The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-26 00:00:00

THE COMING DOOM.

She reached the pile, now covered with fluttering pennons
and streamers—orange, white, and crimson—and thousands
of garlands, which the people had hung or thrown upon it
as votive offerings since the morning—and the litter was
set down for her to alight. It was with difficulty the crowd
was kept back so as to form a space round the pile which
would admit of her passing in procession ; but it was cleared
at last by the Bramhuns, and the people hung back awe-
struck and staring at the beauty of the victim.
Tara looked at the pile; but there was that strange
ecstacy glowing in her eyes which appeared to have ren-
dered her unconscibus of its purport or of all else about her.
Sometimes she cast up her eyes with a strange bright
smile, and nodded as if she were saying, as perhaps she did,
"I come, I come." Again she looked round her dreamily.
The roar of the people's voices, the clash of cymbals, the
shrill screams of the pipes and horns, the hoarse braying of
trumpets, and the continuous beating of deep-toned drums
were around her, drowning the sound of words, and the
bitter sobs and low shrieks of her mother and Radha at her
side. Her father's spirit seemed to have risen to the need
of the occasion, for he stood near her, joining the solemn
chant, which blended with and softened the rude music.
As she stood, the Brambuns worshipped her and poured
libations before her and on her feet, touched her forehead
with sacred colour, and put fresh garlands over her neck.
Then the last procession was formed, in which she would
walk round the pile thrice, and ascend it, as her last act of
ceremonial observance. Now, and before she had to take
off her ornaments, she turned her full gaze on it, and they
thought, who were watching her, that she seemed to com-
prehend its purpose. A huge platform of logs, black with
oil and grease that had been poured upon them, strewed
with camphor and frankincense, which had been scattered
lavishly by the people in their votive offerings, and smeared
with red powder. A rude step had been made for Tara to
ascend by, and on the sumn.it some bright cloths were laid
as a bed, where she might recline, upon which a small
effigy of a man, rudely conceived and dressed, had been
placed. Her marriage-bed in the spiritual sense of the
sacrifice, on which, through fire, she would be united to her
husband. The whole was garish, hideous, and cruel.
Face to face with death so horrible, so imminent, the girl
seemed to shiver and gasp suddenly, and sank down
swooning.
Vishnu Pundit and another old Bramhun, raised her up,
" It must not be," they said to each other in a whisper;
" she must not fail now, else shame will come upon us."
But Tara's fate is not thus decided! However, we
will reveal no more. The lovers of sensation may
here indulge their favourite sentiments after the
most legitimate fashion, and acquire historical
knowledge in the midst of romantic excitement. In
the very interesting introduction, Captain Taylor
tells us that, so far back as 1839, in a conversation
with Professor Wilson, be (Captain Taylor) sketched
out the outline of this tale, which is actually
founded upon historical fact. Professor Wilson de-
sired him to write a story to that effect for Black
wood's Magazine, but many accidents then pre-
vented the carrying out of that design. At length,
nearly a quarter of a century later, the history of
Tara is presented to the public, and we doubt not
that it will now excite in the minds of many readers
the same feelings of interest and admiration with
which, in its early infancy, it was regarded by the
Great Critic of the North.

The Pocket Date Book. By William L. R. Cates.
One vol., pp. 252. Chapman and Hall.
A wonderful repertory of information ! And,
what is more, a work of reference in the
accuracy of every individual entry com-
prised within which, the most implicit re-
liance may be placed at once and unhesitat-
ingly. It comes to us, moreover, this little volume,
with the avowed and emphatic approval of one
eminently well qualified to estimate the merits or
demerits of such a compilation, and one, too, who
in the instance immediately under notice, has had
peculiar opportunities for so doing. Mr Cates'
Book of Dates—" which," as Mr. Peggotty observed
under similar circumstances, "is rhyme, though 1
didn't mean sr—appears before the public, in point
of fact, with a Prefatory Approval, dated from
Windsor Castle, by Mr. Woodward, the learned
Royal Librarian, and now Editor of the Fine
Arts Quarterly as well. The work we are
re-
ferring to, it appears from Mr. Woodward's brief
but perfectly sufficient preface, has undergone"wne
careful scrutiny by himself, both in manuscript
-pa
and in print before publication, that is
proof sheet. As a series of classified tablnes the
Dates, the work appears, of course, as all such
works should appear, unencumbered iu an
by a notification of the authorities consulted
the
sp:bi pars
the compiler. Yet, for all that, we have
faction of learning, through Mr. Woodward (who

has seen the " MSS." and the " Proofs "), that the
compiler has certainly and conscientiously through-
out consulted the most reliable sources of information.
As we have said, the work is classified : but—we
should add at once—very simply and briefly clas-
sified. There are two main divisions—Part 1.,
Ancient; Part IL, Modern. Each of these Parts
again is halved in its turn : here giving us the
Historical, here the Biographical. The Ancient
Historical Division has six separate sections—the
Ancient Biographical Division four. Whereas—by
reason of the superior copiousness of the materials
stored up since the Christian Epoch—while the
Modern Biographical Division has nine sections in
all, the Modern Historical Division has as many as
thirty-one ! A noble, resplendent, marvellous
c.italogue. As a matter, of course, however,
furnishing (as that first section does undoubtedly) by
far the most extended list of the kind anywhere to
be found in the world's annals, these thirty-one sec-
tions of the Modern Historical Division lead off
with the Popes. The record of the Sovereign Pon-
tiffs, here given, however, we observe at once be-
gins, oddly enough, with the beginning of the third
century, when it might just as well have begun
with the beginning of the first. It might far more
reasonably have been made complete while the
chronologist was about it. St. Linus is as per-
fectly authenticated a personage as St. Severus
The year 63 is as reliable a starting point
of the sequel to the Acts as the year 202, The
martyrdom under Severus is certainly not one jot
more striitly historical than is the crucifixion under
Tiberius Caesar. It is not however as the swallowing
of the great and the subsequent declining to swallow
the camel: it is rather than anything of that kind,
as the gulping of a whole caravan of camels and then
the declining of a very few additional drome-
daries. However, though still, as in this instance,
incomplete at several points, the outline of it is
wonderfully comprehensive, and the filling up of
that clear bound outline even yet more wonderfully
minute. In subsequent editions any compara-
tively insignificant histories may be readily enough
filled up—while a judicious erasure here and
there of entirely superfluous information
may, at the same time, be boldly ad-
ventured upon by the compiler. A single
exemplar of each—that is, of any erasure of super-
fluous matter, on the one hand, and of any additional
information, in regard to whatever has been over-
looked, upon the other—will, for our present
purpose, be perfectly sufficient. Under the head,
"Eminent Men" (in the modern Biographical Divi-
sion), it should be added also in the title of the
heading, " And Women"—we cannot in any way
perceive the interest or utility of such an entry as—
" Byron Anne Isabella, Lady Noel, widow of Lord
Byron, 1793-1860."

While it is surely a strange oversight, indeed, on
the part of the compiler to have no mention
whatever, under the head " Modern Statesmen,"
of one of the most resplendently distinguished
modern statesman in our own country (the
Byron of politics, we might almost call him), the
rarely gifted and still lamented Earl of Durham.
A man who, had he survived till now, instead of
being cut off, as he unhappily was, in the very
flower and glory of his manhood, would doubtless
have held for years, possibly at this moment, the
supreme post of the Premiership. Skimming the
cream from the thirtieth section of the first divi-
sion of Part 11., what marvels are there not arrayed
before us in this most acceptable little volume
of Mr, Cates' when we can jot down upon a mere
incidental glance along his records in that one sub-
division, the following as among the very pick of