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all things, we shall endeavour to base every judgment on an intelligible principle, to give the reason of every judicial sentence. We have no idol to worship, no patron to gratify, no trading interest to serve; we have never been mixed up with any of the parties or factions that divide the literary republic, and removed from the distorting atmosphere of faction we can see the merits and the faults of all.

the historical novel; it is the most prevailing class of fictions, and it is capable of being made the most beneficial. The time has arrived when its laws need to be investigated, and we shall undertake the task without a reference to the productions of any particular author, but by an examination of the entire class. Historical fiction is, we assert, the bent of the age, and not a moment should be lost in analyzing its

Our earliest attention will be devoted to scope and tendency.

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THE SUNIASSI; A HINDOO LEGEND.

(Continued from page 124.)

Though Yougal had, for the first few hours after his return to the palace, been occupied with the pleasures of eating and drinking, and in calculating the various enjoyments in store for him, he nevertheless had not forgotten his determination to revenge himself upon Mariataly for her defection, as he was pleased to term it, forgetting that she could no longer recognize the slave Yougal, under the form and lineaments of the saint Veramarken. He resolved to visit her with a signal chastisement, especially as the superior charms of the princess had entirely effaced the impression once excited by the far inferior beauties of the pariah. In consequence of this determination, he commanded the innocent Mariataly to be brought before him. She was placed under a balcony, in order that her polluted frame might not contaminate the atmosphere breathed by the royal Fakeer. As she stood trembling before the imagined potentate, he asked her with a stern voice, "Where is Yougal ?" The trembling girl, astonished at this question, not supposing that her intimacy with the Suniassi's slave was known to the master, protested with solemn earnestness that she knew not.

"Take her to the cavern in the jungle, and let her see the mangled remains of that unhappy man!" cried the fictitious saint.

Mariataly was confounded at hearing that Yougal was dead, and the more so at an imputation so direct of her having murdered him. She was borne rudely from the presence of her royal judge, placed in a hackery, and driven direct to the cavern where the headless trunk of Yougal lay, in a state of dreadful decomposition. She gazed upon it with terrified astonishment. Tears of anguish streamed down her quivering cheeks, as her eye fell upon the mutilated corpse of one whom she had really loved, with a fondness not at all common among Hindoo women. When asked if she had not murdered her lover, she declared her innocence; and enquired how it was possible that a feeble girl like herself should have been able to overpower a young, strong, healthy man like him, whose livid corpse lay before her,

under the most unsightly aspect of death. Her appeals to those instruments of inflexible justice, by whom she was surrounded, moved not their stony hearts; she was again replaced in the hackery, and the putrid body of her late lover cast beside her. She sat in the abstraction of speechless grief, and was so absorbed in the agony of her sorrows as to be insensible to what was passing around her. Being again placed under the balcony before the inflexible spirit of her once fond Yougal, she was asked by the stern judge, how she had contrived to put her victim to death.

"I am innocent," she replied, " of a crime so revolting to humanity. I am incapable of violating, by so detestable an act, the dignity at once of woman and of human nature. Besides, how could the weak overpower the strong? Some enemy has done me this wrong."

"Take her hence," said the prince, "and let the sepulchre be prepared for the body of my unhappy slave, who has become the victim of a woman's treachery."

Mariataly was immediately removed to a remote apartment in the palace, where she was left to the solitude and silence of her own unhappy thoughts. In the course of that evening, the door of her dismal chamber was unexpectedly opened, and to her astonishment the venerable Suniassi stood before her.

"I am come," said he, "Mariataly, to convince thee that the love which thou hast so lately slighted deserved a more grateful requital."

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'Why this mockery of one whom your tyranny has doomed to an unjust and cruel death? Does it become the sanctity of your order to steal into this miserable prison, where I am to await the doom which you have pronounced upon me, and insult me with the mockery of love? Degraded though I am, in the eyes of all but those of my own tribe, I am not, however, so lost to the decencies of my sex, as to listen to the unhallowed vows of a saint by profession, whose profanation of his sacred calling shows him to be a mere mocker of the divinities whom he pretends to serve.'

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Ha, ha, ha!" burst forth the intem

perate ascetic, with ill timed merriment; "is it possible, bibi, you can't see my soul through my skin? I'm not Veramarken, as I seem to be, but Yougal, whom you used to vow you loved better than a banana, with the fresh morning dew upon its stem. The Suniassi is on a journey to the stars, and having left his trunk behind him, I, by means of the secret of the mandiram, have crept into it and now stand before you, Veramarken in body, but Yougal in spirit.”

"Nay, that is impossible; Yougal would not have abandoned his own body, and cut off his own head, when, if what you say be true, his soul must so shortly be called upon to relinquish its present usurped tenement, and take to its own shell: where will he find that, when his ashes shall have been wafted upon the wings of the wind over the far country?"

"Don't fear; the holy man cannot resume his own flesh, until it shall please me to quit it, and that you may rely upon I shall never do, while I can enjoy a crown, be received as the husband of a beautiful queen, and as I hope the lover of a still more beautiful pariah. Will you accept my love, Mariataly, as before I became a prince?"

66 Never! you may be Yougal, but I only see before me the unsightly form of Veramarken. I cannot imagine deformity to be beauty, and therefore never can yield my love to what my heart revolts from. Besides, how am I to know that what you tell me is true?"

"How! dare you disbelieve the declaration of a prince?"

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"Are you prepared to die?' "I am, rather than become the concubine of Veramarken!"

"Your wish shall not be delayed. This day you shall lie in the cold earth with Yougal's body."

He quitted the unhappy Mariataly in a paroxysm of rage, which the more strongly convinced her that her former lover had not been addressing her, as he had ever been tender, and utterly unused to show the least excitement. She was now more than ever persuaded that he was dead, and the idea of being buried in the same grave with him was to her a matter of rejoicing rather than of grief. For her death had no terror since the object of her heart's affection was no more, and she cheerfully resigned herself to the fate that awaited

her.

That very afternoon the beautiful pariah was summoned to attend the interment of her deceased lover. A large deep grave was dug, upon the side of which the corpse was placed, in a dreadful state of decomposition, covered with a ragged palampore*. The unhappy girl advanced to the brink of the pit without shedding a tear, and, expressing her satisfaction at the privilege of being laid beside him in death whom she had so fondly loved in life, desired that the solemnity might proceed. After a few slight forms, the body of Yougal was lowered into the receptacle, when Mariataly, having scattered some flowers over it, descended into the dreary sepulchre. She seated herself at the head of the corpse. A few bamboos were then crossed above her

"If a prince, you are no longer the slave head, and fixed firmly into the sides of the Yougal; you cannot be both."

"Do not I tell thee that the slave's soul has become an inhabitant of the prince's body, and that thy adorer is ready to raise thee to distinction, being determined no longer to submit to the penances of a Suniassi, but devote his future life to enjoyment ?"

“That you may do, if you please; I will never consent to participate with you those honours of which you are now in possession. Yougal I loved, but detest Veramarken. In you I see only the latter. To tell you at once my suspicions, I believe you to be endeavouring to delude me into a false belief. You are no more Yougal than I am the queen."

“You reject me, then?'
"I do."

pit; upon these branches were thrown, and a canopy being thus formed which prevented the earth from falling upon her, the devoted girl was thus consigned to a living grave, without one ejaculation of sympathy being expressed at her unhappy fate.

Meanwhile the spirit of Veramarken, which had been taking its pleasure among the beatified in Indra's paradise, satisfied at length that he had been sufficiently long in such good company forall spiritual purposes, and being anxious to see his queen, whom he had now, as he imagined, grievously pained by too long an absence, determined to return to this nether world, resume his body, and, putting off the penitentiary, at least for a season, devote, if not the remainder of

A Counterpane.

his life, at all events a long interval of it, to those enjoyments from which he had hitherto debarred himself with painful but righteous perseverance.

Having taken a respectful leave of Indra and his celestial court, the soul of Veramarken quitted the Swerga, shot, with the velocity of a sunbeam, from a height immeasurably above the most distant star visible through the largest telescope, and dropped like a ray of light in the cavern where he had left his body. Alas! it was not to be found. The radiance which his spirit had imbibed, and bore with it from the celestial mansions, filled the whole space with a lambent glory, that showed distinctly every object; but he could no where discover the tenement he had quitted. His lamentations, though inaudible except to celestial ears, were of the most heartpiercing description. He proceeded into the darkness, for it was then night, and spread like a mist over the neighbouring jungle, hiding the stars, and affrighting the superstitious inhabitants scattered here and there through that desert tract, with the apprehensions of evil omens or of coming mischief. The wretched Suniassi hovered over the palace, where he soon had the opportunity of witnessing his own lost body possessed by the soul of his slave, of whose discovery in the cavern a headless corpse, together with his burial, and that of the lovely pariah, he soon heard from the casual gossip of the domestics. Enraged beyond description at the treachery of Yougal, who he now perceived must have overheard him pronounce the mystical mandiram, he flitted about from place to place like a noxious exhalation. On the following day, to his extreme mortification, he saw the counterfeit of himself enjoying the conversation of his queen, whom it almost maddened him to perceive listening, with more pleasure than she had been wont when he was with her, to the conversation of his menial. What was to be done? The miserable spirit had no power of expressing its indignation, because it was dispossessed of every physical faculty.

Veramarken was doomed to witness what he could not prevent or interrupt, and in a fit of spiritual agony he wished that he had never become a Suniassi, thinking, for he could not give utterance to his thoughts, that his holy penances had heaped misery upon his soul, instead of rendering it everlastingly happy. VOL. X.-NO. V.-MAY, 1837.

In a state utterly disconsolate and despairing, he continued to hover over the palace, unseen by mortal eye, but observed by the benignant Bhavani*, who quitted the mansions of bliss, and meeting the unhappy spirit of her favourite worshipper (for the saint bowed before more than one idol), consoled it with divine compassion upon its bereavement.

"Unhappy essence of a most devout Suniassi!" said the divine Bhavani, not in articulate words, but by spiritual communication, "thou shalt not wander about this world in a state of restless disquietude, without some shape of mortality to embody thee. I know thou longest to be an inhabitant of this earth, which thou didst quit for an interval, and return hither only to encounter bereavement of the sorest kind. I will therefore prepare thee a body in which thy restless soul will find sanctuary, until the opportunity shall present itself of regaining thy own. To supply thee with a human form is beyond my power; but such as I can give thee thou shalt have."

She had no sooner made this welcome communication than the form of a beautiful lory was wafted towards her on the soft wings of the morning breeze. The bird fell at her feet, and was immediately possessed by the disconsolate spirit of Veramarken. For some minutes the lory tried its newly-fledged pinions, mounted above the clouds, but soon perched upon the summit of the palace roof, when, having made its acknowledgments to Bhavani for her divine compassion, that goddess retired behind the sun to those celestial regions where she reigned undisputed queen.

;

The lory fluttered from window to window of the palace, anxious to obtain an entrance into those chambers in which the Princess Maldavee was in the habit of enjoying the pleasures of domestic intercourse. The venetians had not been yet unbarred there was consequently no entrance for the melancholy bird, which bruised its head and wings against the wooden laths of the blinds in its unavailing efforts to enter the palace. Finding no access at the upper stories, the lory descended to the lower, where it was almost immediately caught by one of the menials, who, admiring the extreme splendour of its plumage, was deter

*The Venus of the Hindoos. E E

mined to present it to her royal mistress. The extraordinary beauty of the little captive became the talk of the kitchen, and the rumour of its gorgeous array soon reached the ears of Maldavee, who desired that it should be brought into her presence. This being done, she was so captivated with its appearance, that she ordered a cage for it to be hung in her own private apartment, where the lory was henceforward a very unwilling prisoner. The princess was deThe princess was delighted with her beautiful bird, and the more so when she found it could speak her native language with a fluency truly surprising. The captive was so placed that it could hear and see all which passed in the room, and Veramarken was therefore continually put into a state of agony at witnessing the usurpation of his rights by Yougal. Nothing could exceed the torment daily endured by the Suniassi in his cage, at beholding his slave assuming the airs of royalty, and receiving the caresses of his queen.

This, however, he was forced to endure without a murmur, having no means of recovering his body, which he had relinquished in an unfortunate moment for a mere idle visit to the skies.

Though Yougal was elevated to a distinction beyond what he had ever contemplated, and was in possession of a lovely bride, he could not help now and then reflecting upon the interesting Mariataly, whom he had so cruelly consigned to an untimely grave. He frequently repented that he had so hastily given way to the base passion of revenge, for the comely pariah had really produced a strong impression upon his heart, which was, however, for the moment effaced by the fury of disappointment at her rejecting his unhallowed passion, when declared to her in the character of the royal devotee.

After a short time the menial was so elated with his new position that his subjects began to murmur at his tyranny, and even the queen already felt that she had rather too much of his company. Her dislike increased daily, but she was afraid to exhibit the real state of her feelings. There was a coarseness in the conduct of her no longer penitential husband for which she could not account, as, with all his former austerity, there had been still a certain refinement of manner, which showed that he was of princely lineage, for Veramarken traced his lineal descent direct from Gau

tama, one of the seven Rishis*, and how to account for the change was beyond the skill of her philosophy.

In proportion as the queen became frigid, the counterfeit prince grew irritable, and there consequently occurred frequent jars between the royal couple. The lory heard these bickerings, and the beatings of his heart ruffled the very feathers of his breast as his ear caught the harsh accents with which the presumptuous slave treated his mistress, over whom he exercised the severe dominion of a husband and a sovereign. Maldavee received the stern rebukes of her tyrant with almost passive endurance; nevertheless, her dislike increased with her patience under tyranny, until it grew at length into positive detestation. She could scarcely bear the sight of the fictitious monarch and saint, whose frame, by a long period of indulgence, had grown to a comely obesity, which, however, was to her even more odious than the rigid angularity caused by a series of torturing inflictions.

Yougal began to see that the dislike of the royal consort was growing daily colder, and this increased his irritability. His subjects were heard to murmur, and expressions of dissatisfaction were uttered without reserve, even within the walls of the palace. The domestics observed that things went very differently now their master seldom quitted his capital, but indulged his longings after sensual gratifications, for which he showed that he had a most ravenous appetite. They remembered with a sigh how much they had been left to their liberty when the royal Suniassi was accustomed to retire to the desert, to prepare his soul by devout abstraction for the paradise to which it had thus established an admitted claim t. He never then interfered with the innocent recreations, either of his subjects or domestics. He thought of nothing but his devotions; and thus all they who preferred pleasure to piety were left to their own choice, without a word of expostulation or inquiry. Now, the prisons were filled with criminals; stripes were administered upon the backs of the refractory without stint or measure; the people were as familiar with oppression as with boiled rice; the scales of justice no longer hung

These are seven celebrated penitents:-Casyapa, Atri, Bharadwaja, Gautama, Viswamitra, Jamadagni, and Vasishta.

+ The Hindoos imagine that by certain penances a positive right to enjoy the blessing of paradise is obtained, which even the Gods cannot set aside.

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