by full batta, and broke out into open mutiny: and though the first-named corps, after some demur, returned to their duty, the others remained refractory till surrounded by a superior force of Europeans and artillery, when several hundreds were disarmed and made prisoners; and have since been either dismissed the service, or draughted into other regiments, as if to disseminate as widely as possible the example of disaffection. At present, (as we are assured by the latest accounts,) all symptoms of insubordination have disappeared; and as the batta grievance has been redressed by order of Lord Eilenborough, this may be really the case. Still it must be admitted as singularly fortunate, that this disturbance did not take place at the time when the fidelity of the soldiers was assailed by the machinations of Mubariz-ed-dowlah and his Wahhabi confederates; and even now, with the examples of the insurrection at Cabul and the mutiny at Vellore before our eyes, who can say how far this seeming security, in the critical state of our affairs in other quarters, is to be depended upon? Such, up to the present time, have been the visible results of Whig domestic government in India, and of that ever-memorable stroke of Whig policy by which (as we were assured two years ago) our Anglo-Indian empire had been established for ever on an immovable basis; what the ultimate consequences of both may be, is as yet hidden in the womb of time. It had been long since foretold by him whose lightest word was never spoken in vain, at once the most illustrious of our warriors and most sagacious of our statesmen, that "it would not be till Lord Auckland's policy had reached the zenith of apparent success, that its difficulties would begin to develope themselves," and fatally has the prediction been verified. But if the ikbal, or good fortune, which is proverbially believed in the East to attend on all the operations of the Company, has deserted them in their utmost need in the passes of Cabul, it must be allowed that the original instigators of, and agents, in the Affghan war (with the single exception of the unfortunate Macnaghten,) have most signally reaped the benefits of its influence. Titles, pensions, and promotions, have been heaped upon them with an unexam pled profusion, which presents a strange contrast with the impeachment of Hastings, and the general neglect experienced by those who laid, in past days, the foundations of our Asiatic rule; and before their short-lived laurels have had time to wither, they have been recalled to the tranquil enjoyment of their honours in England, leaving the rectification of their errors to their successors. Even to the last moment of his stay in India, the late viceroy was fostered by the breath of popular favour; and the thunder of the cannon which announced the arrival of Lord Ellenborough, was mingled with the acclamations which rang through the Town Hall of Calcutta from those assembled to do honour to the ruler whom he came to succeed. With the tributes of respect thus tendered we have no fault to find, if considered as on the principle of "speed the parting guest," or with reference to the amiable character and high private worth of the individual; but the laudatory allusions to his transIndian policy, with which the Calcutta addresses were filled, were equally opposed to fact and to good taste; and must (we think) have been felt by the object of them as a painful and humiliating mockery. When Lord Auckland assumed the reigns of government in 1836, the external relations of our Eastern empire were peaceful, the finances prosperous, and the army, notwithstanding the injudicious reductions of Lord William Bentinck, amply sufficient for any duty required within our own frontier; but a far different prospect awaits his successor. A treasury drained to the last rupee-an army defeated in one quarter, and disaffected in another-an almost hopelessly-involved foreign policy-with a war of extermination in Affghanistan -a seemingly interminable bucanier warfare in China, and the probability of hostilities with Burmah and Nepaul - such is the frightful catalogue of difficulties with which the new governor-general is called upon at once to grapple! But Lord Ellenborough approaches the task with far different qualifications to several of his immediate predecessors, who seem to have assumed the viceregal sceptre of India as a dignified and lucrative sinecure; for the creditable fulfilment of the duties of which little exertion would be requir ed, and still less any previous knowledge of the institutions and political condition of the countries they were thus called to govern. His services as President of the Board of Control in 1828, and more recently (in 1840) as chairman of the Lords' Committee on East Indian produce, bear ample and honourable evidence of the extent to which his researches have been carried in the commercial and agricultural resources of our Asiatic territories, and afford a hope that this knowledge may, when the present storm has passed, be brought efficiently to bear on the development of these too long neglected natural riches. The trade of India has now been open seven years, but neither the parliament nor the public have as yet shown themselves adequately aware of its true value and importance. While the possession of the Indus ought to secure to us the whole commerce of Central Asia, the tea of Assam, the sugar of Hindostan, and the cotton recently introduced from America and Egypt, might be cultivated so as eventually both to render us inde. pendent of our now precarious trade with China, and to secure our supplies of cotton in the event of a rupture of our hollow friendship with America. For the first time during many years, the care of these mighty interests has devolved upon one who is endowed not only with zeal and goodwill, but with that previous acquaintance with India, its resources, and its customs, the want of which has so lamentably marred the well-meant endeavours of more than one of his predecessors. Of his foreign policy, hampered as it must necessarily be at the outset by the task of unravelling the tangled web which has been bequeathed to him, little can at present be said:-but he has set out with the commander-in-chief for the northwestern provinces, in order to be nearer the scene of action a journey, we trust, to be attended with different results to the memorable progress of Lord Auckland to the same quarter; and his domestic administration has been commenced auspiciously, by an act of justice to the Madras sepoys in the restoration of the disputed batta. But on the course of Lord Ellenborough's government will mainly depend the question of the future stability, or gradual decline, of our AngloIndian empire; for, though we are not among those who hold the opinion said to have been expressed by a late governor of one of the presidencies, (Sir Charles Metcalfe,) that "he hardly felt secure, on retiring to rest for the night, that the whole fabric might not have vanished into thin air before the morning," - it cannot be denied that the prestige of unerring wisdom and invincible good fortune, which powerfully conduced to the maintenance of our authority, has sustained a tremendous shock from the late occurrences beyond the Indus. The French press already, in exulting anticipation, has ventured to indicate the period of its extinction: _"England" (says the Siècle) "is rich and energetic: she may re-establish her dominion in India for some time longer; but the term of her Indian empire is marked: it will conclude before the quarter of a century." Less than the prescribed period would probably have sufficed, under a continuance of the policy lately pursued, for the accomplishment of this prophecy; but we have good hope that the evil days have now passed away: and if Lord Ellenborough, at the conclusion of his viceroyalty, has only so far succeeded as to restore our foreign and domestic relations to the same state in which they stood ten years since, he will merit to be handed down to posterity by the side of Clive and Hastings as the second founder of our eastern empire. * The exertions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce have already worked wonders in this quarter-depots have been established at vairous points on the Indus; and the port of Soumeeani, on the Belooch coast west of the mouth of that river, is fast becoming the emporium of a wool trade, the staple of which is supplied by the innumerable flocks grazing on these elevated table lauds. A town in the interior called Wudd (145 miles from Khelat and 152 from Soumeeani) is the inland mart for this new trade. A RECORD OF THE PYRAMIDS. "Vitam impendere vero." To this drama is affixed a preface of twenty-nine pages, after a dedication to Sir Robert Peel. Pars minima estipsa puella sui. The author, in the first page, tells the right honourable baronet that "he believes there does not exist one who ever questioned his personal disinterestedness or abstract love of his country." The first epithet conveys no meaning; the second would appear sly and insidious; but we are confident that the good Mr Reade had no such intention. He adds, "your acceptation of my dedication" (here he begins his versification, which is a fair specimen of the rest) "of the Poem of Italy to you, was an earnest of the success which it finally attained, thus ratifying your expressed opinion of it-a success which I trust, and fully believe, will be further confirmed by time. Perhaps your accordance of the same honour to the present Drama, may entail on it, also, the like auspices." We will not object to so fashionable a word as "accordance," although we would rather find it in another sense, its old one. But we must inform Mr John Edmund Reade that to "entail auspices" is sheer nonsense. Auspices lead to events instead of following them. In the preface, p. 9, Mr Reade quotes a passage from Terence which had, perhaps, been more frequently quoted than any other of antiquity: but, in his equal want of scholarship and reflection, he omits the principal word, the word which conveys what he means to convey; and he makes the speaker in Terence say, "I am a man, and think nothing lies out of my way." Whereas the sentence is, "I am a man, and think nothing indifferent to me which concerns humanity." P. 9. "While the material energies of man may be overpowered, the spirit and the mind of freedom remains unconquerable." - How untrue, how unphilosophical, how contrary to historical fact, is this specimen of Mr Reade's reflections! P. 11. It would be difficult to find out, in the second paragraph, what Mr Reade means, and whether he scoffs at "and laughs to scorn" transcendental philosophy, or whether he does it the honour to patronize it as "a something beyond a mere tool of mechanism; - a spark, a scintillation from the all-ineffable Being, who, to judge, far less condemn, his creatures, must leave their thoughts and actions as free as those of their archetype." We sincerely believe that Mr Reade is a religious man: but, his thoughts being never clear nor consistent, he has written here what would have been censured in any minister of sounder sense, and more capable of making just distinctions. Human thoughts and human actions never can be so free as those of the Deity, whose judgments are not to be thus arraigned. Mr Reade will say he did not mean any such thing: we know he did not: we attribute it to the feebleness of his intellect, and not to the unsoundness of his faith. P. 12. Here we must notice some absolutely false statements. "On my return, I published my long-laboured poem of Italy. I have been aware, in common with my poet brethren, [he means poetical,] that 'poetry,' in its highest walk, had become extinct, or, in other words, 'out of date,' [as if there were no difference, and its altar altogether desecrated; that even the advantages of criticism were neutralized; its daily habit of pandering to the suggestions of friendship or instigations of spleen, having rendered its aids useless; the voices of the more discerning were drowned in the blazonries of the puffer," &c. We will not stop to enquire how a voice can be drowned in a blazonry-how a sound can be absorbed by a colour; but we must remark that there is no evidence of any living author who has taken A Drama, in ten scenes, by John Edmund Reade, author of " Italy," " Catiline," &c. VOL, LII, NO. CCCXXI, H to such incipient pains to collect voices and conciliate puffers, as Mr John Edmund Reade. It is incredible to what a degree he has been successful, sometimes by unwearied flatteries, and sometimes by piteous complaints that his health had suffered, and was suffering, by the malignity of his enemies and the neglect of the public. We will leave his "poet brethren" settle the question with him, whether "poetry in its highest walk has become extinct, and its altar altogether desecrated." Let Mr Milman, Mr Wordsworth, Mr Montgomery, and other moral poets, come forward on this ground. For our own parts, we would rather that a friend of ours should have written the three worst pages of Mrs Hemans, than the eight or nine thousand verses strung like empty birds' eggs in the dormitory of Mr Reade. He goes on, "I was also prepared for the prejudice which would at once condemn, without even partially reading, far less dwelling on, that which had cost me such time and labour of thought to erect." What prejudice can arise against a person so inoffensive? And yet we wonder that those whose business it is not to criticize for the public, should, after perusing one poem of this author, ab. stain from "even partially reading, far less dwelling on," the rest. But, happy man, he now returns to his seclusion, "as quietly confident of results as if they had already happened!" ticipated." In English, we say "responded to." "Discarding as the 'merest weakness' of the mind all vague and metaphysical analyzation." Mr Reade has abundantly proved to us that there are merer weaknesses of the mind, though certainly more vague, than metaphysical analýzation; analyzation cannot be vague, although it may be inexact. "The triteness and iterations of every. day common-place conveyed to them with an air of undue and false importance.' If Mr Reade had looked at the face of any friend while he was delivering this sentence, he would surely have seen an involuntary smile at such a Daguerreotype resemblance of himself. But he intends this rather for it: "He will walk along his own path, supported by the thoughts which have made him the independent, the morally happy being he is become, drawing in all pure and joyful impresses from nature round him, while carefully mixing with his fellow beings in a circle not wide enough to distract, or weaken, or deaden, his social sympathies; at the same time he will stand apart, so that he will be carefully mixing with his fellow beings, and at the same time (mind you) he will stand apart!" Doing what? why, in sheer earnestness and sincerity of his "mission;" for Mr Reade gives you to understand in the preceding page that he is "the true vates," devoting his life to the worship of the good and true. We are afraid he has been devoting his life to such a phantom of va vanity as was never seen before, even in the magical circle, or rather the fairy ring of poets. "Thus should he be occupied until he dies." We have no objection, provided he does not spoil our dramas by the nausea he excites at his grave coxcombry. "And however baffled or mystified by time or circumstance," &c. Time has nothing at all to do with him; and, Horace wrote, as every twelve-year- according to his own account, circum "The sense of the duty of his mission will lay on him with the obligation of a moral law." In the first place, this is nonsense; in the second, the grammar is defective; and we are afraid some critic less lenient than ourselves will take up Priscian's cudgel and lay it on poor Mr Reade. He writes in two lines of prose and bad Latin, part of two verses in Horace. He writes "Si vis me flere, Primum dolendum sit tibi." old schoolboy knows "Si vis me flere, dolendum est It Mr Reade had ever once read "His aspirations responded, or an stance can have very little; for he said three minutes ago, that he is supported by thoughts which have made him "the independent, the happy being," &c. The vates soon discloses himself a potentate. "Who would exchange the existence of such a potentate?" "The wise poet," &c., "he is inflated by neither pride nor vanity." If Mr K. had given no more irrefragable proofs that he is not a wise poet, nor any thing like one, he has given it here. We defy the man who possesses more books than Heber ever did, to open any volume, or ten volumes, in his library, containing such an excess of vanity, concluded by the sentence, that the vates, the potentate, is a little lower than the angels; the fulfilment of all which is an obligation upon him, a necessity, and a moral law. He is somewhat more than vates or potentate. "He is the priest of nature, as of humanity." What can the man mean by this contradistinction? Such a farago of broken-down Latin and of false quotations of the commonest texts, such a compilation of notes out of magazines -such confusion and contradiction, ought to secure a place in every curiosity-shop of letters. We now come to the poem itself. Before it opens, we are told Prometheus is discovered gazing on a statue, which is placed in a recess of the cavern. Now, it happens that for thousands of years after the death of Prometheus, statuary had not been invented. But Mr Reade has made quite another Prometheus, and very different from the old Titan, who was almost a match for Jupiter. The actual one is little more than a match for Mr Reade. He is a little bit of a Chartist, who wishes to raise the flame of freedom through mankind, and what is more, "To make them know and feel that they are free, I have, with watchings of long years, and fast. hundred miles? The nearest is the range of Mocattam "And crush the work And workmen in their ruins." He tells his brother Epimetheus"Thy brow is bound with silk, not steel." How many thousand years before silk and steel were worked? " Which thěn is greater beneath yonder heaven?" This is a verse, but a different one from what Mr Reade suspected: we have marked the bars. It appears that the Shepherd kings were the ancestors of Mr Reade's Prometheus and Epimetheus. "Of our great sire, take again the branch." This is no verse at all. In the time of Shakespeare, fire was often pronounced as a dissyllable, and sometimes spelt so: it retains that form in the adjective fiery; but sire was als ways a monosyllable. "For from the moment that a freeman takes A tyrant's gift, his half of manhood's fled." This is a very bad version from the Greek tragedian. "I come, and will interpret his dream to him." Scene II., v. 12. The sun is sloping off this eastern side, The prefects are upon the other, rousing," &c. "For we are slaves and servants all of us." This, also, is a diffuse paraphrase from the Greek. But no Greek verses were like the following, and very few English, we hope and trust. "You infinite ether, with its sun and moon, With boundaries known but to the gods alone, 'Tis necessary for man to be happy." Sigid says of his hands "They help'd to raise the walls of Thebes, yet I Have lived to see her in decay." How was this? He must then have lived longer than Methusaleh. |