BRITISH INDIA.

[Historical and Descriptive Account of British India (in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library). 3 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1832. Price 15s.]

To the imagination of the people of Europe, for more than two thousand years, a peculiar charm has hung around the name of India. Its remoteness and separation from our quarter of the globe; its high, and at the same time anomalous civilization; its singular and fantastic institutions of civil polity; its mysterious, stern, and imposing religion; its dazzling abundance of gold and precious gems, and other productions, which have usually most inflamed the cupidity of men; its sunny sky and teeming soil, and its swarming population,—all these considerations long threw over India the colours of a land seen in a dream, or read of in some volume of romance or poetry. Nor when, at last, commerce had made a high road to it over the waves, and for the narratives, filled with unexplained wonders, of individual voyagers, we had fleets constantly arriving, loaded with its merchandize, did it cease still to dwell in the public mind as a splendid vision. In many respects the nearer and more distinct view only disclosed new features of magnificence and attraction. From a foreign country, with which we carried on trade by means of some two or three marts, established here and there on the border of the immense peninsula, India has become, throughout nearly its whole extent, a part of our own empire—a subjugated and tributary possession of our little island. This is the most extraordinary of all the revolutions which have marked the history of that portion of the earth, and, together with the state of things which has grown out of it, the political and social systems which have sprung up under the British connexion, and the changes through which both are likely to pass, gives an interest to the subject of India greatly exceeding any that before surrounded it.

The present publication, as its general title, which we have quoted, indicates, is an account of British India, considered not only historically, but in its actual condition. It is the work of several writers, some of whom have long been eminent for their acquaintance with the subjects which they here undertake to illustrate. Only the first volume, and somewhat more than the half of the second, is devoted to what may be properly called the history of India; but the remainder of the second volume, which appears to be contributed by the same writer, Mr. Hugh Murray, consists of five chapters—on the Hindoo History and Mythology; on the Hindoo Manners and Literature; on the British Government of India; on the British Social System in India; and on the Industry and Commerce of India: which may be considered as belonging to the same portion of the work. These two volumes are written in a flowing, perspicuous, and agreeable style, and will be found to present a very interesting and useful outline of the succession of great events, of which India has been the theatre since it was overrun by the first swarm of its western invaders. The principal fault we have to find with the narrative is, that the notices of important transactions are occasionally so brief as to be unsatisfactory, if not almost unintelligible, and that this unpleasant effect seems, in some degree, to be occasioned by an over anxiety on the part of the author to preserve the mere smoothness of his style, by the omission sometimes even of a necessary clause, or sentence of explanation, which might have interrupted the ease or equability of its current. In other instances, the brevity with which parts of the story are treated may be imputable solely to the limited space which the author had at his command; but the effect is sometimes awkward enough. The only account, for example, which we have of the late contest with the Birmese, is contained in the following two sentences, the second of which, by the bye, would seem almost to contradict the first: “Since the termination of the Pindarree contest, no important event or acquisition has distinguished the history of British power in Indostan. The only war undertaken on a great scale was the arduous but finally successful one with the Birman empire, by which the Company gained a considerable territory along the Bay of Bengal.”—(ii. 283.) We would also recommend to Mr. Murray a more liberal insertion of dates than we usually find in his historical compilations. The year in which an event happened can always be given without much expenditure of space; and nothing contributes more to the clearness of such narratives as the present.

The third volume is the work of various authors. The Zoology of India is treated of in the first five chapters, by Mr. James Wilson, who is well known for his familiarity with the subject of Natural History, and whose descriptions are in general lively and graphic, while he appears to have exerted a very laudable industry in the collection of his materials from the best sources. Two chapters on Indian Botany follow from the pen of Dr. Greville, who has had the advantage of some valuable communications from Dr. Wallich, the able and zealous superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta. The climate, the hydrography, the geology, and mineralogy of India, are then described by the learned pen of Professor Jameson; after which comes a chapter on the general medical effects of the Indian climate by Dr. Ainslie, late of the Medical Staff of Southern India; and another on the Spasmodic Cholera, as it appeared in that country, by Mr. Rhind. A popular view of the Hindoo astronomy and mathematics, followed by an account of some interesting trigonometrical surveys executed by the late Colonel Lambton, is then given by Professor Wallace; and the volume concludes with two interesting chapters by Captain Clarence Dalrymple, in which that officer describes the manner in which the navigation to India is at present performed, and discusses the question as to the best means of establishing a steam communication between that country and England.

We regard this publication as extremely well adapted to introduce its readers to an acquaintance with India. In respect to many matters it is fitted indeed rather to stimulate to further inquiry than to afford complete satisfaction; but this, which is an unavoidable consequence of the limited size of the work, we do not look upon as a defect in an elementary book. Whatever the subject, the first view of it which is presented to the mind of the student ought to be a general one, for the plain reason that it can in no otherwise be a comprehensive one.