practice of female infanticide. By minute inquiries on the spot, during the agent's first visit, it was ascertained, that, "at the lowest estimate, above one thousand female children must have been destroyed annually in the three districts of Pondacole, Gulodye and Bori alone!" And subsequent enquiries, as we have seen, instead of diminishing, tended only to augment this aggregate.

What a shocking picture of humanity have we here! What a prodigious waste of innocent life at the very dawn of beingand that too, within so limited a space!-a waste, the extent of which it is difficult for imagination itself adequately to realize! Talk of famine, with its biting hunger and sinking leanness of pestilence, with its raging virulence of disease-of war, with its horrid devastations:-and who will not mourn over the wreck and the ruin which ever mark the train of these ruthless destroyers? But these monster evils are, in their visitations, comparatively rare, and in their causes, comparatively intelligible. The sinful negligence of a people, or the aggravated misdeeds of their rulers, may, under a righteous overruling providence, at length evoke the judgments of high retributive justice, in the frightful forms of famine and its grim attendant pestilence. The uncontrolled lust of plunder, or power or fame, may fire the breast of the savage conqueror with matchless and destructive energy-hurrying him along, with the impetuosity and speed of a resistless hurricane-and impelling him unconsciously to fulfil his fatal destiny as "the scourge of God" to the guilty nations. In this way, famine has numbered its hundreds of thousands of victims. During the year that has now gone by, it is said, directly and indirectly, to have diminished the population of Ireland by two millions; but never before have we read or heard of such a famine in that unhappy land. Pestilence or the plague has numbered its hundreds of thousands of victims. But of really great, universal, or œcumenical plagues, authentic history records but four,-that vulgarly designated "the plague of Athens," merely because of the intensity and extent of its prevalence in that devoted city-and those still more spreading and destructive ones which so memorably signalized the third, the sixth and the fourteenth centuries of the Christian era. War, whether of plunder or of conquest, has also numbered its hundreds of thousands of victims. Who can reckon up the hecatombs of " untimely slain" that were strewn in the rear of Tamerlane's earthquake invasions? But in the records of Asiatic ambition and Asiatic crime, we read but of one Tamerlane. In the terrific wars of Napoleon, it has been calculated that upwards of two millions must have perished in battle, siege, conflagration or disastrous flight. But since the

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days of Alaric the Goth, Genseric, the Vandal, and Attila the Hun, there has been but one Napoleon to scourge the European nations. From these appalling tragedies, enacted on the public stage of this world's history, we next turn to a region and a people, heretofore unheard of in story or in song"-to the sequestered glens and smiling valleys of Khondistan, with their aboriginal races of rude but unsophisticated men. And what do our eyes behold? Spectacles, intrinsically not less appalling, though vastly more inexplicable, than those at whose portentous magnitude we have now been taking a cursory glancespectacles, of unmitigated cruelty, bloodshed, and death! Fixing our gaze on the present, and seeing in it only the sensible type of the past, which ascends upwards, till, like the "Fame" of Virgil, it muffles its head in the clouds and obscurities of an undated antiquity, we have presented to our view, crowds, yea, literally, myriads or rather millions, of hapless beings perishing before their time!-perishing, not from famine, or pestilence, or red-stained war-thé ordinary rods that are wielded for the chastisement of a sinful rebellious world,—but perishing, as the trophy-victims of fatally erroneous opinions! There, as the result of one class of errors, we find hundreds of adults systematically reared for the slaughter-hundreds annually offered, with savage brutality, as propitiations to an imaginary but sanguinary deity. And as the practice has prevailed from time immemorial, it must now reckon up its victims by myriads of myriads! There, again, as the result of another class of errors, alike pestiferous, we find hundreds of unoffending innocents annually massacred by the hands of those who instrumentally gave them being; and who, therefore, were bound by every obligation, human and divine, to feed, nourish, and cherish them. And as this practice also has existed from the earliest periods, it, too, must reckon up its victims by myriads of myriads. What a frightful conclusion, then, are we compelled to arrive at! Looking at a single obscure and narrow nook of this mighty land, we find two revolting practices in busy and constant operation, which furnish an ascertained annual average of about fifteen hundred victims, barbarously slain. And this annual average, calculated only from the commencement of the Christian era, supplies the amazing aggregate of nearly three millions!-three millions, thus mercilessly swept away from the stage of time, by the inexorable requirements of a sanguinary superstition or mistaken honor;-when, all the while, high heaven has been jubilant with choral songs of " peace on earth and good will to the children of men!" Would that, with reference to the hydra-headed tyrannies of Khondistan, and every other

region of this magnificent empire, we could warrantably adopt, in all its plenitude, the glowing language of the poet, and with him exultingly exclaim :

""Tis past. Too long oppression's tyrant race
Have ground her children with their iron mace!
Too long has silence heard her whisper'd fears,
And glens impervious drank her flowing tears!
"Tis past. Her bosom stung with conscious shame,
Awaken'd Albion re-asserts her fame;
Inclines in pity to a groaning land,

Wrests the foul sceptre from the spoiler's hand;
And greatly lavish in the glorious cause,

Grants with her JONES, her science and her laws.
But chief Religion, venerable maid,

Raptured repairs where first her footsteps stray'd,
When down to earth she came, an angel guest;
And man, yet pure, her genial presence blest.
On guilt's dark brow her glittering cross appears,
His sullied cheek is wash'd with pious tears;
And Ganges, hallow'd still for holier ends,
Death-stream no more, his wave baptismal lends.
E'en now from yonder strand I see them move,
The mild evangelists of peace and love;
And bear (strange merchandise,) to Asia's shore
The gospel's bright imperishable ore :

Unsold to deal its unbought wealth, their plan;
Their traffic, to redeem the soul of man.

Her banner'd cross victorious Albion waves,

Bencath that symbol strikes, beneath that symbol saves.
O beauteous queen! O dear-loved mother-isle !

Thine is each gallant aim, each gen'rous toil.

For thee, while fame her wreath of am'ranth twines,
And with her palm thy native oak combines,
The succour'd orphan lisps his little prayer,
And the slave's shackles crumble in thine air.

Hold then thy high career. Be this thy art,
Not to corrupt, but meliorate the heart:
Where'er mankind in Gentile darkness lie,
Instruction's blessed radiance to supply;
O'er the oppress'd soft mercy's dews to shed,
And crush with ruin the oppressor's head.
O haste your tardy coming, days of gold,
Long by prophetic minstrelsy foretold !
Where yon bright purple streaks the orient skies,
Rise Science, Freedom, Peace, Religion, rise!
Till, from Tanjore, to farthest Samarcand,
In one wide lustre bask the glowing land;
And, (Brahma from his guilty greatness hurl'd
With Mecca's, Lord) MESSIAH rule the world ! "

ART. II.-The History of the British Empire in India. By Edward Thornton, Esq., author of India, its state and prospects.

"YOUR Homer," said Bentley to Pope when reminded of his obligation to take a copy of the little poet's famous work, "oh! yes, I remember, a very pretty poem, but you must not call it Homer." An exactly similar conviction has impressed itself on our mind after a perusal of the work we have prefixed to the present paper. Mr. Thornton has given us a very pretty narrative, but we must not call it History.

Mr. Thornton's work has now been before the public, in part, if not entirely, for seven years: he has been reviewed, quoted, and expounded in various quarterly, weekly and daily publications at home: his strictures on the Indian press and his narrarative of the Auckland and Ellenborough administrations have been made the subject of a separate paper in No. IX. of this Review. He has also been called to account for his neglect of Lord William Bentinck. Mr. Impey in breaking a lance with him has presented us with the spectacle of a son nobly doing battle for a deceased parent's memory, and has enlisted, if not our entire approval, at least a great measure of our warm and hearty sympathy in his behalf: in short, Mr. Thornton has received that measure of attention which in the case of less elaborate or important publications would render superfluous all further notice from us.

Some preliminary explanation is therefore necessary for thus taking up a subject which has so long been before the public. Voluminous Histories of India are not to be placed on the same shelf with Mr. Hutton's imaginative tour in the East, or with the pleasantly written but somewhat flippant "Letters from Madras." They are intended for a second or even third perusal and for frequent reference: and the present work, coming from a person of Mr. Thornton's capacity, and stamped with the Court's approval, who have, we understand, presented a copy of it to every member of the Civil Service-may yet fairly claim some portion of our time, while we endeavour to show how the History of the British Empire in India should be written, and in what respects Mr. Thornton has gone wide of the mark.

The critic may be permitted to consider Mill's well known paradox on the qualifications for an Historian inapplicable to the present case We are not called on to inquire whether a genuine History of ancient Rome could be compiled from

Baker's Livy and Murphy's Tacitus, or a true picture of Hindu and Mussulman supremacy from Sir William Jones' Manu and Briggs' Ferishta. Mr. Thornton was standing on almost an English soil, and had moreover peculiar opportunities for arriving at the truth. Indian affairs for a considerable period had been his study: the archives of Leadenhall Street, we may safely conclude, unlocked their stores at his bidding: every authentic document that could throw light on our policy at any interesting period, seems to have been placed at his disposal: and his social position brought him in contact with many well informed individuals, who could supply facts and anecdotes, drawn from indisputable sources, and well calculated to correct, amplify, or illustrate the text of History, where either inaccurate, meagre, or obscure.

Whatever, therefore, may be the advantages of residence in the country, or conversancy with the language of the people, about whom the Historian is to write, the want of such residence or knowledge, in our opinion, would not have absolutely disqualified Mr. Thornton for his task. He was not going to discuss Manu's Social or Akbar's Revenue system. He had not to lament the illegibility of old Sanskrit manuscripts, or to extract truth from the pompous and inflated periods of a Persian Historian. His skill in deciphering medals and inscriptions, his acquaintance with Hindu architecture, his general knowledge as an antiquarian, were never likely to be called into question. He had not to undertake long journies for the purpose of settling by personal investigation some disputed point in the topography of the seven hills, or some undecided question relative to the long walls of Athens. Seated in his study he could avail himself of all that others had either written, collated, or endured. And if it be asserted, and with show of reason, that a few years passed amidst the scene of his future labours will give the writer that familiarity with the manners, customs and physical aspect of a country which only some few of the highest historical minds can realise at a distance, it may on the other hand be affirmed that brief residence or cursory tours are apt to convey a partial and one-sided impression, and that the modern historian so circumstanced, will come to his task imbued with a party-view of men and matters, which it will require the most judicial fairness entirely to remove.

With narratives, accounts and despatches written in the English language, such as required no accurate scholarship to decipher, Mr. Thornton, had he possessed some of the true qualifications of an historian, might have given us something approaching to a good History of British Supremacy in the East. By skilfully