have been productive of considerable advantage. Observing that the Government schools were stationary in progressthat they were inferior to the mission schools-and that the progress made did not go beyond what an under-teacher ought to be able to lead the pupils to read-also that school books were much wanted ;-Captain Durand freed Mr. Hough, whom he took to be a competent Burmese scholar, for a time, from constant attention to elementary tuition,-setting him to work on translations and the writing of school works, as a temporary occupation, until such time as a higher class of select students could be formed, when it was intended that Mr. Hough should carry on such a class into the higher branches of knowledge. The experiment had no fruit, for reasons sufficiently obvious, at least to all at Moulmein. Another measure of the late Commissioner was not carried into effect, in consequence of the disapproval of Government. Finding that the bulk of the regular attendants at the two Government schools were the children of Christian parents, Captain Durand endeavoured to induce the Government, as an exception to their rule, to permit the introduction of the Bible into the schools in the Tenasserim provinces; this, as might have been anticipated, was not acceded to. The Government schools have thus remained without progress or improvement, and beyond a very elementary knowledge of English, Arithmetic, and Geography, imparted to a few children, chiefly of clerks and native officials, they have done little towards the diffusion of knowledge.

It is somewhat of a reproach to us as a people to find, that, in the Tenasserim provinces, by far the most efficient and the most beneficial educational establishments are those maintained by the American Baptist Mission; a body, from a nation having no temporal interest in the country, but nevertheless, entirely devoted to the present and eternal welfare of its people. What will not the gratitude of future generations be to the names of Judson and his compeers, when the truth is preached in future ages from the translations of the Scriptures made, printed and first taught by these American teachers; and how will it sound, when, in future times, it will be said and truly said, "Our English Rulers were indeed the conquerors of the Burmese, and wrung from them these fair and beautiful provinces, but our American teachers were the conquerors of ignorance, and dispelled the

a good Talain scholar, who understood Burmese well, and a young native acquainted with Burmese and English. The work when finished was placed in Lieut. Latter's hands, who set himself earnestly to the task of mastering the Talain language. This officer, when about to become useful to the Commissioner, was suddenly removed by Sir T. H. Maddock, and was only restored to the Commission after the removal of his superior. When his return could be of no use to Captain Durand, whose insu bordinate assistants he had not joined, Lieut. Latter was sent back to the provinces.

darkness from which the English never strove to rescue us." Even, humanly speaking, whose will be the real glory, that of Judson and his brethren, or that of the rulers, who, Christians themselves, could yet establish schools for the training of youth exempt from all religion whatever; and whose countrymen did nothing to retrieve the culpable caution of their brethren in office by early sending labourers into the field. That field is now occupied, and well occupied; and the only manner in which the good work should, by the English, be aided, is by furnishing funds to enable the American Mission to extend its sphere and increase its numbers. Much is written and much said of military heroism, and when the soldier falls on a battle field, the sympathy of a nation forms his shroud; but the highest and the most enduring of all heroism passes unheeded by the world, and, though it may command the sympathy and the admiration of angels, has little earthly to support it. Such is and has been that of the ladies of the American Mission; one by one they fall at their post,-over-exertion and constant labour, shattering their weak frames, whilst they endeavour, not unsuccessfully, to rival their brothers and husbands in the labours of the Mission. Look at the abilities of some of them; their writings in their own and in the difficult tongues they have mastered; their noble characters, the late Mrs. Judson for an instance ;-and then to think that paucity of numbers, that a reluctance to be removed from the scene of their labors, and to throw more work upon their husbands and friends, should, humanly speaking, cause the untimely loss of so much talent and goodness! The same, to a less degree, with the men; they too are overworked; undertake more than men can well perform; and only fall less seldom than their ladies, because the latter, in addition to their Mission cares and labors, have those which their families inevitably devolve upon them. The Mission must well know that the loss of an old Missionary, that is, one acquainted with the language and habits of the people, is not replaced by one, two, or half a dozen new Missionaries, and it is to the interests of the cause they have at heart, that their competent men and ladies in the Tenasserim provinces be neither permitted to kill themselves by over-work and exertion, nor by thinking that they have any superhuman powers of conquering sickness and disease; in short, it is essential that more hands be sent into the field; and it will be a shame to Englishmen if they cannot aid the American Baptist Mission, should funds be any obstacle to increasing the numbers of their emissaries, on the eastern coasts of the bay of Bengal, in provinces under British rule.

U

ART. IV.-1. Lois de Manou. guste Deslongchamps.

2. Works of Sir William Jones. 3. Elphinstone's India, vol. 1.

Publiees en Sanskrit, par Au

HISTORY, or Tradition which often supplies the want of history, have invariably assigned a high rank to those great spirits who first compelled a community to recognise the eternal principles of Law. They who consolidated scattered maxims, or gave stability to fluctuating and uncertain rules of life, or stamped with the seal of authority all that was good and pure in transient customs, they, in short, who substituted for the biassed opinion of one or of a number, a determinate and consistent code, have invariably come down to posterity linked with the names of mighty conquerors, founders of art, and inventors of letters. But from a variety of causes an uncertain mist hangs over the life and actions of these law-givers, even while their claims on the admiration of mankind have been as clear and recognized as the sun at midday. While soldier and scholar have been recorded by the pen of admiring companions and humble followers, it has been fated for the legislator to avoid the light, and depart to those lone recesses where popular credulity might fancy him in communion with heavenly influences, or whence it might view him with awe, descending at periodical intervals to bestow the fruits of his treasured wisdom on his erring fellow-men. That the Hindu sage should be involved in such obscurity, is no matter for wonder, when we consider the vague fictions in which Sanskrit literature has indulged. But we see the same result in the early accounts of Greece and Rome. The founders of their laws are either transformed into demi-gods, and placed as Bacon observes, second only to the inventors of arts, or are men of whom nothing is known. Grecian mythology represents Minos as the son of Jupiter on earth, and the judge of the shades afterwards. Numa must hold nocturnal consultations with Egeria before he can give laws to the rising colony of Rome. Lycurgus stands before us only as the prototype of Spartan severity. Draco is the image of legalised blood-thirstiness. Even Solon, a much more historical character, is associated with Epimenides, and must share in the traditions with which the latter's history is deformed.

Who then was Manu, and what were his objects? are ques

tions often asked, which may be answered in two or perhaps more ways. Of his antiquity, and we may say, his reality, there can be no doubt. For though the plan of the work is evidently dramatic, yet it is as clear that the code was compiled by a Brahman well versed in the lore of the Vedas, and to a certain extent in the ways of the world: combining secular and book knowledge at once. Nor again is there any doubt as to Manu's being the main fountain, whence the religious observances of a country, where every custom is based on religion, the hopes and fears of the Hindu for this life and the next, the various regulations of society and intercourse, marriage and inheritance, birth-rites and funeral pyres, spring and are perpetuated. He is indeed the Shastra to which learned and unlearned alike appeal. The well-read Pundit, when we inquire of him the reason for this or that custom, will base his answer on a text of Manu. The secular Hindu, nay the unlettered Ryot, while pleading in extenuation of some grave folly sanctioned by the transmission of ages, unconsciously repeat the substance of some time-hallowed sloke. But most Hindus, if asked the age and date of their great legislator would answer in a breath, that he was the son of the "self existent," that he was taught his laws by Brahma in one hundred thousand verses, and that he finally delivered them in an abridged form to his son Bhrigu, who gave them currency in the world.

The European scholar, acquiescing in the antiquity of Manu, has often busied himself with speculations as to his identity with law-givers in other countries and ages. We shall avoid what we cannot but consider a needless waste of time, and forbear to inquire whether Manu be the same with Minos, or with the Moon, or with the Sanskrit word Manas, whether it was the first of that name or the seventh whom Brahmans believe to have been preserved in an ark from the deluge; whether the divine bull of Dharma has an affinity with the Egyptian Apis, or with the Cretan Minotaur, or whether several precepts of extraordinary stringency are to be considered as applicable only to the three first and more pure ages of the Hindu world. Such questions we hold to be entirely abhorrent from the true province of Historical investigation. They can never he perfectly settled to every one's satisfaction, and speculation on them only raises up another hypothesis to which every one has some point of dissension to urge. But viewing Manu as a graphic picture of the manners of a somewhat advanced state of society, and as a combination of religious precepts and human laws, which to a certain extent supply the materials

for History, we think that a considerable deal of valuable knowledge may be extracted from the book, if tested only by the legitimate rules of philosophical inquiry. Manu's system is not one of uncompromising ambition or unmingled priestcraft suddenly erected by some one enterprising Brahman, for those whom his arms had vanquished in the field. It is not a code springing at once into life from the superior intellect of a single individual, like armed Pallas from the head of Jupiter. It is a strange compound of mœurs and enactments. It is not a mere picture of domestic manners, for it has several chapters expressly devoted to politics and law. It is not a mere code of jurisprudence for it dives into the minutest economies of private life. It displays all the elaborate arrangement of the Pandects with an equally elaborate provision for those household duties which other legislators have deemed excluded from their province. It attends on the King or Rajah in his hall of audience or in his closet; it follows the husbandman to the field, and waits on the mahajan in his shop. It prescribes rules for the Brahman at his great sacrificial supper, or at his homely repast; it regulates his carriage, his very look, the stick on which he leans, his address to his superiors or inferiors all his outcomings and his ingoings. It extends its universal sceptre over every social relation, from the pleading of causes in court to the earliest studies of the student in the four Vedas, and from the ceremonies consequent on the birth of a Brahman to the day when he shall quit his mortal frame," as a bird leaves the branch of a tree."

This is but a necessary part of the great Hindu system. Religion, minute in its observances, was to be the foundation on which every rule of life was based, and the whole code pursues this object with undeviating attention from first to last. We shall endeavour to show hereafter who or what the author must have been. But call him Manu, Bhrigu or Sumati, give him the name of any other ancient Hindu sage, his work is a remarkable instance of what an Eastern intellect can produce. Whoever the law-giver was, his imagination, as Elphinstone well remarks, must have been singularly impure. He is liable to the charge of unhealthy superfluity, which every reader of satire brings against Juvenal, and which Johnson denounced in Swift. He revels in ideas from which others would shrink with disgust. He fears no pollution from the contact of pitch. He evolves with scrupulous accuracy those offensive particulars, which we could hardly imagine as uttered in the very depths of the confessional. He presumes to dictate to conscience what she would amply pro