This man is in a fallen state, for he has uttered words of disrespect to the authority of the eternal, uncreated Veda; and when the elder brother is degraded, there is no sin in the prior espousals of his junior.' Santanu thereupon returned to his capital, and administered the government as before; and his elder brother, Devapi, being degraded from his caste by repeating doctrines contrary to the Vedas, India poured down abundant rain, which was followed by plentiful harvests." According to some ancient books, this unfortunate prince, who was thus adjudged by the Brahmans to be deposed of his kingdom, is still alive, at a place called Kalapagrama, where, in a subsequent age, he is destined to be the restorer of the Kshatriya race, a caste which has now become exploded, or at least scarcely discernible. But of castes we shall speak hereafter.

All authority can only be sustained by physical power or moral influence. It was necessary, therefore, for men of a peaceable order to invent and impose on the minds of all, whether of the people or of the sovereign, occult theories, fearful mysteries, and dark and dread superstitions. The theory of their own origin, and that of the three other classes is thus set out in the Puran, to which we have referred:-"When the truth-meditating Brahma was desirous of creating the world, there sprang from his mouth beings specially endowed with the quality of goodness; others from his breast, pervaded with the quality of foulness; others from his thighs, in whom foulness and darkness prevailed; and others from his feet, in whom the quality of darkness predominated. These were in succession beings of the several castes, Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, produced from the mouth, the breast, the thighs, and the feet of Brahma." And the duties of the various classes are thus set forth :-"The Brahman should make gifts, should worship the gods with sacrifices, should be assiduous in studying the Vedas, should perform ablutions and libations with water, and should preserve the sacred flame. For the sake of subsistence, he may offer sacrifices on behalf of others, and may instruct them in the shastras (the sacred books); and he may accept presents of a liberal description, in a becoming manner (or from respectable persons, and at an appropriate season). He must ever seek to promote the good of others, and do evil unto none; for the

best riches of a Brahman are universal benevolence. He should look upon the pearls of another person as if they were pebbles. These are the duties of

a Brahman.

"The man of the warrior tribe (the Kshatriya) should cheerfully give presents to Brahmans, perform various sacrifices, and study the Scriptures. His especial sources of maintenance are arms and the protection of the earth. The guardianship of the earth is, indeed, his especial province. By the discharge of this duty a king attains his objects, and realises a share of the merit of all sacrificial rites. By intimidating the bad and cherishing the good, the monarch who maintains the discipline of the different castes secures whatever region he desires.

"Brahma, the great parent of creation, gave to the Vaisya the occupations of commerce and agriculture, and the feeding of flocks and herds for his means of livelihood; and sacred study, sacrifice, and donation are also his duties, as is the observance of fixed and occasional rites.

"Attendance upon the three regenerate classes (the above-mentioned castes) is the province of the sudra, and by that he is to subsist, or by the profits of trade, or the profits of mechanical labour. He is also to make gifts, and he may offer the sacrifices in which food is presented, as well as obsequial offerings.

"Besides these their respective obligations, there are duties equally incumbent on all the four castes. These are, the acquisition of property for the support of their families, tenderness towards all creatures, patience, humility, truth, purity, contentment, decency of decoration, gentleness of speech, friendliness; and freedom from envy and repining; from avarice, and from detraction. These also are the duties of every condition of life.

"In times of distress, the peculiar functions of the castes may be modified. A Brahman may follow the occupations of a Kshatriya or a Vaisya; the Kshatriya may adopt those of a Vaisya, and the Vaisya those of a Kshatriya; but these two last should never descend to the functions of a sudra, if it be possible to avoid them; and if that be not possible, they must at least shun the functions of the mined castes."

Such are the distinctions and duties of the various castes. A moral code, or rather a conformity for worship, is then set out by the tutor to his pupil in the

same Puran. "Janardana" (the giver of the soul, an appellation of Vishnu,) "is propitiated by a man who observes the institutions of caste, order, and purificatory sacrifices; no other path is the way to please him. He who offers sacrifices, sacrifices to him. He who murmurs prayer, prays to him. He who injures living creatures, injures him; for he is all beings. He is propitiated by him who is attentive to established observances, and follows the duties of his caste. The Brahman, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra, who attends to the rules enjoined his caste, best worships Vishnu. He is most pleased with him who does good to others; who never utters abuse, calumny, or untruth; who never covets another's wife or another's wealth, and who bears ill-will towards no one; who neither beats nor slays any animate or inanimate thing; who is ever diligent in the service of the gods of the Brahmans, and of his spiritual preceptor; who is always desirous of the welfare of all creatures, of his children, and of his own soul; in whose pure heart no pleasure is derived from the imperfections of love or hatred."

A moral code could scarcely be drawn out more beautiful, and mild, and gentle, than this; except for this one circumstance by which it is made to contain the elements of tyranny, and to encourage the principles of superstition. Throughout the whole of it the Brahman appears at the head of the nation, and the chief of all the tribes; and although he may be considered as of the race of mortals, as being one of four classes, yet at the conclusion of what we have quoted, the three lower classes are left unconsidered, and the Brahmans are classed with the gods.

It is said that he may receive alms; but any suggestion which the giving of alms would naturally raise in the mind of the bestower, that of superiority is carefully guarded against, for the Brahman must only receive alms from respectable persons, and at an appropriate season; and, indeed, the law of Menu is more explicit than that in this Vishnu Puran, and lays it down for a maxim, "That the Brahman receives but his own in alms; that all things on earth, and in air, and sea, are his, and that by his favour other mortals enjoy life."

But such lofty pretensions should be followed up or authenticated by some acts, either authoritatively on the part of

him who asserts his superiority, or submissively on that of those to whom the assertion is made, and from whom the submission and the credence is required. When the pretension to any mythical sovereignty is well-founded, the miraculous acts which give thought to the claim come from the party insisting on belief. The miracles of our Saviour were performed openly; in the street, in the temple, before five thousand men on the banks of a lake, in a burying-ground, in short in every public resort of men. He never asked any one to believe him. It was, "Believe me for the very work's sake." When Moses asserted his mission before Pharaoh, it was with signs and wonders done by himself. He asked for no belief; he called for no assent to the Divine nature of his commission. When the prophet of Israel had assembled all Israel to Mount Carmel, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and all the prophets of Baal, and the prophets of the groves, with whom his quarrel was, his speech was short, and his issue most pointed: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him;" and the trial was, "The God that answereth by fire, let him be God:" and he performed the miracle at once, at the hour of the evening sacrifice. But there were other men there at that brook, the priests of Baal, who had acquired their ascendancy over the minds of the people, by their own devotion to the service of Baal; for it is said, "They cut themselves with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them." Now here is an instance of belief in a faith, and enthusiasm, derived from that belief, arising from another cause than that of the sober evidence of the senses - the enthusiasm, namely, of having suffered for a cause. The suffering seems to give a devotee a vested right to future happiness, and therefore he believes in the faith for which he has suffered, all the more intensely.

It is even this order of enthusiasm which is raised by false prophets and in the cause of an untrue religion. The Mohammedan wisely gave up the case of miracles at once, and said that the Koran itself was the greatest of all miracles, and used to enforce his belief with the edge of his sword, and declared that nothing more was requisite to authenticate his Prophet's mission. The Hindoos have no relation of miracles; for the many thousand legends which exist in their

books can scarcely be called records of miracles so much as the vagaries of fancy; as for instance, the story that all the gods met on a particular occasion to charm the ocean, and the account of the numerous wonders produced by such process of charming; how Krishna transformed himself from one animal into another to the working of his destined exploits, and the like; but instead of performing miracles, they inculcated hideous superstitions and enjoined fearful rites, such as the compilers of their sacred books had never thought of; and the performance of these rites, and the belief in these superstitions, had something of the same effect as miracles in giving at least a character of sanctity to the rite, and especially of authority to the priest who officiated at it. Mothers threw their first-born into the Ganges; fathers compelled their sons to swing at Churruck Pooja; swinging at the extremity of a horizontal revolving beam fixed transversely at the top of a mast which was driven into the ground; the beam had a rope hanging down at either end, the one rope had a large hook at its extremity which was driven into the back of the devotee, the other rope was held by an official who ran round and round the mast, thus lifting the victim many feet above the ground. Widows would not endure life, (for such were the injunctions of the priesthood, though the Menu expressly lays down rules for the conduct of a widow,) but calmly ascended the funeral pile, and were burned with the bodies of their husbands. And not half a century ago, if one walked out in the morning amongst the most calm and romantic villages in India, he would chance to come upon a small shrine of the goddess Kalee, who is specifically the goddess of human sacrifice, and before the threshold of her temple he would see the usual sacrificial block of India, the forked branch of a tree planted in the ground before the altar of the goddess; and there, out in the road, he might behold the headless body of some pilgrim who had offered his life to this dread deity; the sacrifice had been performed during the night. The head of the victim was laid at the foot of the goddess, and the blood poured out in a basin before her shrine.

These were common scenes but a few years ago. It is scarcely necessary to say, that they were permitted through a fear, most unnecessary (as has since been

shown) that it was dangerous in a newlyconquered country to meddle with the religious observances of a people, however revolting those observances might be to a civilized mind. A curious instance of the security with which such barbarous practices may be put down, and of the readiness with which the great body of a nation will assist beneficent conquerors who strive to free them from the thraldom of a tyrannical priesthood, may be here mentioned. When, fifteen or sixteen years ago, the question was agitated in India as to the feasibility of abolishing the practice of female immolation, it was instanced by the advocates for the abolition of that rite, that but a few years before the government had, without any damage to their rule, stopped the practice of casting children alive into the Ganges. The very idea of this latter custom was so revolting to the minds of the new and more enlightened generation which had sprung up, that they could not believe the existence at any time of such custom; although the every day witnessing of the practice of suttee had inured them to look on that but as an ordinary and ancient rite-a rite detestable to most men, even to many of those Brahmans who did not act as priests at sacrifices, but yet an ancient rite insisted on by the priesthood; for the bfahminical order at this time has grown to be divided between those who are priests and those who do not officiate at sacrifices,—just as the Levitical order was, in its inception, divided between the whole tribe of Levy, and the descendants of Aaron in particular. Brahmans are all alike holy, with the exception that one particular family called Koolins, in no way of necessity practising the functions of the priesthood, are more holy than all the rest of the caste. The abolition of this rite, so hateful to all but those who get their bread by it, was clamoured against as the men of Ephesus clamoured respecting Diana. The rite, however, was abolished; the assisting at it was declared a capital offence; the people were everywhere grateful, some few of the exclusive and priestly Brahmans excepted; and now, from the source of the Ganges to its confluence with the sea, no widows are immolated on its banks.

In connexion with this part of our subject, it will not be uninteresting to the reader if we give him an extract from the leading Indian newspaper respecting the last great act of lord Hardinge's

administration-the abolition of suttee (or the practice of burning widows alive) throughout the territory of the Punjaub which he had just conquered. The article was written on the 6th January, 1848: "We cannot allow lord Hardinge's parting notification regarding the abolition of suttees in Rajpootana, among the Sikh states, and in Cashmere, to pass without a more distinct notice. If among those triumphs in India which have excited the envy and admiration of European nations, the triumphs of humanity by which our progress has been successively marked are deemed the most gratifying, with what feelings of satisfaction will the announcement be received that the barbarous rite of female immolation has now been abolished in the remotest Hindoo principality! The work which lord William Bentinck commenced in 1830 has been consummated, at the end of seventeen years, by lord Hardinge; for although there are some insignificant Hindoo states which have not yet come into our arrangements, and it is possible that a suttee may be here and there surreptitiously perpetrated, yet this practice, which has polluted the soil of India for twenty centuries, and to which the Hindoos have clung with as much tenacity as if it were the glory rather than the opprobrium of their system, has been prohibited, under the severest penalties, by all the public authorities, Christian, Hindoo, and Mohammedan, from the valley of Cashmere to the island of Ceylon. It is a noble and magnificent victory over the strongest national prejudices, and it may well make us proud of the empire we have established in India.

The history of this great measure, the lustre of which will increase in proportion as that of our other victories becomes dimmed by age, is not without matter of deep and profitable instruction, and should be carefully studied for the guidance and encouragement it affords us in our future career. The reader scarcely needs to be informed that the repugnance to the abolition of this custom among the public functionaries of the Indian government in former days amounted almost to a feeling of hostility. The natives affirmed it to be part and parcel of their religion, and whatever was thus represented as having a religious sanction, was deemed sacred in the eyes of those who then enjoyed paramount influence in our public councils, without any troublesome inquiry regard

| ing the morality or the humanity of the practice. The great obstacle to the abolition of this rite, from the time when the question was first agitated, consisted much more in the prejudices of our own countrymen than in those of the natives. It was the European officers of government who stood in the way of this great measure, and by their own squeamishness emboldened the natives to demand the continuance of the custom, on the ground of prescription of rights. With some we believe the motive of opposition was an unfeigned apprehension of provoking disaffection among the natives; but the greater number of those who resisted every attempt to abolish the rite were influenced, we think, by those Asiatic feelings which grew out of a long alienation from the hallowed associations of their native land, and gradually induced them to look without repugnance, if not with some degree of complacency, on the most revolting practices of Hindooism. They closed their eyes on the fact that the Mohammedans had repeatedly and peremptorily forbidden suttees in various principalities with the most perfect impunity, and that the supreme court had never allowed an act of female immolation to be practised within the circle of its local jurisdiction. That they cordially disapproved of the cruelty of putting defenceless women to death, we cannot for a moment doubt; but these feelings of humanity and justice were fatally weakened by the dread of offending what were termed native prejudices, and of touching that empire of opinion' which we were said to have established in India, though they never paused to inquire whether this empire consisted in an opinion of our pusillanimity or of our courage.

"For many years the abolition of suttees was ranked among those subjects which the public press was not allowed to discuss in India. The slightest agitation of it in the newspapers was considered dangerous to the stability of our rule. When the quarterly series of the 'Friend of India' was established nearly thirty years ago, a very temperate article was published in one of the numbers on this delicate question, in which the propriety and the safety of abolishing the rite was urged upon the attention of government, and in the mildest and most moderate language. No editor who valued his reputation would, at the present day, venture to write in so tame and subdued

a tone on a question in which the dearest interests of humanity were involved. Yet a gentleman, then one of the members of council, and subsequently the governor-general of India (provisionally), went into council with a proposal that the journal should be suppressed. Lord Hastings replied, that he had carefully read the article, and could perceive nothing objectionable in it, and he refused to sanction any interference. The apprehension implied in the proposal to suppress the offending journal was generally common to all the members of the Company's service. The opinion of the public officers was, for the most part, so generally opposed to any attempt at abolition, that government did not deem it prudent to venture upon a measure in which it could not expect the support of its own officers. The abolition was represented as fraught with the most imminent danger to our own rule, and it was believed that our very existence, as a power in India, depended upon our permitting the annual sacrifice of a thousand women. In the ten years preceding lord William Bentinck's arrival in India, however, many of the European Indians of the old school, whose generous sympathies had been withered by too long and uninterrupted a residence among Asiatics, had been removed, some by death and others by retirement; and a more healthful feeling and a tone of higher and bolder morality had begun to pervade the service. Still, when lord William Bentinck called for the opinion of the public functionaries on this important question, not a few were found to denounce all interference as a breach of our national compact and a rash endangering of our supremacy. But the act was passed: a little opposition was got up by some native opposition gentlemen in Calcutta, backed by the Europeans, who had resisted the abolition to the last; but it was soon discovered that the fears, under the influence of which we had allowed thousands of innocent victims to be sacrificed on the shrine of superstition, were the creation of our own weak and prejudiced minds, and that nothing was to be apprehended from the Hindoo population, even though we did abrogate a practice which they deemed sacred, at the call of humanity. The lesson which the history of the abolition teaches should not, therefore, be lost to the cause of public improvement; and we must ever bear in mind that a measure which, twenty years ago, was con

TRUE satisfaction is a blessing nowhere to be found in this world. The mind of man is restless and insatiable, ever reaching after something which it does not possess. It is also big with the principle of immortality. Nothing within the bounds of time can impart to any man full satisfaction. It is not only the poor, the sick, the disappointed, of whom we speak, but of all human kind. You may take the child of fortune, and discover in him a restlessness which tells you that there is a void which needs filling up. Whatever seeming or real earthly good you may possess, you have a desire after something more. The present satisfies you not. You do not live upon the present, but upon the anticipated future. You move in a kind of futurity. This is natural, and we do not blame you for looking for something beyond the present. The cravings of your mind demand it. The immortal principle which busies itself within you, cannot be confined to the enjoyment of the present. What we desire is, that the pursuits of your mind, and the affections of your heart, may go after those things which delude not the grasp. Let no energies be cramped, let the heart widen itself after happiness; be not satisfied with the present, but see to it that the nature of that which you seek be satisfying. Let it be something which will correspond with the endless thirstings of an immortal soul.

All that the world gives and promises is, in its very nature, unsatisfactory. You are not content with what you now have. And if you had all the riches, and honours, and could enjoy all the pleasures of the world, you would be still reaching after something more. All the water which you can draw out of this world's cistern, cannot quench the thirst of a soul. And as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, so we say to you, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again."

Turn, then, to the waters which satisfy.