"From the month of May, till the month of August, the bar or entrance of the river on the Agoada side is closed by the sands which the south-west winds throw up; and vessels arriving at that season enter by the Mourmougon branch: during the rest of the year all enter by the Agoada branch, and go quite up to the town.

"In passing up the river, we find a prodigious number of villas (maisons de plaisance) which may well be styled palaces. These the influential men among the Portuguese, while their state was in its glory, vied with each other in building, to shew forth their magnificence. It may well be believed that a town whose exteriors are so superb, contains within it what may excite the admiration of all beholders. And in point of fact, although the nation which occupies it is now in its decay, although it has had losses which can scarcely be comprehended, and its trade is barely the shadow of what it was; yet its houses are very beautiful, and nowhere can the riches and magnificence of its churches and its convents be surpassed. Amongst them, one is never weary of admiring the grandeur and the beauty of the houses and churches of the Jesuit Fathers, in one of which are preserved with peculiar veneration the precious relics of the great apostle of India and Japan, St. Francis Xavier, for whom all the orientals have a very great respect. Do as they might to honor his memory, they could but imperfectly express the great obligations under which they lie to him, for having a million times risked his health and his life, in order to instruct them and to lead them to Jesus Christ. After the houses of the Jesuit fathers, nothing is grander or richer than the convents of the Jacobins and the Augustinians. The church of the Theatines is undoubtedly one of the neatest in Goa, though it is not one of the most magnificent. The bare-footed Carmelites have also a fine convent. The cathedral, dedicated to St. Catherine, and the church of Mercy, are of wonderful richness and beauty, and I should never have done, if I were to describe in detail the magnificence of these churches, and of others which I do not mention, the least of which attracts the admiration of strangers.

"Although there are in Goa a very great number of private gentlemen who have houses that might serve for the accommodation of princes, yet none of them can be compared, for beauty, size and richness, with the vice-regal palace. Each successive viceroy has added to it and embellished it. It looks, on one side, upon the river, and on the other upon a grand square, which is before the principal gate."

And so forth. It is like the description of old Tyre in the days when "her merchants were princes, and her traffickers the honorable of the earth." Look now upon the other picture, that of the same city as it is now, or as it was half a dozen years ago, when visited by Lieut. R. F. Burton :

"When the moon began to sail slowly over the eastern hills, we started on our tour of inspection, and, as a preliminary measure.

walked down the wharf, a long and broad road, lined with double rows of trees, and faced with stone, opposite the sea. A more suggestive scene could not be conceived than the utter desolation which lay before us. Everything that met the eye or ear seemed teeming with melancholy associations; the very rustling of the trees and the murmur of the waves sounded like a dirge for the departed grandeur of the city.

"A few minutes' walk led us to a conspicuous object on the right hand side of the wharf. It was a solitary gateway, towering above the huge mass of ruins which flanks the entrance to the Strada Diretta.* On approaching it, we observed the statue of Saint Catherine, shrined in an upper niche, and a grotesque figure of Vasco de Gama in one beneath. Under this arch the newly-appointed viceroys of Goa used to pass in triumphal procession towards the palace.

"Beyond the gateway a level road, once a populous thoroughfare, leads to the Terra di Sabaio, a large square, fronting the Se Primaçial or Cathedral of Saint Catherine, and flanked by the Casa Santa. Before visiting the latter spot, we turned to the left, and ascending a heap of ruins, looked down upon the excavation, which now marks the place where the Viceregal Palace rose. The building, which occupied more than two acres of ground, has long been razed from the very foundations, and the ground on which it stood is now covered with the luxuriant growth of poisonous plants and thorny trees. As we wandered amidst them, a solitary jackal, slinking away from the intruder, was the only living being that met our view, and the deep bell of the cathedral, marking the lapse of time for dozens, where hundreds of thousands had once hearkened to it, the only sound telling of man's presence that reached our ear.

"In the streets beyond, nothing but the foundations of the houses could be traced, the tall cocoa and the lank grass waving rankly over many a forgotten building. In the only edifices which superstition has hitherto saved, the churches, convents, and monasteries, a window or two, dimly lighted up, showed that here and there dwells some solitary priest. The whole scene reminded us of the Arab's eloquent description of the city with impenetrable gates, still, without a voice or a cheery inhabitant: the owl hooting in its quarters, and birds skimming in circles in its areas, and the raven croaking in its great thoroughfare streets, as if bewailing those that had been in it.' What a contrast between the moonlit scenery of the distant bay, smiling in all eternal Nature's loveliness, and the dull grey piles of ruined or desolate habitations, the short-lived labours of man!

"We turned towards the Casa Santa, and with little difficulty climbed to the top of the heaps which mark the front where its

The Straight Street, so called because almost all the streets of Goa were laid out in curvilinear form.

St. Catherine was appointed patron saint of Goa, because the city was taken by the Portuguese on her day.

three gates stood. In these remains the eye, perhaps influenced by imagination, detects something more than usually dreary. A curse seems to have fallen upon it; not a shrub springs between the fragments of stone, which, broken and blackened with decay, are left to encumber the soil, as unworthy of being removed.

"Whilst we were sitting there, an old priest, who was preparing to perform mass in the cathedral, came up and asked what we were doing.

"Looking at the Casa Santa," we answered. He inquired if we were Christian, meaning, of course, Roman Catholic. We replied in the affirmative, intending, however, to use the designation in its ampler sense.

666

Ah, very well,' replied our interrogator. I put the question, because the heretics from Bombay and other places always go to see the Casa Santa first in order to insult its present state.'

"And the Señor asked us whether we would attend mass at the cathedral; we declined, however, with a promise to admire its beauties the next day, and departed once more on our wanderings.

"For an hour or two we walked about without meeting a single human being. Occasionally we could detect a distant form disappearing from the road, and rapidly threading its way through the thick trees as we drew near. Such precaution is still deemed necessary at Goa, though the inducements to robbery or violence, judging from the appearance of the miserable inhabitants, must be very small."

We say not that there were no other causes for the decadence of Portuguese power and influence in India; but we must assert our conviction that God has visited the people nationally for this national iniquity. We are not superstitious, but neither are we atheistic. Individual men may set their faces against high heaven, and the thunder-bolt may not be launched forth to strike, nor the load of affliction press more heavily upon them than upon those of opposite character. This is a phenomenon of no rare occurrence, and one that has always been a stumbling-block to thoughtful men. "I was "envious at the foolish," said one of old," when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death; but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble like other men; neither are they plagued like other men. 'fore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. *** When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end." In the sanctuary of God he doubtless learned that this world is but the first act of the great life-drama. Man's life here bears so small a proportion to the whole duration of his being, that the pros

There

perity of the bad, and the adversity of the good, are of no estimable amount in judging of God's principles of dealing with his creatures. Each individual man is taken away from our cognizance, while yet the account between him and his creator is but newly opened. There is an unadjusted balance which we are too apt to think has been "written off;" and it is perhaps not till faith comes to the aid of observation that we are able fully "to justify (in this respect) the ways of God to man." But with nations it is otherwise. They have a substantive existence, apart from that of the individual men who compose them; they perform responsible acts, and are capable of being dealt with providentially in their national capacity. Then the duration of a nation upon earth is necessarily longer, and may be much longer, than that of a single generation of men; and thus there is more time allowed for the reaping on earth of the harvest that they sow, for the evolution of that Providence which is the acting of Him, of whom it is sublimely said, that "a thousand years are as one day." And then we have no reason to believe otherwise than that the earthly duration of a nation is the whole of its national duration. If then a nation be capable of responsibility, it seems that the account must be settled upon earth, that national sins must, sooner or later, induce national judgments. It is not to be expected that we should be able to trace very minutely the connexion between them, yet we can see enough to give foundation to the belief that the connexion may be very close, and the sequence very much of the nature of cause and effect. It may be, for example, that there was more than a merely poetic combination in those solemn lines in which the poet brings the destruction of the Roman Empire into immediate contact with the brutalities of the Roman Circus ;

His eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother; - he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unavenged? Arise! Ye Goths, and glut your ire.

It may be that, as we have said, the poet in this grand passage was not the maker of a connexion that did not exist, but rather the seer of a sequence, the links of which were not apparent to men gifted with less insight.

And it may be too, that there is a closer connexion than might at first sight appear, between the Inquisition of Goa, and the

setting of the star of Portugal in the east. It was said of the Portuguese, in the days of their Indian glory, that they were "a little body with a mighty soul." But how could the might of their soul be upheld, when so base a system as we have sketched, of espionage, and mutual distrust, and suspicion, was established in the midst of them? Is it not of necessity that this must have cowed the soldier's heart and weakened his arm? Is it not of necessity that it must have chilled all generous enthusiasm in the breast of the merchant? Must it not in hundreds of ways have introduced, and fostered, and perpetuated, that self-abasement which is so often the prelude of national degradation? That other causes conspired to effect the decay of Portuguese interests in the east, we by no means intend to deny. But we think that any one enquiring into the causes of this effect, would very materially err, if he omitted, or did not give a prominent place to, the Inquisition, the injury it must have done to man, and the vengeance that it must have called down from God.

In such lights viewed, the history of "Portugal in India" is fraught with lessons of grave import to us; and doubly so now, when some even think that the commotions, that but a little while ago were regarded as trifling outbreaks of partial mutiny, are to be converted into an actual struggle for the empire of India. It is not for us to extenuate our misdoings or our shortcomings in this land. They have all along been stated and set forth, fearlessly and without disguise, in the pages of this Review. Yet our confidence is mainly this; that with all its faults and all its failings, the British rule is so immeasurably superior to any that could be substituted for it here, that we cannot believe that it is destined to pass away. In reference to those faults and those short-comings, we may surely hope that, in all the bloodshed and the brutality of these three months,* in the loss of a Scully and a MacMahon, of a Willoughby, a Lawrence, and a Wheeler, and so many more, high in rank, or high in that which is immeasurably above rank, of whom we had so good cause to be proud, in the massacre of our children and the foul dishonor done to our women by base ruffians, we have received double for all our sins. We think not therefore that Britain's rule is destined yet to pass away; but rather that she has a new career to enter on, in which, correcting the errors, and reversing the faults, and increasing the virtues of the past, she shall yet stand forth as a signal example to all the nations and to all governors, that righteousness is the safeguard and the exaltation of a people.

*This is written early in August.