The views now expressed are concurred in by Mr Wylie, by Mr Marshman, than whom, perhaps, no one is more competent to give an opinion, and by many in the East. If they be admitted, then observe the conclusion to which they almost necessarily lead. Any semi-barbarous power can draw us on, and on, and on,-over deserts more vast,-through defiles more treacherous,-to attack countries difficult to conquer, and if conquered nearly impossible to hold. And the ultimate result may, nay must, be the fall of our empire. To this some may reply, that India is being gradually colonised from Europe, and that thus the disproportion between the small numbers of the ruling class and the many millions of the governed will rapidly diminish. Experience, however, seems to shew that India cannot be colonised from Europe. The first generation that goes thither from this country can, in most cases, repair by a return home the greater part of the injury it may have sustained from the tropical climate. The second generation, however, if brought up in the East, deteriorates physically, intellectually, and morally, to such an extent, that were each son to take his father's situation, we should begin to lose India in the first severe battle that might occur. It is to save children from this degeneracy, and not simply for education, that they are sent home about the age of 5, and not allowed to return to the enervating East before 18,-and that evidence must be very clear, which convinces every mother of the necessity of parting with her offspring for thirteen years. Ordinary colonisation would seem in these circumstances to be impracticable, and we are brought back to the conclusion, that the train of events formerly indicated is likely to go on unchecked. Still, though the ultimate dissolution of the Anglo-Indian empire appears inevitable, probably a long period must yet elapse before its fall. And it is chiefly because so much longer a time than is generally believed must be allowed for the universal destruction of its idolatries, that it has been thought necessary to raise the question now discussed Is it too much to expect, that unless the views expressed above can be proved absurd, they should be allowed some influence in the distribution of the missionary force throughout the world? There are certain countries now under heathen governments, on which British colonies are encroaching, so that the power at present wielded by idolaters must soon pass, and that permanently, into European hands. These lands we may almost choose our own time to evangelise; but we cannot calculate on finding India always as open to Christian enterprise as in the good providence of God it is to-day. But even though this argument be set aside, yet the subject of the distribution of our missions over the globe will, sooner or later, force itself on public notice. At present it is regulated by no

fixed principle, and the cry of thousands is frequently attended to while millions clamour unheard.

In thus summoning to protracted conflict, in place of expressing hope of speedy victory, we shall not be accused of doubting the divine promise that the world shall be finally evangelised. No; were sight opposed to faith, faith itself would perfectly sustain; but already sight begins to be superadded to faith in no trifling degree. There is but one real discouragement, that India contains a population too vast to be rapidly overtaken by our small churches, especially burdened as the latter are with the necessity of contending against extensive and organised error in Europe. Were Christian and heathen numbers more nearly on an equality, all would be easy. And even independently of conversions, there are causes in operation tending to reduce the present disproportion from day to day. In estimating the force with which any religion may be expected to act in the future, we must not merely make a census of the millions at present adhering to it, but ascertain also if possible the rate of their increase. When this is inquired into, it is found that the population in Protestant nations doubles in a much shorter time than in those adhering to the Church of Rome, and again in Roman nations more rapidly than in Muhammadan and heathen lands. Let it be assumed, that throughout the globe Romanists are at present to Protestants in round numbers as 2 to 1, but that the former double in 50 years and the latter in 40, then in 200 years the two religions would in this respect be equal, man to man But if, as is probably much nearer the truth, Protestants double in 30 years and Romanists in 50, then the former would equal the latter in considerably less than 120 years, and be double their number in 150. And it need scarcely be added, that in the presence of laws operating on such a scale of magnitude, the perversion of an occasional duchess is an event light as a feather's weight. Thus though, threatened hitherto by the hosts of that faith whose trust has ever been in the coercive force of numbers, we have been compelled to carry on the erection of the spiritual Zion, as the ancient Jews rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, each with a weapon in his hand, yet, under the divine economy, the operation of the one cause, mentioned above, will soon remove the danger from the source now indicated, and leave us more free for the evangelisation of the world. To observe next the operation of the same law with respect to Muhammadan and heathen lands. The mortality is excessive throughout the whole of these. To indicate but one source of deathvaccination being either unknown or unappreciated in most half-civilised countries, the inhabitants are constantly swept off by small pox to an extent that will not readily be believed. The time, then, which a heathen or Muhammadan country will

require to double its inhabitants must be very great; hence these nations have of late, in the main, remained stationary, while new Protestant colonies are everywhere springing up,-of which one, Australia, has in providence been so located as, in military phrase, to outflank India, on which it will yet sooner or later operate with exceeding effect.

And reasoning from what has already been accomplished through the instrumentality of the small missionary force in the field, to what a larger one might be made the means of achieving, there is very much to encourage. The wild tribes of the primeval jungle have hitherto been kept from embracing the Brahmanic faith, apparently that standing apart from others, they may the more easily be brought over to the truth. Hinduism of the normal type had, till within the last few years, the prestige with the general public, both in Europe and Asia, of absolute invincibility; but this is now gone, never to return, and the very Brahmans confess that Christianity must at last prevail. The case of the Muhammadans is less immediately hopeful. Though amounting to only one-seventh of the whole Indian population, many of them, if present appearances can be trusted, may linger in their error after the idolatrous six-sevenths shall have yielded to the truth. And we cannot but entirely dissent from the opinion frequently expressed, that the political decadence of Turkey and the other great Moslem powers, will lead, before long, to a general abandonment of the Muhammadan faith. There still lurks a fierce bigotry in the Mussulman mind, fitted to inspire the apprehension that their general conversion may yet be a remote event. Perhaps, however, this may not be the unmixed evil it at first sight looks. Under the moral government of Him, whose province it is to bring good out of evil, there is a mission even for gigantic religious errors. They frequently come into the world in pairs, and entering into fierce antagonism with each other, allow truth to rise unnoticed amid their combats, till it acquire a power greater than their own. During the whole of its past existence, Muhammadanism has been the unsleeping foe of the Greek and Roman religious tyrannies, and the history of the world for many centuries was little more than a narrative of their mutual struggles. And it is instructive to mark how simple, yet effective, is the check provided to neutralise any efforts they may make to convert each other, and deprive the world of the advantages it reaps from their disunion. It is this that Muhammadans, in most respects further from right doctrine than even the most corrupt Christian churches, have yet the manifest advantage over these on one point-their abhorrence of idolatry. If truth has a vitality which error does not possess, then Muhammadans attempt a hopeless task, when they aim at perverting even the least enlightened Christian to their own

own dark faith. And Christians, who so little understand their system, as to employ images in their worship, will find it just as difficult to deprive a Mussulman of his just views on the sin of idolatry. Hence Romish missions to the Muhammadans have invariably failed in the past, and have no reason to anticipate success in the future. If the place of Muhammadanism, under the divine government, has now been correctly indicated, then, perhaps, it will continue till the Papacy and other corruptions of Christianity are about to quit the world, and then itself also depart, the stern work it was commissioned to accomplish effectively done. Unbelief, the most formidable peril of our day, may possibly linger after the old superstitions have fled, but it too must finally yield its place. An epoch will succeed in which none will sigh for the resurrection of the extinct errors to deaden the force of truth, though it become universal,-none, the reanimation of the old despotisms, to check the absolute power of the Redeemer, though his kingdom, on every side overstepping its present narrow limits, encircle the world around.

ART. X.-Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana; with an account of excavations at Warka, the "Erech" of Nimrod, and Shush, "Shushan the Palace" of Esther, in 1849-52, under the orders of Major-General Sir W. F. Williams of Kars, Bart., K.C.B., M.P., and also of the Assyrian Excavation Fund in 1853-54. By WILLIAM KENNET LOFTUS, F.G.S. London: Nisbet & Co. 1857.

FOR some time past public attention has been strongly directed to the vast plains of ancient Mesopotamia; and many more years may be well expended in continuing the researches still needed for the full exploration of the numerous and huge ruins of hoary antiquity with which these plains are thickly studded. Every traveller adds to our stores of knowledge; and every addition to these stores enlarges our conception of what remains still to be ascertained. Mr Rich began the search, gave much interesting information, and roused our curiosity to desire more. Mr Layard disinterred Nineveh, called up before us the wonders of that great city, made us acquainted with the very lineaments of its mighty barbaric monarchs, and guided us through its vast and gorgeous palaces, placing in our hands the lettered sculptures that record its history. Sir Henry Rawlinson has read to us these records, and thereby carried our knowledge of ancient history back into the previously dim regions of the fabulous.

ages. But in all these instances, where our highly intelligent guides have been constrained to pause, they still point forward, and assure us that the half has not been told-that greater discoveries await us-and that the career of discovery has but begun.

A little consideration will suffice to shew us that we ought to have expected all this; and that our expectations ought still to be on the increase, and our exertions and encouragements undiminished for years or centuries to come. Let any intelligent reader, already tolerably well acquainted with the knowledge now before the public, take a good map of that region of Asia which includes Mesopotamia, and the countries on each side of it from Persia to Damascus, and from Kurdistan to the Persian Gulf. It is a vast region, but so very thinly inhabited compared with Europe, for example, that he cannot but regard it as little better than a desert, across the sand-covered wastes of which the wandering Arab tribes lead their wild and unresting life. But let him go back some three thousand years and more, and he will find it covered with a dense population, highly cultivated, and numerously filled with large and flourishing cities. Or, to aid him in realising this view, let him take a rapid journey of some days across these plains in almost any direction, and he will soon find that what to a cursory glance seemed low sand hills, are mounds beneath which ancient towns and villages lie buried. His eye is becoming educated, and he can now almost at a glance distinguish between a mere rounded ridge of drifted snow-like sand, and a mound that marks an ancient ruin. Let him take his stand on the summit of one of these conelike elevations, which he now knows to be a buried palace or temple, and look around him. The unaided eye can mark ten or twenty of these at no great distance. By the aid of a telescope these become as many hundreds as they had appeared tens. He moves forward a few hours, and again gazes around him. prospect is as thickly studded with these tombs of dead towns and villages as the first. Throughout the whole vast plain he finds the same now almost appalling scene repeated, till imagination itself becomes bewildered in the attempts to realise the departed greatness of the nations by which these regions were formerly inhabited. Who are they? what was their history? what caused them to perish so utterly from off the face of the earth? how could they all have found subsistence in a country which now cannot support more than the half-famished Arabs that roam across its pathless deserts?

This new

Traveller, gaze around you thoughtfully, and take for your best guide-book, the oldest book in the world, the Bible, and then prosecute your inquiry. You may also consult your Arab guides; but you will do well to learn how to distinguish between a dim legend of traditionary truth-a wild fable-and a con