During that long period, measuring half the duration of the globe, the intermediate points of communication between the East and the West, have changed with the rise and fall of mighty cities and empires. Connected, however, with all such changes, there is one fact that stands out in singular prominence, challenging the attention of the patriot, the statesman, and the Christian philanthropist. It is a fact, too, so uniform and characteristic, that it may well be entitled to rank as an historic law. The fact is this: that whatever city or nation has, in the lapse of past ages, held in its hands the keys of Indian commerce and Indian influence, that city or nation has, for the time being, stood forth in the van of the civilized world as the richest and most flourishing. Indeed, the temporary monopoly of Indian trade has rescued even petty states from obscurity; and raised them to a height of greatness, and wealth, and power, vastly incommensurate with their natural resources. Some of the most famous cities of antiquity it may be said to have literally created. With the first possession of it, they suddenly sprang to their meridian of glory; and with its departure, they as rapidly sunk into the dark night of oblivion.

The southern peninsula of Arabia, projecting as it does like an isthmus between the East and the West, seems, from the earliest times, to have enjoyed, on a great scale, the full benefit of Indian commerce. And is it not matter of historic record, that the most important advantages were thereby conferred on the inhabitants? Did it not stimulate their industry at home,-multiplying the necessaries, enhancing the comforts, and superadding the most coveted luxuries of life? Engaging the services of art as the ally of nature, did it not lead to such improvements of an originally happy soil, as doubly to justify the poetic designation of Araby the blest?" Did it not arouse the great mass of the people to correspondent activities abroad—earning for them a distinguished reputation for nautical enterprise, and enabling them to plant and maintain flourishing colonies on the most distant African shores?

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Or, casting our eyes northward, over the sandy skirts of ancient Syria, do we not find the barren waste doing homage to the prolific bounty of the East? Do we not find the mere transit depot of Indian produce suddenly rise into surpassing grandeur? Indian commerce found Palmyra composed, as it were, of brick,—but left it more precious than marble. And, to this day, those ruins that fill the traveller with amazement, if animated and vocal, would cease not to proclaim,-Behold, these are but the time-worn fragments of that wealth and magnificence which dropped in the desert from the wings of Orient riches, on their passage to the West!

Or, if we look westward, along the shores of the Mediterranean, do we not find the various tribes of Phenicia, though only the secondary conveyers of the merchandise of the East, thereby raised into temporary prosperity and renown? And with the disappearance of that aggrandizing traffic, do we not find all their glory vanish like a dream? What enabled Tyre, single-handed and unaided, to resist so successfully, and so long, the mightiest assaults of the Macedonian conqueror? Chiefly the resources which it had accumulated from its monopoly of the Indian trade. This could not escape the eagle-eye of Alexander. Accordingly, on having achieved the conquest of Egypt, he at once resolved, through that country, to open a direct communication with India; and replace Tyre by a nobler emporium for Eastern trade. Hence the origin and design of that celebrated city, which still retains the name of its royal founder. And when the conqueror, in his swift career, reached the Indus with its tributaries, and had concluded, in those days of geographical ignorance, that these were none other than the feeding streams of the Nile, his biographer, Arrian, expressly assures us, that the vast fleet placed under the command of Nearchus, "was equipped for the specific purpose of opening the direct intercourse between India and Alexandria." So bent was the hero on this favourite project, and such importance did he attach to its success, that when, after weeks of intense anxiety, he

was at length suddenly relieved from all fear as to the safety of his fleet, he burst into tears, and exclaimed,

By the Lybian Ammon and the Grecian Jove, I swear to thee, that I am made happier by this intelligence than in being conqueror of Asia; for I should have considered the loss of my fleet, and the failure of the enterprise it has undertaken, as almost outweighing, in my mind, all the glory I have acquired." The execution of his magnificent design he lived not to witness. But under his immediate successors, Alexandria soon became the channel of communication between Europe and Eastern Asia. And recent though it was, and but of yesterday, compared with the "hundred-gated Thebes," and other ancient cities, direct trade with India and the East speedily raised it into such pre-eminence, that it appeared to eclipse all else besides, even in a land so prodigal of architectural wonders. Yea, when it ceased to exercise sovereign power, and became politically dependent on all-conquering Rome, it still maintained its proud position as the commercial capital of the Empire;—while, in opulence, splendour, and population, it bade fair to rival, if not outrival, the Eternal City itself.

After the proud mistress of the world sunk into decrepitude and inanition, Arabia once more sprung up into more than its original greatness. Its tribes, headed by a warriorprophet, and inflamed with fanatical fury, speedily overran many of the fairest provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa, gathering up the spoils and fragments of the shattered Empire of the Cesars,-planting the Mahammadan crescent in distant realms, which the Roman eagle never knew. With the extension of their conquests were re-developed those mercantile energies which distinguished their forefathers. On almost every shore from the Straits of Gibraltar to the extremity of the ultra-Gangetic Peninsula were strongholds established, as posts for military aggression, or depots for commercial enterprise.

The Moslem conquerors having usurped the dominion of the Eastern and Western seas, and for several centuries maintained an uncontrolled supremacy over them, the trade

of India, in all its boundless variety, became exclusively theirs. Bagdad, their capital, started up at once, the Rome and the Alexandria and the Athens of the East. Resistless in arms, unrivalled in commerce, matchless in learning, it absorbed, while it flourished, all power, all wealth, all wisdom. And when its day began to decline, its commerce with India and the East fringed the lengthening shadows of evening with a halo of glory. That commerce had caused the sun of its prosperity to shine with sevenfold greater splendour; and when it would have suddenly sunk in darkness, its setting was protracted into a long and glowing twilight. Year after year, did the balmy plains and aromatic groves and pearly shores of India pour in their redundant stores, to replenish the exhausted treasury of the Caliphate. Year after year, did the Ganges, as it were, roll in another and another wave to retard the final drying up of the Euphrates.

When, at length, the Mahammadan Empire was broken up into divers independent principalities, Indian commerce, instead of flowing in one all-comprehending channel, came to be distributed among several lesser ones,—each deriving therefrom the most important advantages. The vigorous revival of the old branch of the trade by the Red Sea renovated the decaying city of Alexandria. The new branch, stretching along the great desert of Syria, restored to something like primitive grandeur, some of its dilapidated cities. The northern branch, by the Caspian and Black Sea, enriched every country along the route; and added fresh lustre to the imperial city of Constantine.

Here we cannot but pause to notice in passing, that if the regular commerce of India proved so uniformly advantageous to the nation that succeeded in engrossing it, the occasional plunder of that fertile region proved not less so to a succession of fierce and rapacious invaders. To single one instance out of many that crowd into India's eventful history, let us fix our eyes on Ghizni, a city of Afghanistan. Situate on the crest of a bleak mountain range, the rigour of its climate, and the sterility of its soil, had

passed into a proverb. About the end of the tenth century it was still little more than "an encampment of migratory shepherds." But Fame brought to Mahmoud, its ambitious chieftain, the most extravagant reports of the riches of India. In his fervent imagination it presented itself as a land glittering all over with gems and gold. In twelve successive expeditions he levelled its proudest cities, and plundered its most venerated shrines,-returning in triumph to his mountain fastness, laden with spoils -spoils of pillage and sacrilege-spoils, vast beyond all calculation-spoils, the accumulated treasures of ages! What was the effect on Ghizni? Its shepherd citizens instantly became nobles; its leading warriors, princes. Its miserable hamlets were turned into palaces; its humble oratories into stately temples;-and towering above them all, in majesty and grandeur, the marble edifice, so richly bedecked with the jewels and gold of India, that throughout all the East it was long renowned as "The Celestial Bride." Altogether, though perched aloft amid almost perpetual frosts and barrenness, the naked fastness of Ghizni soon outstripped in pomp and magnificence every other city of Asia. The spoils of India at once transported to it the arts and letters-the power and glory-of the Caliphate. The spoils of India converted it into the seat of the most brilliant court, and most powerful empire then in the world. It seemed like the ancient Canouge, and Matura, and Tanasser, and Samnat of the Indian heroic ages, blazing in concentrated beauty and splendour, amid the snows of the Indian Caucasus.

Hitherto the nations of Western Europe seem to have had no share in the direct management of Indian commerce; and little or no participation in any of its fruits. Too rude to be sensible of the wants so heavily felt in a refined society, they were too ignorant to comprehend the advantages of an international exchange of, the products of different climes.