtpore, in Rajapootana, on the event of which, far more than on anything which may happen in the Birman empire, the renown of the British arms, and the permanency of the British empire in Asia must depend. Jâts are the finest people in bodily advantages and apparent martial spirit whom I have seen in India, and their country one of the most fertile and best cultivated. Having once beaten off Lord Lake from their city, they have ever since not only regarded themselves as invincible, but have been so esteemed by the greater part of the Mahrattas, Rajapoots, &c. who have always held up their example as the rallying point and main encouragement to resistance, insomuch that, even when I was passing through Malwah," galantee shows," like those carried about by the Savoyards, were exhibited at the fairs and in the towns of that wild district, which displayed, among other patriotic and popular scenes, the red-coats driven back in dismay from the ramparts, and the victorious Jâts pursuing them sabre in hand. Their fortress, too, has really all the advantages which can arise from an excellent situation, an imposing profile, a deep and wide ditch, a good show of cannon, and a very numerous and hardy garrison; while the means which Sir D. Ochterlony has been able to collect against it, though really far more considerable than could, under all circumstances, have been expected, are described in a letter from General Reynell as very barely adequate to all which they have to do,-and the present intensely hot season is a circumstance greatly unfavourable. Still I do not find that any of

my

my military acquaintance despond. On the contrary, they all appear to rejoice at the opportunity offered for effacing the former very inju rious impression which had been made by Lord Lake's failure, though they admit that, should our army fail again, few events would go so near to fulfil the shouts of the mob a few months back in the streets of

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Delhi:-" Company ka raj ho guia!" "The rule of the Company is at an end." Meantime, heartily as I desire the success of our arms, and the more so because the cause, I believe, is really a just one, I am very sorry for the Jâts themselves, with whose rough independent manner I was much pleased, and who showed me all possible civilities and hospitality in passing through their country. But this is one among many proofs which have fallen under my notice, how impossible it is to govern these remote provinces from Calcutta, and how desirable it is to establish a separate presidency for Northern and Central India, either at Agra, Meerut, or perhaps Sangor.'-Letter dated Bombay, May 10, 1825.

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Ceylon, which Heber next visited, might seem to be a Paradise on earth. Gentle undulations of what in England might be called well-dressed lawn (we speak of the S. W. quarter)—rivers rapid, deep, clear-cocoa-palms peeping forth from vast tracts of jungle, and marking to an experienced eye the site of some sequestered village-mountain-sierras of no inconsiderable height, and of shapes the most fantastic-plants of all hues, the choicest ornaments of an English hot-house-precious stones of every variety, unless, perhaps, the emerald-such are some of the riches of Ceylon. But the picture has its deep shadows. Along the borders of those romantic streams there lurks an air, that no man can breathe long, and live;-a fact the more remarkable, as the tanks or standing pools of the same country are said to exhale an atmosphere of health, and to one of these Kandy has been supposed to owe its comparative salubrity. Snakes and other reptiles are so abundant, so active, and so deadly, that but few birds are seen, and, for the songsters of an English grove, the traveller must be content to receive in exchange apes that mow and chatter at him,' as if the island were Prospero's. Female infanticide is reported to prevail in some districts to a considerable extent; and we can easily believe this of a country in which several brothers of the same family are accustomed to share the same wife; and, to crown all, at night the blaze of the sacrifice, the dance, and the drum, proclaim that those who worship at all, worship the devil. Yet, with all this, the island holds out a prospect of better things. The noble experiment of Sir Alexander Johnstone, as to the introduction of a species of jury trial, appears to have been crowned with most encouraging success. The prejudice of caste is far less powerful than on the continent; and the Dutch had long ago established in it a systent of parochial schools and parochial preaching,

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