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I think, as Horace thought-and thousands more-
Hard was his heart, in triple brass encased,
Who first invented ships, and from the shore
Launched the frail fabrics on the watery waste-
A liquid desert, by Heav'n's arms embraced!
What are a sea-life's joys?—Hear seamen tell:-
To feed on past delights by memory traced;
On distant scenes and future hopes to dwell-
The present is a blank, as seamen know too well,
Ne'er with impunity gregarious man

Can court seclusion from the kindred herd:
The social compact with the world began

When the Omnipotent pronounced the word—.
(Which to the sole the social life preferred)

"It is not good for man to be alone.".

This law, by our progenitor first heard,

All tribes, all races, all conditions own,

The tenant of the wood, the hovel, and the throne.
Durst monarchs frankly all their grief reveal,
Did shame not quell the risings of complaint,
And check tormenting thoughts, that else would steal
Upon their festive scenes with harpy taint,
They'd tell us, though a monarch were a saint
(And few are such), a palace is a gaol—

A king a wretched exile;-they would paint
A sovereign's joys as shewn in Crusoe's tale:
Monarchs are, like him, sole-and solitude is bale.
A ship's a gaol, guarded by grinning Death
With arms of fearful potency; the air,
The sky, the shore, the sea, the rocks beneath-
His ministers their implements prepare
To gorge the monster's maw with human fare.
The growling thunder and the shrieking wind,

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Like jackals rousing lions from their lair,
Are Death's vaunt-couriers-he stalks behind,

Pleased with the vent'rous madness that tempts weak mankind.
Who, that has seen the horrors of a storm,

Can e'er forget them ?-when the yawning deep
Discloses ruin in its ghastliest form;

When o'er the toppling waves the whirlwinds sweep, With blustering rage; when the soft hand of sleep Forgets its needful office; when despair

Reigns in each face, and makes the bravest weep: The idiot-smile and maniac-yell`are there,

The cry of blasted hope-the long-neglected prayer.

Such

Such is a storm!-But lo! what dingy speck

Is that beheld to leeward ?-" Land!" they cry.-
The cabins pour their tenants on the deck,

Each with a throbbing pulse and straining eye.
From restless ocean's bed upshooting high,
It seems a rock o'erhung with frowning mist:
But, as the dancing ship approaches nigh,
Its aspect lovelier grows; fears are dismissed,
And dismal doubts and dreams-like ghosts by exorcists.
Madeira! how we hail thy welcome port,
Fair even to the practised eye of taste!
Thy lofty mountain-range appears to court
Acquaintance with the heavens; its broad waist
By vines in countless multitude embraced,
Or mounting up its steep acclivities,

All tangled, intertwined, and interlaced,
With human habitations mixed, which rise
High up the soaring hills, that seem to kiss the skies.
Ah! who can tell, when the dull scene is changed,
The joy that fills the soul, the ecstacy,

Of those whose gaze for dismal weeks has ranged,
Daily and nightly, over sea and sky
Alone! What sweet relief it is to fly
From such monotony, to hill and dale,

Where nature's verdant garb salutes the eye!
To hear the lark-the zephyr's breath inhale-
Safe from the perils of the deep, and stormy gale!

TO A MOTHERLESS INFANT.

In that bright eye, so soft and fair,
Methought the mother's look was there;
And on that open brow serene,

Was stamped her mild and gentle mien.
Young bud of promise! may the ray
Of joy beam on thy opening day;
And when thy riper growth is seen-
O, come no envious frost between,
To nip thee in thy brightest hour,
Thou scion of a much-loved flower!
Ah, yes;-may happier days betide
Than did the stem that nursed thy pride !
Let not the fury of the storm
Come in its terrors to deform

This only solitary flower

That blooms to deck a father's bower!
Long may'st thou live to picture o'er
The worth of her who is no more-
To give thy joyful friends to trace
Thy mother's image in thy face,
And thus, at least in part, restore
What ne'er shall glad our vision more!

O. G.

› HINDU ASTRONOMY.

MR. COLEBROOKE'S REPLY TO THE ATTACK OF MR. BENTLEY.

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SIR: Mr. John Bentley, of Calcutta, in a posthumous work, which I heard of some time since, but have had only recently an opportunity of seeing, made an unjust and virulent attack on me, which, averse as I am from controversial writing, I think it nevertheless right to notice; and shall do so, as briefly as the nature of the subject will permit.

Mr. Bentley was, as his writings evince, a good hater. He bore animosity to me, and to every one who did not implicitly adopt his opinions concerning Hindu astronomy, nor concede to the authority of his conclusions respecting it. In early communications, before he had manifested his hostility towards me, I was enabled to convince him, upon evidence to which he yielded reluctant and ungracious assent, that he was wrong in regard to some of his positions. He has in a former publication (an essay in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches) made an acknowledgment of the evidence in one instance; and he has used other information which he derived from me in the first part of his posthumous work. Several points of difference, however, remained to the latest period at which I had any communication with him: but he has not stated them correctly in the concluding section of his work, where a direct and personal attack is formally opened against me.

In many instances Mr. Bentley has altered his opinions, but without the candour of acknowledging the change. On the contrary, he continues to manifest unrelenting animosity towards those who controverted positions which he himself has now relinquished. In not a few cases, he has abandoned error; but in some he appears to be still more wrong than he was before. I shall, however, for the most part confine my remarks to those matters in which my name has been introduced, or in which I am pointedly marked.

In his treatise on the antiquity of the Súrya Siddhánta, inserted in the sixth volume of the Asiatic Researches, Mr. Bentley affirmed that Varáha Mihira was author of that Siddhánta. He insisted that the astronomical period, which he said was expressly called " the Calpa of Varáha the fair," derived its name from this author. He deemed it probable that the name of Varáha Mihira must have been affixed to the Súrya Siddhánta when it was first written. These positions he supported by asserting, that, in the commentary on the Bhásvatí it is declared that Varáha was the author of the Súrya Siddhánta. The Bhásvati, Mr. Bentley said, was written in the year 1021 Saca, by Satánand, who, according to Hindu accounts, was a pupil of Varáha, and under whose directions he acknowledges he wrote that work. Consequently Varáha must have been then alive, or a short time before it. That Varáha was the real author of the Súrya Siddhanta is still further confirmed (as Mr. Bentley argued) by one of his works entitled Játacárnava, the age of which comes out by computation 739 years (before 1799). The age of the Súrya Siddhanta itself Mr. Bentley determined, by computation on the same principles, to be 731 years nearly. It evidently appeared, he said, from a comparison of the two works, that one person must have been the author of both.

In an essay on the Hindu systems of astronomy, inserted in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches, Mr. Bentley again affirmed, that the system contained in the Súrya Siddhanta was originally invented by Varáha Mihira, and now called from him the Calpa of Varáha. In the same essay Mr. Bentley

strenuously

strenuously maintained, that there is not a Hindu astronomer, who has the smallest pretension to the knowledge of the history of astronomy in India, that does not know that Varáha was the real author of the Surya Siddhúnta; and not only of that work, but also of the Brahma, the Rómaca, the Vasishtha, and the Paulastya (should be Paulisa) Siddhántas, which are called the five Siddhántas of Varáha Mihira.

Observe, that Mr. Bentley had given a different account of the Brahma, the Rómaca, and the Vasishtha, amongst other Siddhántas in his former essay.

The passage which Mr. Bentley relied upon in the Bhásvati, or its commentary, did not appear to me conclusive: nor could I find any other sufficient evidence that Varáha was the real or reputed author of the Súrya Siddhánta, nor of the rest of the five Siddhántas attributed to him by Mr. Bentley.

In my treatise on the notions of the Hindu astronomers concerning the precession of the equinoxes, I shewed that Varáha Mihira was not reputed to be the author of those five works: but of a treatise concerning them; one of several single works, so Mr. Bentley describes them, written under the title of Pancha Siddhántas, as supposed to contain the essential parts of those five treatises.

Nor could I find any evidence that the Calpa of Varáha was so called, with allusion to the astronomer of that name. It rested on a bare surmise or conjecture, for which Mr. Bentley never adduced any proof.

All these positions are abandoned in Mr.Bentley's posthumous work. Varáha Mihira is now not the author of the Súrya Siddhánta, nor of any other of the five Siddhántas. The Pancha-siddhanticá of Varáha Mihira is an unseen and unheard-of work, which he is disposed to think never existed. The Calpa of Varáha may not have taken its name from this astronomer; who did not flourish at the age assigned by Mr. Bentley to the Súrya Siddhánta, but so recently as twenty-six years before the accession of the Emperor Akber, an interval of nearly five centuries.

The Játacárnava, which was proved by the same train of computation which determined the age of the Súrya Siddhúnta, and that of Brahmagupta, to have been composed 739 years before A.D. 1799, is still maintained to have been the work of Varáha Mihira, but written 300 years ago, instead of 750. · Consequently, all the evidence and reasoning to which Mr. Bentley had trusted for determining the age of any Hindu astronomical work, falls to the ground. It is of no more validity to determine the age of the Súrya Siddhánta, than that of the Játacárnava; which he maintained to have been contemporary, but which he now affirms to have been 450 years distant.

The Bhásvati, which he considered to have been written about A.D. 1099, is now brought down to the reign of the Emperor Akber.

Bháscara, who was stated in Mr. Bentley's first essay to have been born in 1036 Saca, and to have written or compiled his great work, the Sirómani, in 1072, is now a contemporary of Akber. The Carana Cutuhala of the same author, in which the epoch for the position of the planets is given for the year 1105, is also a fabrication of the same period.

The Graha lágharn, which, in his first essay, Mr. Bentley said was written by Ganésa, son of Césava, in the year 1442, is now considered as merely feigned to have been written by him.

Lacshmídasá is a feigned grandson of Césava. The calculations of places of planets, and cosmical and heliacal risings of stars for A.D. 1500, as found in his commentary, were done with a view to make it believed that he lived and wrote at the epoch for which he made the calculations.

The

The date of Gangadhara's commentary on Bháscara (A.D. 1420), is equally rejected as incompatible with the age newly assigned by Mr. Bentley to Varáha Mihira (A.D. 1528).

In short, all is a heap of fabrication and forgery. Every thing is imposture which opposes Mr. Bentley's new hypothesis; for which, however, he has no sort of evidence, nor any other foundation but vague conjecture, as fanciful and groundless as the story he has invented of a pretended forgery passed on my credulity.

All is confusion worse confounded. Every thing which Mr. Bentley had before done, all which he had achieved in two laboured essays, goes in the general wreck. Every thing has passed away, except his wrath against his opponents.

I now proceed to Mr. Bentley's direct attack on myself in the sixth section of the second part of his posthumous work.

His position is that the longitudes of stars reckoned from the beginning of the Hindu sphere must be the same whether given by an astronomer who lived a thousand years ago, or by one who only lived fifty years since; because they are reckoned from the same point.......... Hence he affirms Mr. Colebrooke's notions are altogether unfounded."

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I have shewn in my treatise on the Indian divisions of the Zodiac (As. Res, vol. ix.), that the longitudes given in the Indian tables are the longitudes of the stars' circles of declination, and not of the stars themselves. It is distinctly so said by the Hindu writers cited by me in that essay. The manner in which they direct observations to be made confirms the conclusion; for the intersecting circle, which they use on an armillary sphere to make the observation, is a circle of declination. I have repeatedly and explicitly so affirmed. I never maintained that tables of true longitudes would vary with the time for which they are prepared. But surely tables of the longitudes of circles of declination are affected by precession, and require correction accordingly.

Mr. Bentley was aware of the distinction drawn by me, and has more than once noticed it in his posthumous work; but he suppresses that essential distinction in this place. I again assert, that the tabular longitudes and latitudes, given in the Súrya Siddhúnta and certain other Hindu works, are not the true longitudes and latitudes of stars; nor did I speak of the stars' true longi tudes in the passage in question. The computation which Mr. Bentley has himself exhibited from a Hindu author (at page 176) evidently shows, that the tabular longitude is that of the star's circle of declination; and not the star itself, which must be deduced from it by computation.

In fact, I have no where endeavoured to deduce the age of any Hindu work from longitude of stars. The passage, which I presume Mr. Bentley questions, is one contained in my essay on the Indivision of the Zodiac, where "I suppose the original observations, of which the result is copied by successive authors, to have been made about the time when the vernal equinox was near the first degree of Mésha," adding, in a note, that" Brahmagupta wrote soon after that period, and that the Súrya Siddhánta is probably a work of nearly the same age. Mr. Bentley considers it more modern. It cannot be more ancient; for the equinox must have past the beginning of Mésha, or have been near it, when that work was composed."

This I take to be what gave offence to Mr. Bentley. But it certainly does not express, nor hint, that the antiquity of a Hindu work may be deduced from the longitude of stars given in it.

Mr. Bentley (p. 199) pretends that " I was determined to adopt a new mode

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