reasons for his conduct, whether we suppose the learning of the age to have been a mere gossamer of sophistry; and morality, by a continuous ebb, to have left the exhalations of a putrid marsh to poison the intellectual atmosphere, until the energies of the sovereign were required to rescue his people from crime and barbarity; or whether, taking for our guide the fabled traditions of the times, we admit, that whilst the rest of mankind were sunk in ignorance, India was the only country exalted by wisdom, and that Ballál Sena was nobly ambitious to elevate his subjects still higher in moral excellence; whatever the circumstances of the age, or the motives of the sovereign, the measure commends itself as calculated to found an empire of knowledge on the ruins of ignorance, give stability by equitable laws to the throne, and encircle so wise a ruler with a halo of glory, which malevolence could not obscure, and which future generations should venerate.

All must regret that the advanced age of Ballál Sena did not permit him to complete his noble design. Had he lived to disrobe of their father's honours those Kulin sons, whom neither paternal example nor the sovereign favour could stimulate to morality; and to remand individuals so unworthy of their father's distinctions back to poverty and neglect; he would at its first setting in have arrested a tide of arrogance and wickedness, which without opposition has rolled on through subsequent ages.

To pursue the gradations through which Kulin polygamy obtained its present abominable excess, would neither interest nor profit. Human nature, unbridled, rapidly advances in the path of crime; and the brahman and Kulin, mutually stimulated, this by covetousness and lust, that by fame, would agree to trample down every obstacle to the attainment of their wishes. The Kulin, denuded of moral sensibilities, had much to gain by multiplying his wives; and the brahman, inflated with the pride of exalting his family, forgot the solicitudes of a father when, by giving his daughter to the nominal embraces of a Kulin, he inclosed her in an iron cage of necessity, damned up the streams of domestic comfort, and consigned her to solitude, worse than that of widowhood: a prey to passions, designed by the beneficent Creator to make her an affectionate wife, and the happy mother of a contented family; but which, by this unnatural custom, as fires smothered up, consumed by slow degrees her constitution, or breaking out into flames, constrained her to fly to illicit intercourse while under the paternal roof, or to the abode and degradation of a prostitute.

Were a census taken of that unhappy class of beings just alluded to, it would perhaps be ascertained that the majority is composed of Hindu females, not by nature more frail, nor by disposition more disposed to go astray, than others; but whose calamity has been to be wedded in infancy to infants like themselves,

and whose husbands died before they had attained the age of manhood; and who, being bound by their shastras to remain in widowhood, never tasted domestic happiness. After allowing for the disparity of numbers between the Kulin and other tribes, were a second census taken, may we suppose that the majority obtained would be made up of Kulin wives. We cease therefore to wonder, when a Kulin's wife, unless a Kulin born, becomes a mother, that her offspring is regarded as illegitimate; and fear that a mere tithe of such children arrive at manhood. Neglect, not to say wilful murder, can put a speedy termination to their existence. That the destruction of such infants, however frequent, escapes detection may be accounted for, by the reputed sanctity of a brahman's house, and the seclusion of brahmanis from the rest of mankind. The pregnancy of a brahmani reaches not the ear of a Mussulman neighbour, till after parturition; but this, if dishonourable, is of course never announced. Should a whisper breathe reproach on a brahman, a Hindu's bosom is the sacred deposit of such scandal; we may as easily extract water from a flint as elicit the secret from him: veneration for the brahman hermetically seals his lips; and did it not do so, his caste, his reputation, his livelihood, his family, his home would all be placed in jeopardy by the disclosure. Thus a fountain of iniquity is opened, the streams of which, though concealed from the eye of others, are imbibed

more or less by the whole Hindu race, and demoralize them till, horribile dictu! they brutalize the father, debase the mother, mock the bride, prostitute the daughter, and murder the infant.

SELECTIONS.

Pictures of Hindu Manners, by Hindus.-A series of papers has been commenced in the Englishman, by a young native gentleman, who has been educated at the Hindu college, on "the domestic manners, habits, usages, and notions of the Hindus." His first paper is on the Hindu women. His style is exuberant, but his knowledge of facts compensates for this defect.

"However true it may be, that the mighty fabric of ignorance, which had reared itself from time immemorial in this ill-fated land, has begun to dissolve, and the effects of mental illumination are visible in some parts, yet those who have accurately observed the characteristics of the Hindu women, must admit that their condition has been little ameliorated, either in an intellectual or moral point of view It may be that some of them are endowed with attractive qualities, but that their actions, habits, and principles are grounded upon superstition, and that their tastes and notions of beauty are ludicrous and unrefined, is what appears to me as indubitable as a self-evident proposition. The religious prejudices, which have been

suffered to twine round their mind from infancy, are the bane of every improvement, and can contribute to nothing but the perpetuation of their degraded state. The ridiculous ceremonies which they are taught to observe, and the antiquated customs which they idolize, do not only afford evidences of their inability to reason, but are serious impediments to their ascending in the scale of civilisation.

"Instead, however, of exhausting here my strictures at once, I would reserve them for proper places, and would, therefore, divide the Hindu women into three heads; viz. the unmarried, the married, and the widow.

"First, then, with regard to the unmarrried women. It is, perhaps, known to many, that the Hindu society consists of several castes, almost all of whom have made it a point to get their daughters married before they arrive at the age of puberty; and if in any instance the rule is violated, the Shaster teaches that the fourteen successive ancestors of the parents of the girl, whose marriage is thus neglected, shall have to feel hereafter the horrors of hell, and receive a condign punishment for their crime. The Coolin brahmins do not pay much attention to this ordinance, though it is by their race that it has been fabricated and ushered into the world. In such matters as these, they are more disposed to observe their family distinctions of kool, and honour their religious precepts.