be accompanied, on the side of the latter, with many feelings of jealousy. It seldom wears even the slightest appearance of familiarity, except in the chief seats of government; and there, as might be supposed, the natives are rarely to be seen now-a-days in their pure and unmixed condition, either as to real character or as to external manners. Exceptions of course there are to this rule, as to most others; but we believe they are very rare. Of recent years, Sir John Malcolm furnishes by far the most remarkable instance;-but they who read Bishop Heber's account of Sir John's personal qualifications will be little disposed to draw any general inference from such an example.

It is strange, but true, that only two English gentlemen have as yet travelled in India completely as volunteers-Lord Valentia, and a young man of fortune, whom Bishop Heber met with at Delhi; and who is still, we believe, in the east. Perhaps, were more to follow the example, the results might be less satisfactory than one would at first imagine. Orientals have no notion of people performing great and laborious journeys from motives of mere curiosity; and we gather, that when such travellers do appear in India, they are not unlikely to be received with at least as much suspicion as any avowed instruments of the government.

Considering the lamented prelate whose journals are now before us merely as a traveller, he appears to us to have carried to India habits and accomplishments, and to have traversed her territories under circumstances, more advantageous than any other individual, the results of whose personal observation have as yet been made public. He possessed the eye of a painter and the pen of a poet; a mind richly stored with the literature of Europe, both ancient and modern; great_natural shrewdness and sagacity; and a temper as amiable and candid as ever accompanied and adorned the energies of a fine genius. He had travelled extensively in his earlier life, and acquired, in the provinces of Russia and Turkey especially, a stock of practical knowledge, that could not fail to be of the highest value to him in his Indian peregrinations. His views were, on all important subjects, those of one who had seen and read much, and thought more-liberal, expansive, worthy of a philosopher and a statesman. In the maturity of manhood he retained for literature and science the ardent zeal of his honoured youth. The cold lesson, nil admirari, had never been able to take hold on his generous spirit. Religion was the presiding influence; but his religion graced as well as heightened his admirable faculties; it employed and ennobled them all.

The character in which he travelled gave him very great opportunities and advantages of observation. His high rank claimed

respect,

respect, and yet it was of a kind that could inspire no feelings of personal jealousy or distrust; this the event proved, whatever might have been anticipated. The softness and grace of his manners; a natural kindliness that made itself felt in every look, gesture, and tone; and an habitual elegance, with which not one shade of pride, haughtiness, or vanity ever mingled—these, indeed, were qualities which must have gone far to smooth the paths before him, in whatever official character he had appeared. As it was, they inspired everywhere both love and reverence for the representative of our church, Many will hear with surprise, none, we think, without pleasure, that his sacred office, where it was properly explained, even in the remotest provinces, received many touching acknowledgments. There was no bigotry about him, to check the influence of his devout zeal. In quitting one of the principal seats of Hindoo superstition, we find him concluding his lamentation over the darkness of the atmosphere with an avowal of his hope and belief that God, nevertheless, may have much people in this city.' And who will not be delighted to learn that this wise and charitable spirit met with its reward; that learned doctors, both Moslem and Brahmins,men who would have shrunk from the vehement harangues of half-educated zealots, however sincere and excellent,-were eager to hear a mild and accomplished scholar reason of life, death, and the judgment to come; and that the poor peasantry often flocked to him, as he passed on his way, to beg, not for medicines only, but for the prayers of the holy stranger.

For the unwearied assiduity with which the bishop discharged all professional duties in his immense diocese, and cultivated every branch of strictly professional knowledge, we may refer to the brief sketch of his life which appeared in a recent number of this journal.* The correspondence included in the volumes now before us will illustrate and complete that part of his history. By the favour of one of his oldest and most intimate friends and companions †, we were permitted to enrich the Article to which we have alluded with some specimens of his letters written in India, which gave, we believe, unmixed delight to all our readers; and from these alone it might be gathered, that the mere literary activity of the bishop, while in India, would have been something remarkable, even had his professional avocations been not the hundredth part of what they really amounted to. The publication of this work will, however, strengthen that impression far beyond what any person, but one, could possibly have anticipated at the time when our paper made its appearance. The

* Quarterly Review, No. LXX.

The Rt. Hon, Robert Wilmot Horton.

Journal,

Journal, which occupies the greater part of the book, would of itself appear more than sufficient to have occupied the whole time that Heber spent in his diocese. It was not written with any view of immediate publication, if, indeed, the bishop contemplated publishing it at all. It forms, nevertheless, a monument of talent, sufficient, singly and alone, to establish its author in a very high rank of English literature. It is one of the most delightful books in the language; and will, we cannot doubt, command popularity, as extensive and as lasting as any book of travels that has been printed in our time. Certainly, no work of its class that has appeared since Dr. Clarke's can be compared to it for variety of interesting matter, still less for elegance of execution. The style, throughout easy, graceful, and nervous, carries with it a charm of freshness and originality, not surpassed in any personal memoirs with which we are acquainted. The secret is, that we have before us a noble and highly cultivated mind, pouring itself out with openness and candour, in the confidence of the most tender affection-for the journal is addressed to Mrs. Heber. In his description of India, one of the most loveable of men has unconsciously given us also a full-length portrait of himself.

The bishop, luckily for his English readers-(for even a Heber might have written about India in a style less adapted for them, had he deferred the task)—seems to have begun this work the very day that he entered the Hooghly: he landed in the course of the evening at a small village, one, he was told, that had been but rarely visited by Europeans, where he was conducted to a temple of Mahadeo :

The greenhouse-like smell and temperature of the atmosphere which surrounded us, the exotic appearance of the plants and of the people, the verdure of the fields, the dark shadows of the trees, and the exuberant and neglected vigour of the soil, teeming with life and food, neglected, as it were, out of pure abundance, would have been striking under any circumstances: they were still more so to persons just landed from a three months' voyage; and to me, when associated with the recollection of the objects which have brought me out to India, the amiable manners and countenances of the people, contrasted with the symbols of their foolish and polluted idolatry now first before me, impressed me with a very solenin and earnest wish that I might in some degree, however small, be enabled to conduce to the spiritual advantage of creatures so goodly, so gentle, and now so misled and blinded. Angeli forent, si essent Christiani!" As the sun went down, many monstrous bats, bigger than the largest crows I have seen, and chiefly to be distinguished from them by their indented wings, unloosed their hold from the palm-trees, and sailed slowly around us. They might have been supposed the guardian genii of the pagoda.”— vol. i., pp. 13, 14.

66

The

The bishop's first impressions concerning the outward appearance of the natives themselves, must be exceedingly interesting:

• Two observations struck me forcibly; first, that the deep bronze tint is more naturally agreeable to the human eye than the fair skins of Europe, since we are not displeased with it even in the first instance, while it is well known that to them a fair complexion gives the idea of ill health, and of that sort of deformity which in our eyes belongs to an Albino. There is, indeed, something in a negro which requires long habit to reconcile the eye to him; but for this the features and the hair, far more than the colour, are answerable. The second observation was, how entirely the idea of indelicacy, which would naturally belong to such figures as those now around us if they were white, is prevented by their being of a different colour from ourselves. So much are we children of association and habit, and so instinctively and immediately do our feelings adapt themselves to a total change of circumstances; it is the partial and inconsistent change only which affects us.'-pp. 3, 4.

The great difference in colour between different natives struck me much of the crowd by whom we were surrounded, some were black as negroes, others merely copper-coloured, and others little darker than the Tunisines whom I have seen at Liverpool. Mr. Mill, the principal of Bishop's College, who, with Mr. Corrie, one of the chaplains in the Company's service, had come down to meet me, and who has seen more of India than most men, tells me that he cannot account for this difference, which is general throughout the country, and everywhere striking. It is not merely the difference of exposure, since this variety of tint is visible in the fishermen who are naked all alike. Nor does it depend on caste, since very high-caste Brahmins are sometimes black, while Pariahs are comparatively fair. It seems, therefore, to be an accidental difference, like that of light and dark complexions in Europe, though where so much of the body is exposed to sight, it becomes more striking here than in our own country.'pp. 7, 8.

'Most of the Hindoo idols are of clay, and very much resemble in composition, colouring, and execution, though of course not in form, the more paltry sort of images which are carried about in England for sale by the Lago di Como people. At certain times of the year, great numbers of these are in fact hawked about the streets of Calcutta in the same manner, on men's heads. This is before they have been consecrated, which takes place on their being solemnly washed in the Ganges by a Brahmin Pundit. Till this happens, they possess no sacred character, and are frequently given as toys to children, and used as ornaments of rooms, which when hallowed they could not be, without giving great offence to every Hindoo who saw them thus employed. I thought it remarkable that though most of the male deities are represented of a deep brown colour, like the natives of the country, the females are usually no less red and white than our porcelain beauties, as exhibited in England. But it is evident

from

from the expressions of most of the Indians themselves, from the style of their amatory poetry, and other circumstances, that they consider fairness as a part of beauty, and a proof of noble blood. They do not like to be called black, and though the Abyssinians, who are sometimes met with in the country, are very little darker than they themselves are, their jest-books are full of taunts on the charcoal complexion of the "Hubshee." Much of this has probably arisen from their having been so long subjected to the Moguls, and other conquerors originally from more northern climates, and who continued to keep up the comparative fairness of their stock by frequent importation of northern beauties. India, too, has been always, and long before the Europeans came hither, a favourite theatre for adventurers from Persia, Greece, Tartary, Turkey, and Arabia, all white men, and all in their turn possessing themselves of wealth and power. These circumstances must have greatly contributed to make a fair complexion fashionable. It is remarkable, however, to observe how surely all these classes of men in a few generations, even without any intermarriage with the Hindoos, assume the deep olive tint, little less dark than a negro, which seems natural to the climate. The Portuguese natives form unions among themselves alone, or if they can, with Europeans. Yet the Portuguese have, during a three hundred years' residence in India, become as black as Caffres. Surely this goes far to disprove the assertion, which is sometimes made, that climate alone is insufficient to account for the difference between the negro and the European. It is true, that in the negro are other peculiarities which the Indian has not, and to which the Portuguese colonist shows no symptom of approximation, and which undoubtedly do not appear to follow so naturally from the climate as that swarthiness of complexion which is the sole distinction between the Hindoo and the European. But if heat produces one change, other peculiarities of climate may produce other and additional changes, and when such peculiarities have three or four thousand years to operate in, it is not easy to fix any limits to their power. I am inclined, after all, to suspect that our European vanity leads us astray in supposing that our own is the primitive complexion, which I should rather suppose was that of the Indian, half way between the two extremes, and perhaps the most agreeable to the eye and instinct of the majority of the human race. A colder climate, and a constant use of clothes, may have blanched the skin as effectually as a burning sun and nakedness may have tanned it; and I am encouraged in this hypothesis by observing that of animals the natural colours are generally dusky and uniform, while whiteness and a variety of tint almost invariably follow domestication, shelter from the elements, and a mixed and unnatural diet. Thus while hardship, additional exposure, a greater degree of heat, and other circumstances with which we are unacquainted, may have deteriorated the Hindoo into a negro, opposite causes may have changed him into the progressively lighter tints of the Chinese, the Persian, the Turk, the Russian, and the Englishman.'-p. 53-55.

The