ence, these retired courts and alley ways are not unpleasant or unhealthy; but as the population increases, they become abodes of filth and centres of disease and contagion. A farseeing economy would prevent this, by taking into view the future necessities of a large population, as well as the temporary interest of a few individuals. The beneficial effect of this policy, if generally adopted, upon the comfort, health, productive energy, and wealth of the community for future generations, would almost exceed calculation. In reality, the subject is not so much a matter of economy, or even of health, as of imperious duty.

The Commissioners further recommend "that the general management of cemeteries and other places of burial, and of the interment of the dead, be regulated by the local Boards of Health." The subject of intramural burials has lately occupied a considerable share of public attention, and we feel assured that public opinion is taking a right direction with regard to them. The fact that noxious exhalations and deleterious gases rise and spread from graveyards, carrying poison and death with them, is now well known. It has also been discovered, that the respect for the bodies of the dead, which our tenderest feelings demand, does not conflict at all with a proper regard for the health of the living. Intramural burials, even when the body is deposited beneath the sacred aisles of the sanctuary, are often not less revolting than they are injurious. It is not more in accordance with the laws of sanitary science than with the holiest sentiments of our nature, that the departed should rest, not by the side of crowded thoroughfares, where the idle laugh and profane oath go up to Heaven on the same breath that carries the prayer of the mourner and bereaved, but in retirement and solitude, away from the haunts of busy men, where Nature, by her manifold agencies, shall resolve the body into dust, with a blessing instead of a curse to the living.

Another recommendation of the Commission is, "that persons be specially educated in sanitary science, as preventive advisers as well as curative advisers." This includes, directly or indirectly, all the rest. It strikes at the root of the whole matter. Disease can often be prevented, and rarely cured. The world has yet to learn that, in medicine as in morals, prevention is far easier and better than cure. When disease

has fairly commenced its attack, the physician can do little. else, with his whole battery of drugs, from calomel to thoroughwort, than watch the progress, mitigate the violence, and alleviate the distress of the struggle; and when it must terminate fatally, he can "smooth the pathway to the tomb," making the passage thither less painful both to the dying and the bereaved. But if disease cannot be cured, it can often be avoided and prevented. This is what should be done; and if this recommendation were adopted, and men were in the habit of seeking advice and information with regard to their habitations, occupation, diet, etc., so as to learn, when well, the art of preserving health, we have no doubt that an important and beneficial influence would be exerted upon the sanitary condition of the community. Hitherto, such advice has not been often sought, or much valued. Its importance, however, is daily becoming more apparent; and we hope the time is not far distant, when men will give as much heed to the advice which would prevent a fever, as to that which seemingly cures it.

There are many other points in this Report which we should be glad to discuss, and some which we might be inclined to criticize; but we feel that our remarks should be drawn to a close. Its appearance marks a new epoch in cisAtlantic sanitary legislation, and we hope it may be the harbinger of a comprehensive and enlightened system of sanitary reform. We commend the Report to the consideration of the philanthropists, economists, and legislators of our country, with the confident belief, that if the principles which it presents should receive the sanction of public opinion and the authority of law, they would prove of inestimable advantage to the whole community. To adopt the words of the Commission:

"We believe that the conditions of perfect health, either public or personal, are seldom or never obtained, though attainable; that the average length of human life may be very much extended, and its physical power greatly augmented; that in every year, within this Commonwealth, thousands of lives are lost which might have been saved; that tens of thousands of cases of sickness occur, which might have been prevented; that a vast amount of unnecessarily impaired health and physical debility exists among those not actually confined by sickness;

that these preventible evils require an enormous expenditure and loss of money, and impose upon the people unnumbered and immeasurable calamities, pecuniary, social, physical, mental and moral, which might be avoided; and that measures for prevention, will effect infinitely more, than remedies for the cure of disease."

ART. VI.-1. Annals of India for the Year 1848. By GEORGE BUIST, LL. D., F. R. S., &c. Bombay: 1849. 8vo. pp. 82 and xciv.

2. Correspondence, Deed, Bye-Laws, &c., relating to "Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's Parsee Benevolent Institution," established in Bombay, 1849. Together with a Goojrattee Translation of the Deed and Bye-Laws. Published by order of the Punchayet of the Institution. Printed at the Times Press: Colaba. 1849. pp. 105 and 113.

Of all the cities of the East, from Constantinople to Calcutta, Bombay is the least Oriental. All other eastern cities have a peculiar, distinctive, character of their own depending upon that of their people. A certain degree of special sameness belongs to each. But Bombay is a city of patch-work. Its streets have the appearance of a fair. The scene is so animated and gay that it seems like the scene in a pantomime, and you expect it to vanish even while you are looking at it. There is no other place in the world where the representatives of so many nations and so many religions are gathered together. Bramin and Buddhist, Mussulman and Parsee, Jew and Christian jostle each other at every turn. There is the Persian merchant, who has come from Ormuz, or Bussorah, with a cargo of horses or of dates; the Arab trader, with his long, dyed beard and his grave face, meditating how he may best sell his coffee or his myrrh; the Bedaween, tempted from the desert across the ocean by the hope of gain, but preserving in the midst of the city his wild look and his desert dress, the yellow-fringed kerchief hanging down from beneath the folds of his tightly rolled turban upon his long burnoose of goat's hair; the Armenian, bearing the mark of his

race upon his countenance, and distinguished by his high, sheepskin hat, and his loose, flowing, black dress; the Chinese sailor, with his blue trowsers, his straw hat, and his long tail of braided hair; the unmistakable Jew; the thick-lipped, crisp-haired Seedee, from the coast of Abyssinia; the black, half-caste descendants of the old Portuguese conquerors; the poor native Hindu; the Englishman, who in his double capacity of ruler and trader belongs now as much to India as any of its native races; and ourselves from the farthest West; all the world in fine is represented in this brilliant panoBut the most interesting figure in the group is that of the Parsee, who pushes actively along among the crowd, and is not less easily recognized by his purple and brimless hat, and his spotless, white dress, than by a look, so unusual in India of energy, subsisting unsubdued under the withering glare of the tropical sun.

rama.

It is by this look, and by the character of which it is the expression, that the true Parsee shows that he traces back his origin to a northern country. More than a thousand years ago, faithful to a religion which for ages they had respected undisturbed, the Parsees, flying before Mahommedan persecution, left their native Persia, carrying with them their sacred, unextinguished fire. Guided by the bright emblem of their God, they found shelter on the western coast of India. Here they established themselves, and during succeeding centuries, preserving always traces of their ancient customs and faith, keeping as far as possible out of the frequent quarrels and wars which have been the curse of the native races of India, taking no historical part in the affairs of the country, but distinguished by their intelligence, activity, and prudence, they have spread and prospered, until now they have become the most flourishing people in India, and a great part of the commerce of the western coast of Hindostan is in their hands. In Bombay they form at present one of the most important portions of the community, not only in numbers, but in respectability and wealth.

But one can speak of them with only comparative praise. The nobler qualities of character, those alone which can give a people an honorable place in the history of the world, are almost as rare among them as among other Oriental races. They have nothing which can be called a literature of their

own; no divinely gifted poet has sung to them, and no hero has arisen among them whose glories have been handed down by any pious narrator. Whatever may have been the character of their religion in ancient times, it is now nothing better than a disjointed superstition, supported by a mass of senseless ceremonials, and possessing no moral influence over the lives of its professed adherents. This, however, although accompanied by great evils, may be regarded as in some sort a hopeful circumstance. The chief obstacle to improvement, both among the Hindus and the Mahommedans, in India is the manner in which their religions have intertwined themselves with every detail of life, and given to the most trivial customs, and to the most absurd opinions, the weight of religious authority, and the sacredness of a religious sanction. The religion of the Parsees, on the contrary, has so little influence with them, and has so little to do with their daily concerns, that they are not deprived by it of the free exercise of their intelligence, nor hindered from adopting any change of the practical benefit of which they may be convinced. They have preserved themselves in great measure free from the degrading and detestable institution of caste, the holy springs of natural affection and sympathy are left to flow unchecked, and to this single fact may be attributed much of their superiority to the other races in India. Benevolence, which, except in some rare and most honorable instances, is an unknown virtue among the Hindus, is comparatively common among the Parsees; and we remember hearing it said that a Parsee beggar was never to be seen. But beggary has a different meaning and limit under the tropics, from what it has in our colder and more cruel climate.

The manners of the Parsees are often marked by a natural grace characteristic of Orientals; but this is too frequently accompanied by a suspicious suppleness hardly less characteristic, the result of tyranny and the cover of falseness and deceit. Their life, as one sees it in Bombay, has a half eastern and a half western character. At their counting-houses and their shops, they appear like merchants and shopkeepers in the West. But their life at home, in their private houses, is quite after Eastern fashions. Their wives and other females, though less secluded than is common among Hindus and Mussulmans, are kept much out of sight, and hold a low and