and he shall be punished according to the pleasure of the two governments, and the rule of the Sastras.' This was now readily signed by all the chiefs except one, who at length also consented, but at the same time solicited an abatement of his revenue to reimburse the expense to which he would be liable in consequence of bringing up his daughters. Thus, says Major Walker, the Honourable Company's government have the merit of having directed their philanthropic attention to the abolishment of a custom as singular as barbarous; and as contrary to the general feelings of parents, and of humanity, as ever disgraced the history of man.' The happiest effects were immediately experienced upon the signature of the engagement; and, in the course of a few months, it became as difficult to prove the fact of any female children being put to death, as it formerly was to find one that had been saved. At the end of the year 1808, three infanticides only appeared to have been committed since the date of the obligation, and one of them rested on report only. In the expedition to Kattawar, Major (now Colonel) Walker, on his halt at Dherole, had all the neighbouring Jarejahs who had preserved their children brought to his tent. 'It was extremely gratifying,' he writes, on this occasion to observe the triumph of nature, feeling, and parental affection, over prejudice, and a horrid superstition; and that those who, but a short period before, would, as many of them had done, have doomed their infants to destruction without compunction, should now glory in their preservation.' This visit must indeed have been peculiarly gratifying to Colonel Walker's feelings. The Jarejah fathers,' says Mr. Moor, who a short time back, would not have listened to the preservation of their daughters, now exhibited them with pride and fondness. The mothers placed their infants in the hands of Col. Walker, calling on him and their gods to protect what he alone had taught them to preserve. These infants they emphatically called "his children;" and it is likely that this distinction will continue to exist for some years in Guzzerat.' We have now gone through the sad story of human artifice acting on human weakness; which, however, Mr. Moor, by his incidental notes,' 'remarks,' and 'illustrations,' has ingeniously contrived to swell out to more than 300 quarto pages. The main drift of these notes and illustrations appears to be that of advertising his Hindu Pantheon. Scarcely a page occurs which has not a reference to this elder, but we believe not the eldest, born of his brain; indeed the common inscription on the numerous guide-posts' See my Hindu Pantheon'-so perpetually meets the eye as to be quite ridiculous. We were also amused with another article exhibited to public attention by Mr. Moor. After a long story, totally uncon nected with his subject, he thinks it necessary to give a dull and prosing account of the manner in which an eastern correspondence is managed; and having talked a great deal about Indian and Persian impressions of seals of state which have fallen into his possession, he adds, Among other subjects of like value, I am fortunate enough to possess an unopened letter, written by the late Great Moghul Shah Allum, to a personage of high consideration, with his signet unbroken. Any virtuoso desirous (as all such must surely be) of enriching his cabinet with so great a curiosity, may be accommodated with it on reasonable terms.' (p. 127.) On reading this passage, we turned back to the title page to ascertain whether we had not committed a mistake by transcribing F. R. S. instead of F. A. S. and thus set down Mr. Moor as a person 'well skilled in various branches of natural science,' when we ought to have designated him as a dealer in broken pots and illegible manuscripts. If, however, there be any error in his titles, the printer solely is to blame. We cannot think very highly of Mr. Moor's illustrations.' He is one of those who refer the origin of all human knowledge, institutions and customs to the Hindoos; who discover, in its purity, the philosophy of the schools of Athens and Rome in the Vedas and Puranas. Flowing from the Brahmans, the Greeks and Romans, Mr. Moor assures us, received it filtered through the priesthood of Egypt. The story of Telemachus appears to him to be stolen from the Travels and Adventures of Kamarupa;' and the fabulous relation of the Amazons was certainly borrowed from the Hindoos, because Hamazen means all-women, and is pronounced very much as we sound Amazon.' Nay, he is almost con❤ vinced that the gold stick in waiting at St. James's was borrowed from the Choabdar, or staff-bearer of an Indian Behudar, who, as he says, 'carries a baton of silver;' and it is nearly certain with him, that our Christmas Boxes travelled all the way from Persia, because there the word Bakshish signifies a gift. We are heartily weary of such fooleries, which answer no other purpose than to bring into contempt what little of value may be discovered among the remains of antiquity in Hindostan. ART. XIII. The Vision of Don Roderick; a Poem. By Walter Scott, Esq. 4to. pp. 140. Edinburgh, Ballantyne and Co.; London, Longman and Co. 1811. WHEN HEN the Goddess of Beauty was presented by her sire to the applause of the assembled immortals, the critics of the upper world, as soon as the first effect of surprise and admiration was over, were divided in opinion. Among the inhabitants of heaven as well as earth, there is, it seems, a certain levelling principle, which is uneasy under the shadow of a neighbour's renown, and ever anxious to reduce obnoxious excellence, by plausible deductions, to the general standard of its fellows. In this inclination both parties agreed; but in the means pursued, they were completely opposed to each other. The first acknowledged with apparent candour, the beauty of Cytherea's complexion, and the commanding majesty of her form: the bounty of nature had left nothing to desire; but they could not help regretting that these native charms were so little improved by art, or controlled by the principles of a judicious taste. Her gait was awkward and her garments ill-disposed; the Graces, it should seem, had been but clumsy tirewomen; and it was impossible not to feel disgust at the fashion of her girdle and the intolerable creaking of her slippers. But, while this was the opinion of her graver and more decorous examinants; their antagonists with equal warmth, and more ill-nature, denied at once that either in face or figure the new goddess was at all superior to many among the meaner damsels of the sky.Her dazzling exterior and her graceful motion; the judicious folds of her robe, and the witchery of her golden tresses, these were the secret of her beauty and her faine; and above all, they whispered that, take away her cestus and her Persian shoes, the daughter of Jupiter would dwindle into a mere dowdy. The goddess shrunk back in confusion and distress from the clamour of these irreconcileable disputants; but was restored to peace of mind by the recollection that opposite censures could not both be true, and by the promise of her parent, that the great majority both of gods and men should take their opinion of her person from the first, and of her dress from the last of these revilers. A measure like this has been dealt, we believe, since the world began, to every author of commanding and original genius. His novelties of subject, of prosody, and of style, (and every original genius has delighted more or less to wander in these respects from the beaten track of authority,) have by a certain class of critics been made the subject of grave debate and bitter persecution; while that sordid crew, who seem to themselves less obscure in proportion as their neighbour's lustre is diminished, are fond of ascribing his fame to some paltry trick of popularity-to the influence of a fashionable subject, or the tinkling of an unusual measure. The first lament with decent reluctance over talents misapplied, and imagination wasted on themes which can inherit no lasting renown, in numbers below the dignity of the heroic muse. The others attribute to these same peculiarities all the beauty he can boast, or all the admiration he has attracted; and exclaim aloud against the semi barbarous and deluded age, which can profanely ornament such gaudy novelty with the wreath of real excellence. Both, however, are united in the conclusion that this provoking height of popula rity is every dele, A rock of yce and not of steele :' and exult alike in the comfortable prophecy of a speedy downfal to the intruder who has dared to climb Parnassus by any but its regular gradus. To both these classes of persecutors Mr. Scott has been a long time obnoxious; and though we have reason to believe that neither the forebodings of the one, nor the venom of the other, have very materially disturbed his reposé, he has at length complied with the wishes of both: he has accepted the defiance of his enemies by abandoning the vantage-ground of Scottish scenery, and flinging, like his own Celtic chieftain, the target and the plaid on the ground; and he has followed the opinion of his more friendly critics, in the choice of a subject with which every heart might be supposed to sympathize on either bank of the Tweed, and a stanza which (though for various reasons it has been less generally employed than most of our English measures) is the invention of Spenser, and has been sanctioned by the applause, if not the adoption, of all our more illustrious poets for the last three hundred years. For ourselves, we have not been among those of Mr. Scott's advisers, who shake the head, and whisper much, and change the countenance' at every little instance of departure from a classical model: who gravely admonish him to revert in good time to the old established trammels of poetry; and cry out against the heinous offence of delighting the world in an unusual way. It is enough for us, and it would, we believe, have been enough for Aristotle, that a narrative should have plot, and interest, and action and pathos; that it should be adorned with beautiful imagery, and told in unaffected language; and that the character of the emotions excited by its perusal should be animated, dignified and pure: nor can we help attributing to a very different school than that of classical prescription, the fastidiousness which rejects as unworthy of immortal verse the contests of a petty tribe, or the events of an uncivilized age; or which cannot feel an interest in any hero who is not backed by fifty thousand men. The number of actors with which a stage may be crowded, or the political importance of the subject of a poem, has always appeared to us completely irrelevant to that display of personal character which alone induces interest or esteem: we can sympathize with the anger of Achilles, at least as much as with the ambition of Cæsar; and the petty chief of Ithaca was over, were divided in opinion. Among the inhabitants of heaven as well as earth, there is, it seems, a certain levelling principle, which is uneasy under the shadow of a neighbour's renown, and ever anxious to reduce obnoxious excellence, by plausible deduc. tions, to the general standard of its fellows. In this inclination both parties agreed; but in the means pursued, they were completely opposed to each other. The first acknowledged with apparent candour, the beauty of Cytherea's complexion, and the commanding majesty of her form: the bounty of nature had left nothing to desire; but they could not help regretting that these native charms were so little improved by art, or controlled by the principles of a judicious taste. Her gait was awkward and her garments ill-disposed; the Graces, it should seem, had been but clumsy tirewomen; and it was impossible not to feel disgust at the fashion of her girdle and the intolerable creaking of her slippers. But, while this was the opinion of her graver and more decorous examinants; their antagonists with equal warmth, and more ill-nature, denied at once that either in face or figure the new goddess was at all superior to many among the meaner damsels of the sky.Her dazzling exterior and her graceful motion; the judicious folds of her robe, and the witchery of her golden tresses, these were the secret of her beauty and her faine; and above all, they whispered that, take away her cestus and her Persian shoes, the daughter of Jupiter would dwindle into a mere dowdy. The goddess shrunk back in confusion and distress from the clamour of these irreconcileable disputants; but was restored to peace of mind by the recollection that opposite censures could not both be true, and by the promise of her parent, that the great majority both of gods and men should take their opinion of her person from the first, and of her dress from the last of these revilers. - A measure like this has been dealt, we believe, since the world began, to every author of commanding and original genius. His novelties of subject, of prosody, and of style, (and every original genius has delighted more or less to wander in these respects from the beaten track of authority,) have by a certain class of critics been made the subject of grave debate and bitter persecution; while that sordid crew, who seem to themselves less obscure in proportion as their neighbour's lustre is diminished, are fond of ascribing his fame to some paltry trick of popularity-to the influence of a fashionable subject, or the tinkling of an unusual measure. The first lament with decent reluctance over talents misapplied, and imagination wasted on themes which can inherit no lasting renown, in numbers below the dignity of the heroic muse. The others attribute to these same peculiarities all the beauty he can boast, or all the admiration he has attracted; and exclaim aloud against the semi |