Mrs. Postans has some sensible observations regarding the use which might be made of the imitative faculty and the ingenious tendencies of these comparatively ignorant people, towards raising their character and advancing their civilization. The fine arts cannot be expected to have attained to excellence in a country where, as we are told, several accomplishments of the sort, if on the part of females, are held to be inconsistent with good character. The following notices are illustrative of one branch :

"The Hindu musicians have a diatonic scale of seven primitive notes, agreeing in sound, I believe, with our major mode. These notes are arranged into six simple melodies, entitled rawgs, or modes; and these are again variated into thirty-six airs, or branches, called rawgnees. The six rawgs, and the rawgnese, are supposed to have an imaginary existence, as nymphs and genii, and to preside over the divisions of time. The six rawgs answer to the morning, noon, sunset, evening, midnight, and dawn; and the thirty-six rawgnees attend the intermediate hours. They have also six airs for the seasons, which are considered as the offspring of the rawgness, and are more modern compositions. All the Hindu songs are written for these airs; and it is considered bad taste to play them at any but their appointed hours. I have not been able to find that the Hindus possess any system of musical notation. Their modes are acquired orally; and they possess books called the rawg malas, which contain songs adapted to the thirty-six airs, but without musical notes. All the songs in these books are headed with paintings of the nymphs and genii of the Hindu modes, each bearing the title of a rawgnee. Every branch of knowledge amongst the Hindus, however scientific may be its subject, is embellished with beautiful allegories and poetical ideas; and in their musical divisions this is most remarkable. Not only are the six rawgs themselves described as six genii, wedded to nymphs beautiful as houris, but we are assured that these airs are the favourite melodies of flights of fairies who sing to them the loves of Krishna and Radha, at the banquets of the heaven-born Indra. The musicians of Cutch are acquainted with all these principles of composition, and have attained considerable proficiency in their application. They use instrumental music for three purposes: as an assistance of bardic recitals; as an accompaniment to the movements of their dancers; and as forming a part of their religious ceremonies."

The chieftains of the Cutchees, like other feudal lords, take great delight in listening to recitals of their gallant deeds; and not a few have been the occasions when these military lords have signalized themselves before they had to compete with gunpowder. Most of them have bards. Others of the tuneful and poetic tribe seem to make a livelihood as strollers:

"As provincial bards, Cutch possesses its Bhats and Dadies, whose profession it is to rehearse to the Jharrejah chiefs the warlike deeds of their ancestry, whose glory is thus embalmed in the exaggerated metaphor of ancient story, originally composed to exalt the fame of the warrior princes,

and draw down a shower of their choicest favours. We were favoured with a visit from a celebrated Jharrejah bard, well learned in the early history of Cutch; he brought with him a volume of manuscript odes, written in the Guzzerati dialect, the sole topic of which was royal panegyric. At our request, he sang several of them to his Sitarr, with a pleasing and melodious voice, and in conclusion afforded me an interesting explanation of his art."

The legends and superstitions of the country afford fertile themes for poetic embellishment; some specimens being presented by our authoress. Here is one:

"It is related that, during the reign of a king of Cutch, named Lakeh, a Jogie lived, who was a wise man, and wonderfully skilled in the properties of herbs. For years he had been occupied in searching for a peculiar kind of grass, the roots of which should be burnt and a man be thrown into the flames. The body so burnt would become gold, and any of the members might be removed without the body sustaining any loss; as the parts so taken would always be self-restored.

"It so occurred, that this Jogie, whilst following a flock of goats, observed one amongst them eating of the grass he was so anxious to procure. He immediately rooted it up, and desired the shepherd who was near to assist him in procuring fire-wood. When he had collected the wood and kindled a flame, into which the grass was thrown, the Jogie, wishing to render the shepherd the victim of his avarice, desired him, under some pretence, to make a few circuits round the fire. The man, however, suspecting foul play, watched his opportunity, and, seizing the Jogie himself, he threw him into the fire and left him to be consumed. Next day, on returning to the spot, great was his surprise to behold the golden figure of a man lying amongst the embers. He immediately chopped off one of the limbs, and hid it. The next day he returned to another, when his astonishment was yet greater, to see that a fresh limb had replaced the one already taken. In short, the shepherd soon became wealthy, and revealed the secret of his riches to the king, Lakeh; who, by the same means, accumulated so much gold, that every day he was in the habit of giving one lac and twenty-five thousand rupees in alms to fakirs."

As in duty bound we shall ere closing Mrs. Postans' volume let her be seen in one of those passages which perhaps she has laboured unusually to make beautiful, but where, according to our ideas, the result is inferior to the general features of the book, characterized as they are by ease, rapidity, and a talent for seizing upon descriptive points :

"Delusion is abroad: tourists write, and artists paint, heedless of fact, anxious only to bathe a favourite spot in all the light of graceful beauty, and the bright hues their own glowing and poetic imaginations suggest. But surely, if it be once admitted that truth alone is the keystone of knowledge, and, consequently, the only associate of good taste, it were better, where facts really exist, that ornament should be deemed superfluous and ill-placed; and I have no doubt that, as real knowledge increases,

its vanities will be seen, and the simple and vivid delineation of truth be held in most esteem, and constitute the real triumph of literature and the fine arts. Teniers will find more admirers than Nicholas Poussin, and those writers gather greatest fame, who

• Pour out all as plain

As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.'

Then will nature be worshipped as she alone deserves, divested of the meretricious garb which only veils her beauty; she will be sought for by the path of knowledge, science will be the ministering flamen of her mysteries, and the many will feel the harmony of her simple beauty. The institutions of man will be purified by her influence, his mind will recognise its powers, facts will appear, opinions will change, systems will arise, sincerity and benevolence will radiate throughout the world; and, reaching even the palmy shores of India, may plead the cause of the poor Hindu within the heart of man, and prove

་

That, where Britain's pow'r

Is felt, mankind will feel her mercy too.""

Before proceeding to notice either of the two pamphlets at the head of our paper, and with a view to enrich the article by introducing a variety of information regarding some of the independent nations of Asia, the north-western frontiers of India, Affghanistan, Lahore, &c., we shall quote a passage from the second and enlarged edition which has recently appeared of "Conolly's Overland Journey to India," which conveys a striking outline of a people's manners and character. The nation we refer to is that of the Affghans, whose capital is Herat, so lately the scene of war. In several features these warlike people resemble the Scottish Highlanders :

"Revenge for blood is, with an Affghaun, a duty which is rendered sacred by long custom, and sanctioned by his religion. If immediate opportunity of retaliation should not present itself, a man will dodge his foe for years, with the cruel purpose ever uppermost in his thoughts, using every cunning and treacherous artifice to entrap or lull him into confidence, and thinking it no shame to attack him in a defenceless state. The public leave men to settle their own quarrels, not interfering, except, perhaps, in the case of a long-cherished feud between families which affects the interests of the community; and then they induce the man whose turn it is to retaliate, to accept the price of blood.

*

*

"Moollâ Mohummud, our Heraut friend, told me the following story, the circumstances of which he said he could vouch for, as they occurred in a house which was close to one that he formerly lived in at Candahar, the females of which were intimate with his own. A Doorraunee of the neighbourhood of Candahar had a blood-feud with a young man whom he had long vainly watched, in the hope of finding him off his guard. At last he heard that his enemy had sent sweetmeats to the house of a resident of Candahar, as a preliminary to espousing his daughter, upon which he left his village, and came privately into the city. The Affghauns, as before mentioned, have a custom called Naumzaud Bazee, (trysting)— the lover being secretly admitted to interviews with his mistress, which

frequently last until a late hour in the night. The avenger watched in vain for an opportunity, till the very night before the wedding; when he gained access to a court adjoining that of the house in which the girl lived, and boring a hole through a wall, lay in wait there with his matchlock. In the evening the lover came as usual to tryst. He had that day sent the customary present of the bridal dress and ornaments, but his betrothed, 'through modesty, had declined examining them before all her female. acquaintance;' and when the young man asked if she approved of her trousseau, the mother explained this, and called her away to look at it then. This was late on the night: the moment she went out, the blood avenger took aim at his victim as he sat on a low couch, and in perhaps the happiest moment of his life, shot him dead."

Captain Westmacott, in his pamphlet, takes a comprehensive view of the condition, relations, and prospects, not only of the various provinces of British India, but of central Asia and other countries bordering on our Eastern possessions. This view, we regret to say, is far from being consolatory or flattering to our nation and government. We hope the gallant author draws but the darkest side of the picture; and indeed if the impressions we have received from the whole of our previous reading and inquiries be correct, we must hold that he has exaggerated evils and dangers, while, on the other hand, he has not communicated the whole truth or adduced with equal pains encouraging facts. Even upon the face of his own showing it appears to us that there is something like inconsistent colourings. He labours in one part of the publication to show that British sway in India has been prejudicial, nay direful, in many of the most important respects, to the millions under our controul; that as regards social and civic interests, nay morals and religion, the people have sadly degenerated; that our rule is disliked and hated; and upon the whole he so represents the matter in these and other concerns, that to be consistent with himself, if the wellbeing of mankind, of one of the largest divisions of the human race be a paramount object in his estimation, he ought, instead of strenuously urging our government and the nation to strengthen their hands in the East, and to take prompt steps to fortify their bounaries he ought, we say, to hail the approach of the period when we shall be driven from every settlement in Asia. Surely an enlightened patriotism cannot be incompatible with universal philanthropy ; surely the mere circumstance of our Indian empire being the most valuable of our foreign possessions ought not to be taken as a suffi-. cient excuse for misruling, oppressing and demoralizing, generation after generation, countless multitudes of people. Yet Captain Westmacott declares, after a long residence in the East, after extensive travelling and observing, after inquiring earnestly concerning the past and the present, "that in places the longest under our rule there is the largest amount of depravity and crime;" that" the influx of wealth, and the demoralization that everywhere (everywhere

is the word) dodges the footsteps of the European, are destroying the most valuable features of the national character." We might

quote many passages in which it is asserted that the happiness, the interests of the Indians, have severely suffered at our hands. The Missionaries have done no good-none at all; there have been no conversions; and even where the Christian faith has been adopted or professed, it has always been to the manifest injury and demoralization of the professed convert; it has added vastly to his disadvantage, by bringing him into utter contempt among his former friends; in short, to cite part of one sentence, the writer says, " I think that not only are their labours (those of the Missionaries) thrown away, but very prejudicial consequences follow in their train.” In one paragraph he also declares, "we preserve intact the rites and ceremonies of the natives, under a supervision which is not felt by them;" and in the very next breath he condemns" our anxiety to force the Christian religion on the native population;" statements that seem to be at some variance.

In regard to some countries at which the author glances, Persia, for example, he has no small share of blame to throw at our government for not only neglecting our vital interests in that Kingdom, but for not having kept good faith as an ally and friendly power, for having actually alienated the affections and the trust of a nation which should have been anxiously preserved as a sure bulwark against that Russian aggressive spirit which has long looked and been making stealthy strides towards our Eastern possessions. Now we are not going to enter into debate upon either of the points so strongly put as we have intimated; but, just to show how a person who adopts extreme views is apt to fall into incongruities, in certain parts of the pamphlet there are also encouragement and incentives held out to England upon the ground that in Persia there does exist a decided favour for Englishmen, a confidence in their honour and fair dealing, which is not extended to the people of other countries, to Russia, for instance.

Having thus referred to the overstrained showings of the Captain, we shall now call attention to some of his arousing and alarming statements, for which, unquestionably, there are sufficient grounds, and which, we have as little doubt, will materially aid in keeping awake the strong excitement already abroad in regard to the retention of our Indian empire, and the designs of Russia in that quarter; for although the promptitude and energy of the Indian Government, of which tidings have recently reached this country, may for a time answer some of the arguments and allay many of the fears expressed with much force and knowledge of facts, in the pamphlet before us, the country must not sleep, or suppose for a moment that the wily Autocrat has relinquished his long fondly cherished designs. He has still Tartary for a line of march; while a most extended and potent system of bribery, as well as other