Swedenborg's Writings and Catholic Teaching; or, a Voice from the New Church Porch, in answer to a Series of Articles on the Swedenborgians. By the Vicar of Froome-Selwood, in the Old Church Porch. 12mo. London, 1858. ART. V.-THE OLD ENGLISH NOBILITY The Historic Peerage of England; exhibiting, under alphabetical arrangement, the Origin, Descent, and Present State of every Title of Peerage which has existed in this Country since the Conquest being a new edition of the "Synopsis of the Peer- age of England" by the late Sir Harris Nicolas, G. C.M. G.; revised, corrected, and continued to the present time, &c. by William Courthope, Esq., Somerset Herald, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-law. Murray, 1857. A History of England under the Norman Kings, or from the Battle of Hastings to the Accession of the House of Plantagenet; to which is prefixed an Epitome of the early History of Normandy. Translated from the German of Dr. J. M. Lappenberg,, For. F.S.A., Keeper of the Archives of the City of Hamburg, by Benjamin Thorpe; with considerable additions and corrections General Introduction to Domesday Book; accompanied by In- dexes of the Tenants-in-Chief and Under-Tenants at the time of the Survey, as well as of the Holders of Lands mentioned in ART. VI.-RELIGION AND SOCIETY: PALEY AND CHANNING 397 Channing, sa Vie et ses Œuvres ; avec une Préface par M. Charles Paley's Natural Theology. Edited by Lord Brougham and Sir C. Parliamentary Government considered with reference to a Reform of Parliament: an Essay. By Earl Grey. London, 1858. ART. VIII. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS . Library Edition. Illustrated by upwards of Two Hundred Engrav- ings on Steel, after Drawings by Turner, Landseer, Wilkie, Stanfield, Roberts, &c., including Portraits of the Historical Personages described in the Novels. 25 vols. demy 8vo. Abbotsford Edition. With One Hundred and Twenty Engravings THE NATIONAL REVIEW. REVIEW. JANUARY 1858. ART. I.-PRINCIPLES OF INDIAN GOVERNMENT. An Address to Parliament on the Duties of Great Britain to India. By Charles Hay Cameron. London, 1853. Letters of Indophilus to the " Times." London, 1857. Despatch to the Governor of India on the subject of General Education in India. Parliamentary Paper, 393. 1854. Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. By Lieut.-Colonel Sleeman. London, 1844. A Selection of Articles and Letters on various Indian Questions, including Remarks on European Parties in Bengal, Social Policy and Missions in India, and the Use of the Bible in Government Schools. Contributed to the English Press by Hodgson Pratt, Bengal Civil Service; late Inspector-General of Schools in South Bengal. London: Chapman and Hall, 1857. Les Anglais et l'Inde. Par E. de Valbezen. Paris, 1857. NOTHING can be graver or more startling than the crisis through which our Indian Empire has just passed. Nothing can be more horrible than the details of the several catastrophes at Delhi, Jhansi, and Cawnpore. Imagination probably never picturedhistory certainly never recorded-tragedies more frightful or revolting. It may be doubted whether the annals of the human race, even in the rudest times, and among the most savage tribes, could afford a parallel to the hideous barbarities which have just been practised by a people whose civilisation is the oldest in the world on a people whose civilisation is the highest in the world. A few thousand Europeans, scattered among a hundred and fifty millions of Asiatics, have been roughly roused from a noon-day dream of easy and confident security, and compelled to fight against overwhelming odds for existence and for empire; and have had to defend their conquests against the very men through whose instrumentality they had won them. "A man's foes have been those of his own household." In the dead of night we have been treacherously assailed, in the crisis of battle we have been basely deserted, by the very servants who had eaten our salt, by the very soldiers whom we had led to victory. And gentlemen No. XI. JANUary 1858. B bred in the lap of luxury, and ladies tenderly and delicately nurtured, and infants of helpless age,-our own wives and sisters and brethren and children, with whom we have lived and toiled and danced and sung-accustomed only to the quiet refinements and gentle manners and courteous amenities of the most polished and facile existence upon earth,-have had to endure brutalities and tortures at the very thought of which the soul sickens and the brain reels ingenious, elaborate, nameless cruelties, such as no European ferocity, even when inspired and goaded by a persecuting superstition, ever yet dreamed of inflicting on its victims. Yet even amid horrors and calamities like these, we may discern gleams of consolation and may extract seeds of good. They are something more than "adversities;" yet have their "sweet uses," and their "precious jewel" also. There is scarcely any root so bitter or so poisonous that, when subjected to the right alembic, it will not yield medicines both anodyne and curative. Thus even the Indian revolt has its bright and its serviceable sides; and on these only we design to dwell. To the details of the mutiny we shall refer no further than as they illustrate the native character, or are suggestive of the course which in future it may be incumbent on us to pursue. And foremost among the bright features of the stormy picture is, unquestionably, the display it has afforded of the grand qualities of Englishmen. We will affect no false modesty in speaking of matters of which every Briton has reason to be proud, and which no other race, we believe in our hearts, could have rivalled. Taken by surprise, caught at disadvantage, over-matched a hundredfold in numbers, called upon suddenly to assume new duties and grave responsibilities, sometimes to wield the sword where they were trained only to the pen, sometimes to strike for life and honour where they had been accustomed only to be obeyed servilely by word or sign,-in every case, and under every emergency, they have nobly vindicated the national character and fame. "The deacon of the mariners said well, "We Arteveldes are of the canvas which men use Civilians, writers, planters, have shown themselves as equal to the occasion as soldiers practised in the field. If we except one or two old valetudinarians, not a single man in either service has shown the least deficiency in either physical or moral courage. Neither man nor woman has shown the white feather, either as regards action or endurance. Few have begged their life; none have purchased it by base compliances. They have disdained to bargain or to barter. They have stood to their arms and defended their posts, not simply with the indomitable English pluck which every where shines forth, not with the mere courage of despair, but with the buoyant spirits of conscious and indefeasible superiority. Feeling this, they have made their enemies feel it too. A few thousand men, dispersed in handfuls over a vast district, have conquered and put down the most formidable mutiny recorded in history, before a single reinforcement from the mother country could reach them. Numbers of idle, wild, or reckless youths have come out and acquitted themselves in the trial as noble and Christian warriors. But for this fiery trial we should never have learned how much dauntless heroism and true nobility of soul lay hid in men of whom we had thought but slightingly, and in women of whom we had thought only tenderly. Our countrymen in India, both official and non-official, no doubt committed many oversights and blunders, and perhaps even some injustice and some wrong; but they have amply atoned for and redeemed them all. They have been tried in the furnace, and have proved pure. They have been weighed in the balance, and have not been found wanting. ταύτης τῆς γενεῆς καὶ αἵματος εὔχομαι εἶναι. The second cheering feature of the catastrophe is the purely military character of the revolt. Every fresh piece of authentic information we receive elucidates this point more clearly. From first to last, it has been a mutiny, not an insurrection. In no case have the peasantry or the civil inhabitants given any active participation. In a few villages they have shown animosity against the fugitives; in several they have been deterred by craven terror of the mutineers from harbouring or aiding Europeans; but in many others they have concealed them, and shown them much kindness. On this occasion, indeed, as nearly always is the case, the mass of the population has been singularly passive and apathetic; but as far as the Hindoos are concerned, they have shown themselves antagonistic to the revolt rather than otherwise. And this is no more than we expected, and had a right to expect. For while, among a people composed of such a variety of distinct, and even hostile tribes, unity of national feeling against intruders scarcely could exist; and while it would be unreasonable to look among races who for centuries have been subject to the rule of one foreign conqueror after another for the animosity against their European governors which it is natural for Italians and Hungarians to feel towards their Austrian oppressors,-the respectable natives dread the success of the sepoys as much as we can do, for they are well aware that it would be to them a sentence of spoliation and ruin : the peasants and cultivators of the soil know that it would issue in a restless anarchy, which would make security and tillage impossible, and would spread desolation and famine over the land. Both shrink from the possibility of finding themselves and their harvests at the mercy of a triumphant and ungoverned soldiery. We do not mean to imply that either Hindoos or Mahometans love us or sympathise with us, or look upon us otherwise than as an alien, uncongenial, and objectionable race; -it is notorious that they do not, it is impossible that they should;—but all can compare our rule with that of the native princes who surround us, and of the foreign conquerors who preceded us; and all confess and feel that, whereas formerly and elsewhere they were the victims of any faithlessness, any tyranny, and any caprice,-under our sway, however stern and rigid it may seem, justice is done between man and man, promises are kept, property is secure, rights are respected, and brigandage is put down with a relentless hand. We firmly believe that, if we make abstraction of individual instances where thwarted ambition or disappointed cupidity pervert the judgment, there is scarcely a native from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin capable of forming an opinion who would not regard the success of the mutiny, and the abolition of the English supremacy, as the fiercest calamity which could visit the land. With all its horrors, too, the revolt has its profitable as well as its glorious and consoling features. Used aright, it may prove, like many other of the heavier dispensations of Providence, to be a blessing in disguise-a blessing terribly and gloomily disguised indeed, but still a blessing. The very atrocities that have been committed, too, have in one sense been of signal service to our cause. Not only have they, by intensifying the feelings, quadrupled the energies and. capabilities of our scanty forces (for even Englishmen would scarcely have marched and fought as they have done under an Indian July sun, had they been roused only by the excitements of ordinary war), but they have secured to us the sympathies of all Europe and of all humanity. A common mutiny, a revolt against our rule, our expulsion from India-nay, perhaps even a general massacre of the British population-would have been hailed by our many rivals and ill-wishers throughout the world with malignant, if with secret, joy. The competitors who envy us would have triumphed in our discomfiture; the enemies who hate and fear us would have rejoiced in our impoverishment and loss; and thousands, at home as well as abroad, would have been ready to proclaim that the catastrophe was a fitting retribution for our ancient sins, and a righteous overthrow of a violent and foreign domination. But the awful and horrible details of the insurrection have silenced all language, and, we believe, precluded all feelings of the sort. It has been too clearly shown that the question and the conflict are not between native and foreigner, between English and Hindoo; but between civilisation and barbarism, between the highest progress and the deepest retrogression, in a word, between the very principles and foundations of good and evil;-and there |