introduction to a help-meet, owing its origin to some instinctive perception of attraction, some undefined recognition of aptitude, some felicitous adaptation of form, sentiment, and intellectual bent; the whole thing is a mere bargain, heartless and soulless as a copper pice. Marriage therefore in the place of being an exciting, and noble point of exaltation in perspective, like,—

"The height where fame's proud temple shines afar'

a bower of happiness peeping through the mountain foliage, and a goal of exceeding great reward;-—becomes a mere cloying antepast, a way house of the desert, a lounge in a malarious jungle, a draught of gunja intoxicating for a brief period, and by repetition, stunting unfolding powers, sapping opening energies, and withering all the high aspirations of manhood and nascent honour. Look at the results! What would be expected of the growth and condition of children dieted entirely with honey, sweet pudding, and shurbut of syrup of roses? Until the natives themselves recognize the absolute necessity of modifying this vile system of coupling their children independent of attachment, and binding them into the conventional leash malgre their sympathies; until in short, they agree to raise woman from her degraded state, until they vote her to be something more than an animal and a drudge, and raise her to her proper place, in the social scheme;-all attempts at general improvement will be comparatively ineffective. How much this question depends upon the moral education of the natives, as distinguished from mere schooling, must be obvious to all. The native manhood, to some extent, appears willing enough to avail itself of European institution, and guiding, in regard to intellectual advancement; but the native womanhood is ranged determinately against all change, and turns with aversion from the rays of knowledge, that begin to penetrate the seclusion of the zenanah. This is the retribution of man's wrong. The womanhood of India is its Ireland, and its awfully obstructive moral difficulty. It is much more difficult to enfranchise than to enslave, and men all over the world prefer the easiest or most convenient task of the moment, though it include a Pandora box of difficulty and misery for the hereafter. The Man of India has made woman a serf for centuries, and when he offers her freedom, she spurns it. When he would raise her, she prefers the sordid second nature of custom, to which he in his selfishness reduced her. The proffered liberty therefore is repelled as something unbecoming, immodest, and utterly repugnant to custom;-custom rooted in lust, and hedged in by a system of jealous outrage, that is a reproach to manhood, and a disgrace to civilisation. This is the grand

obstacle to overcome, and until this huge stumbling block, this ugly hill of difficulty, is got over, or leveiled to the dust ; the cause of native education in its high and comprehensive sense, will advance but very haltingly indeed.

The Natives of Bengal who have availed themselves most of the opportunities for English education, and moral indoctrination, have with very limited exception, literally done next to nothing in this matter. We acknowledge the exceptions, including as they do worthy and honorable individuals;-but as a class they have shewn themselves men of words, not of deeds, of profession rather than of performance. The language of reform is frequently in their mouths, which we presume has reference to dietetics, since we hear more of the eating and drinking (after the most approved English fashion) of Young Bengal, than of their own moral progress; or their determined efforts to promote the moral progress of their more ignorant and poorer countrymen. With scarcely a profound oriental scholar among them, and certainly no Grecian or Hebraist, these are the men who set up as learned judges of the evidence of creeds! These are the erudite sages who balance the probabilities of divine revelation, and prove the truth of one book by forbidding their youth to look even into another. What is it that really forms the ground of the aversion that educated (quasi) Natives have to the Christian religion, as a system of morality, grounded on faith in certain historical events? Can it arise from ratiocination and comparison of the morality, purity, and spiritual responsibility of both systems? Do these young sages, wise in their generation, look to results-and judge each tree by its fruit?

The poorer classes of the Indo-Britons, fall also into mistake in regard to the grave question we have been considering above. Most of them marry a great deal too soon, and become prematurely burthened with families, before they have earned the means of feeding so many mouths. The consequence of this, and the scantily remunerative kind of labour to which they chiefly devote their industry, is, a social state on the very verge of pauperism.* Though with Bishop Atterbury it may be conceded, that those who marry, give hostages to the public; yet ought it also not to be forgotten, that too many of these hostages become heavily chargeable to the public. Ought Malthus,

The ideas of some of this class in relation to marriage, are somewhat extraordi nary. A case in point occurs to us, where a young female pauper supported wholly by charity, tendered a petition, praying all the charitably disposed people of Calcutta, to contribute for the purpose of enabling her to marry a poor deformed pauper also living by alms.

then, and his followers, to be blamed, as cold hearted, or unChristian; because they endeavour honestly to inculcate upon all, the necessity of striving to make some provision for a state, the very commencement of which is a doubling of wants, responsibility, and expenditure? Woman was meant not only to be a help-meet, but to be the self-restraining, and industrious man's exceeding great reward. 'None but the brave deserve the fair-has a reference besides the military one. The courage which enables a man to stand fire, is not a rare one. Moral courage is of a more exalted kind. This is the courage most required to enable a man to act well his part in the lot appointed to him. It is this based on religious principle, that fortifies him bravely to breast the difficulties and dangers, that lie between the line of poverty and competence, enterprise and success. The military forlorn hope is generally an affair, (a desperate one it may and generally must be) of a few minutes or an hour, but includes the exciting element of reckless companionship, and prospective glory and its distinctions. That of the labouring man is a forlorn hope of years, and may end in worse than death, blasted domestic comfort, abject misery and despair.

On the subject of "condensation in writing," our author is sound and practical. Though "quality and not quantity, is the true test of excellence," still revising and repruning may be overdone. It may be carried to too great an extent, till the process affects the staple of the work; just as the muskets on board a merchantman are so often polished with the file, that the barrel, at length, becomes thin as paper. To write with great facility, is after all a poor boast. That which is easily produced is seldom much valued. To paint a sign board is one thing, and an altar-piece another. The rapidity of production enhances not value, but the contrary. A copper half-penny may be more readily manufactured than a gold sovereign. Where there is an urgent necessity, for producing a work in haste, as in the instance of Rasselas, we cannot but admire the intellectual power, that under great difficulty, if not distress, so promptly manifested its efficiency. The safest course, however, where no such necessity exists, is to allow the hand ample time to commit to paper the well considered thought. The dramas of Lopez de Vega were written with great rapidity, and by scores for Shakespeare's one. How do they now stand comparatively, in the estimation of the world? Those of the former are scarcely known beyond the precincts of Spain, while the illustrious Englishman's have been translated into the various languages of Europe.

In regard to current literature, we have already remarked that

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a mocking spirit is abroad, tending to turn all excellence into burlesque, rather than to hazard original composition. There would seem to be but little relish for poetry of any kind, or for the plain and simple in prose. The imaginative faculty in children being ingeniously stunted, as much as possible, by forcing the ductile mental aspirations into the channels of trite realities, which come soon enough of themselves, without any forcing; generous sympathies are nipped in the bud, and the bead takes in tender years the lead, which the heart ought to have. If you pluck away the sprouts that are to form the green suckers of heart faith, you must not be surprised at the result. The probability is that your youngling will grow up sharp, hard and selfish. He will be all head, and his theme continually will be, go a-head." The main chance will always be the centre of his hopes, and number One, the object of his intensest affection, while the great moral axiom of "make-money, honestly if you can, but make money," will be his chief maxim. He will, in all probability, prove quite as sceptical in more serious things as he has under the new utilitarian system of education; of the verities of Mother Goose, and Aladdin with his wonderful lamp. Thero is perhaps less to complain of now, than there was some years ago, in regard to works of pure fiction, in which the decencies, to say nothing of the moralities, were sacrificed upon the altar of a vitiated taste. 'Jack Shepherd' and 'The Mysteries of Paris,' smell strongly of the (stage) lamp. This defect clings even to the works of men who are an honor to literature. Dickens is not altogether free from it. Several of his characters and scenes have an eye to theatrical effect, or at least, to our apprehension, seem to have. With all their faults however, and they are but few and far between, the productions of the author of Nicholas Nickleby,' are a glorious antidote to those of the Newgate-Calendar school of romance. They exhibit genius of a very high order, in unison with a kindliness of heart that never ebbs, a soundness of the moral sense, and a rare vigour of delineating character. They are remarkable no less, for their felicitous flexibility towards the pathetic, the ludicrous, or the tragic in human nature. The sweetness of this author is very noticeable. We never find him sneering with a gusto at the faults and weaknesses of humanity. Great minds indeed never sneer. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Dante and Milton, never offend in this wise. The habit of sneering, unless checked, soon hardens the heart. The works of Mrs Gore, and Mr. D'Israelli (author of Vivian Grey), abound in direct or latent sarcasm. We could wish that the sweetness of Dickens, his large charity for the infirmities of man, his loving and generous consideration

for even the fragmentary good in the ruins of character, and the cheerful philosophy that breathes throughout, were more general in the literature of the day. A charity boy with him, or a poor friendless usher, enhances interest, and our best feelings are drawn in sympathy for suffering innocence and virtue. Then how pure his taste. There is no false glitter about the play of bis fancy, which exhales the aroma of poetry, as it were unconsciously. He paints vice and villany in their proper colours, and while with masterly power he shews their hatefulness, and their sure tendency to misery and disgrace; he does not steel us against the criminal. He never revolts the reader with lazarlike exhibitions of his fellow-creatures, or withering sarcasms upon their errors, which he knows will tend more to harden than reform. He never shocks us with false sentiment, or gives to warm coloured sketches of depravity an interest often denied to worth. His works, too, abound in simple but beautiful touches of irresistible pathos, and lovely touches of nature; like some of those sequestered cowslip nooks, and bowery glades, one strolls into, in some English country place, where green lanes lead to some old hall in ruins.

The author of "Vanity Fair" is now acknowledged to be one of our first-rate writers. He has a careless strength that evinces a consciousness of power. His facility with the pencil, as well as with the pen, gives him enviable advantages, as the one so happily illustrates the other. He is a shrewd observer, and his instincts are frank, manly and generous. His limning of character is artistic, but sharp if not severe. If we might hint his besetting sin, it is an ever-recurring tendency to be satirical, and to view all things and persons, too much through the spectacles of a Londoner. His analysis of character comes a little too much under the head of dissection. There is much strong colour, and forcible drawing in his portraits, but they lack a little varnish. The tones want mellowing down. We miss the genial gentle humour of Dickens. His continual irony reminds one of a person labouring under chronic heartburn, and requiring something to correct his constitutional acidity.

The work entitled "Lives of the British Poets"-originally consisted of notices biographical and critical (some of them very short indeed,) attached to a large octavo volume of Selections from the British Poets, compiled and collated for the use of the Government Educational Institutions of Bengal. his "Chit Chat," no less than in his Literary Leaves." D. L. R. has expressed opinions considerably at variance with what we have understood to be those of other good judges, as

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