The Press.
London, England, 1854-10-14 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

land affords to its occupants in India, capital
will eschew investment in it, preferring other
channels. To induce Englishmen to settle in
the interior, further measures would be re-
quired. In the first place, the law, which
shuts them out of all that part of India
which was not in possession of the Company
in the year 1800 would have to be repealed;
for beyond those districts they can now only
settle with the permission and under a pass.
port of the Company. But, what is of more
consequence still, perhaps, the protection of
English laws and English courts of justice
would have to be extended to them. With
these concessions the natural advantages of
India would soon enable it to outstrip nearly
every other colony in the race of improvement;
but England need never expect to see the im-
mense resources of India developed as long as
she is content to look passively on, leaving it
to languish, unthought of and uncared for,
under the gloomy despotism of the Company.
Such are the thoughts that have occurred to
us on looking through Mr. Thornton's work; and
if we have detailed them at some length it is
because the subject is one of great importance.
yet which, out of certain circles, is but little
understood. With Mr. Thornton it will be
seen that we are entirely at issue iu respect to
the political views which his volumes contain,
but in every other respect he merits, as we
stated in the outset, our hearty commenda-
tion, and his book deserves to be generally
known. It is an important addition to the
topography of our Indian empire, and, as such,
should find a place in the library of every one
who cares to make himself acquainted with
the extent and nature of our possessions in
the East.

979

posed, when genius is described, because simplicity is its
most prominent and inseparable attribute.
The hostility of Mr. Hume to Sir James Brooke is
noticed as a case,
perhaps the strongest of many in the course of his long
life, which shows the tendency of his mind to pursue a scent
once obtained, right or wrong. In his hostile demonetra•
lions against Brooke he has shown, it is true, a persistence
and ingenuity of ill•will which were not generally supposed
to be in him.
A mystic article, apparently of German inspiration,
on " The Use and Meaning of History," considers
that in historic annals so little regard is paid to real
truth, that they are nothing " but a collection of ana-
grams," and that the phenomena of life are treated
by historians "like the letters in a child's game,
" which will form any word that he pleases to con-
" nect out of them." The writer analyses the value
of truth and the testimony of experience, and argues
against the licence which poets allow themselves in
their treatment of historical persons and actions.
This, as might be expected in the Westminster Re-
view, leads to the introduction of the Bible history
as an example of an heroic poem rather than a Divine
and accurate narrative. One suggestion, however, at
the close of the article, whether made in a sceptical
spirit or not, is valuable :

If any great man shall rise among us, who, casting away
all these, and nobly and reverently laying hold of the
eternal facts of human life, shall enable us to see in them
a revelation of the will and nature of the Almighty maker
of the world ; and on this argument, which cannot lie,
shall teach mankind once more to know their God, and
feel His living presence among them, then indeed religion
will live again among us, and poetry, and noble life, and
heroism, and all which we most honour and admire in the
old ages—all will rise again, braver, fairer, more beautiful
than ever, inasmuch as based upon a foundation which
shall never fail.
When we reflect on the munificent encouragement
given to natural theology, it appears strange that
none has ever been afforded to what we will venture
to term historic theology. if the being and attri-
butes of Deity are to be proved by the aspect of the
world, might we not rationally expect to dis-
cover them in the government of the world? The
great facts of history are sufficiently known to
us for the purposes of such an inquiry; and the
evidences of the being of God plainly deducible from
them, conceived, not in a rhetorical spirit, but in an
exact philosophical manner, approaching as nearly
as possible to absolute demonstration, would be a
noble contribution to our literature. What Butler
has done for moral, and Paley for natural, theology
remains still to be done for historic theology. The
name would be immortal which worthily succeeded
in supplying the want. The review of Victor Cousin's
" Etudes stir les Femmes illustres et la Societe du
XVIIe siècle " treats the subject with much minute.
ness of detail:—
_ _

These delightful women (says the reviewer), who from
the beginning of the seventeenth to the close of the
eighteenth century formed sonic of the brightest threads
in the web of political and literary history, wrote under
circumstances which left the feminine character of their
minds uncramped by timidity and unstrained by mistaken
effort. Always refined and graceful, often witty, sometimes
judicious, they wrote what they saw, thought. and felt in their
habitual language, without proposing any model to them-
selves, without any intefition to prove that women could
write as well as men, without affecting manly views or sup-
pressing womanly ones.
This may be true, yet to a dispassionate reader these
graceful and refined women appear to have lived un-
der a most hollow and artificial social system. The
paper on the "Sphere and Duties of Government,"
by the late Mr. John Chapman, adopts the theory
that the common consent of men establishes govern-
ment for the protection of person and property, and
for nothing else. The views of the writer are inge-
nious, but purely speculative as applied to old-estab-
lished communities. The paper is unfinished, the
writer having been struck down by the late pesti-
lence—ass we hope we may now call it—while in the
midst of health and vigour. This fragment is
printed from the sheets of manuscript found lying
on his desk. A paper on " Diplomacy "is favour-
able to regular training for that pursuit. The last
article is on the " Crystal I'alace," and properly con-
demns the attempt to turn the building into a gigan-
tic bazaar, as sure in the end to prove fatal to the
prosperity of the undertaking. In the well-written
summary on "Con temporary Literature" we meet with a
passage significant of the extreme chagrin of the

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