LITERARY SPECTATOR.

. SIR THOMAS MUNRO.* , J , IN noticing the first two volumes of this work, we dwelt -particu- larly on what struck us most forcibly—the very amiable picture which they exhibited of the .personal character of MUNRO. We passed over the statistical information they contained, not because it was of small value to those who sought for statistics—we passed over the military details, not because the soldier was likely to dis- regard them—but because to the general reader, excluding these important departments, there was so much of plain, straight- forward, and universally understood humanity, so much that went home to the heart and bosom, not of one class or another, but of all who felt as fathers, brothers, kinsmen. Sir THOMAS MUNRO was in fact a more original and far more interesting cha- racter in his private than in his public capacity. As a most able, ho- nest, and experienced officer, he effected many and great improve- ments in India; and in no situation was it possible that he should not display the workings of a vigorous and enlightened under- standing; but it was chiefly when left to itself—when untrammel- led by the imperative duties and technicalities of office—that his peculiar excellence of heart and head was seen. We hinted that it would be a species of literary crime to withhold from the world whatever had fallen from the pen of a man so wise and so excellent. Mr. GLEIG has acted on this hint. The present vo- lume is meant to supply the shortcomings of the other two. It is not quite so interesting as them in our eyes, for it contains less of the personalities of Sir THOMAS ; but it amply justifies publi- cation, and well deserves its place in the library as one of the series. Military men, especially those who are connected either by present residence or past services with India, will regard the whole work as invaluable.

The letters of the Duke of WELLINGTON, of which there are a number in the third volume, supplied by his Grace himself, are exceedingly characteristic, and form capital specimens of a sol- dier's correspondence. Some of his homely expressions have been laid hold of by his political opponents, and held up to reprobation, as though they indicated a cruel disposition in the man. This is false sentiment, or rather the simulation of it. War cannot be carried on, we believe, without killing. The Duke, writing to a fellow soldier, speaks as all soldiers speak to their fellows. "I drove five thousand men into the Malpurba," says he on one oc- casion; and thereupon exclaims his unfair censor—" What a hard-hearted man this Duke is ! how coolly he speaks of drown- ing five thousand miserable creatures !" Suppose he had com- menced in NELsoN's style—" It hath pleased God to bless his Majesty's arms with a 'great victory: five thousand of the enemy have been drowned wile attempting to escape by swimming across the Malpurba "—had he expressed himself thus, MUNRO would have had a hearty laugh at the. niaiserie of his friend, and the critic *mild have been beyond 'Measure edified.

• The Lite of Major-General Sir Thomas Munro. With Extracts from his Cor- respondence and Private.Papers. By the Rev. G. U. GI*, M.A. M.B.S. VoL 3. Landau, Me. The manly and vigorous intellect of MUNRO spurned every kind of pretence. As we formerly observed, he had no faith in youth- ful prodigies. When he was a boy himself, he had been content to be a boy, and he liked to see others acting as he had done. In the following passage in one of his letters, he quizzes his youngest brother, who had been represented as a precocious genius.

" All my correspondents mention with wonder your extraordinary talents. They say that you talk in quite a different style from the other boys of your age, and that you imitate none of them : this peculiarity is a sure mark of an original genius. They also say that your deportment is grave, and that you despise making a vain display of your abilities ; that you are the wonder of your schoolfellows ; that thoughts like yours never entered into any of their heads ; and that you never open your mouth but you say something new and uncommon, and utter sentences that deserve to be noted in a book. Whatever the boys may think, I hear that it was entirely owing to you that they all got books at the examine* tion. When you go to the College, you will be of great use as a speaker in the societies. I have even hopes that you will rival your brother Daniel, who was a great ornament of them in former times. • He once, if I mistake not, made a speech, and was, when he stuck in the middle of it, within an ace of gaining great applause."

Our next extract is a defence of War—a bantering defence, as the reader will perceive, and appropriately enough addressed to his sister.

" I am still of opinion that war produces many good consequences : those philosophers who prophesy that the millennium is to follow univer-

sal civilization, must have shut their eyes on what is passing in the world, and trusted entirely to intellectual light, otherwise they would have seen that in proportion to the progress of science and the arts, war becomes more frequent and more general, and this I consider to be the true end of civilization. In former ages of barbarity and ignorance, two petty states might have fought till they were tired, without any of their neighbours minding them, and perhaps without those who were at a little distance ever hearing any thing of the matter ; but in these en- lightened times of mail-coaches and packet-boats, no hostility can be committed in one corner of Europe but it is immediately known in the other, and we all think it necessary to fall-to immediately. I should be glad to know in what uncivilized age a fray in Nootka Sound would have produced a bustle at Portsmouth. Barbarous nations, when at war, generally returned to their homes at the harvest season, and took the field again in the holidays, to fight by way of pastime, and they were not afraid to leave their towns with no other guard than their women, because no other nation was supposed to be concerned in their quarrel; but now, by the happy modern discovery of the balance of power, all Europe is fraternized—every nation takes at least as much interest in the affairs of othefUations as in its own, and no two can go to war without all the rest following their example. We are not like barbarians contented with one or two campaigns, the riches of commerce and the improvement of science enable us to amuse ourselves much longer, andwe are now seldom contented wIth less than seven. Why do verproen -of genius specu-

latet ad our manufacturers toil unceasingly,,but.that we may collect motley enough to treat ourselves now and then to a seven years' jubilee of warfare. The only instance in which civilized is less destructive than barbarous war is, in not eating our prisoners ; but this I do not yet de- spair of seeing accomplished, for whenever any philosopher, or politician, shall demonstrate that eating prisoners will improve the cotton manufac- ture, or augment the revenue, an Act of Parliament will soon be passed for despatching them as fast as possible. War is to nations what muni- cipal government is to particular cities, it is a grand Police which teaches nations to respect each other, and humbles such as have become insolent by prosperity. If you are not satisfied with political arguments, I shall give you some of a higher nature. Do not all religious and orthodox books insist strongly on the manifold benefits resulting from the chastise- ments and visitations of stiff-necked and stubborn generations? Now what better visitation can you wish for, than forty or fifty thousand men going into a strange land and living there at free quarters for two or three years. Don't you think that the calamities of the American war have made us more virtuous than we were, and that more Britons have gone to heaven since these chastisements, than did in all the preceding part of the century ? and I, therefore, for my own sake, thank Providence that such a visitation happened in my life. It is in vain to look for the termi- nation of war from the diffusion of light, as it is called. The Greeks and Romans in ancient times were, and the Germans, French, and English, in modern times are, the most enlightened and warlike of nations; and the case will be the same till the end of the world, or till hu- man nature ceases to be what it is. As long as nations have different governments, and manners, and languages, there will be war, and if com- merce should ever so far extend its influence as that trading nations will no longer fight for territory—they will never refuse to take up arms for cloth—and then the age of chivalry having given place to that of econo- mists, prisoners will no more be released on parole ; the privates and subs, will be employed in coal-heaving and other works serviceable to the state, and those of superior rank ransomed, and if they are dilatory in settling accounts, they will, perhaps, be tossed in blankets of a particular manufacture, to promote the circulation of cash. Those who rail against war have not taken a comprehensive view of the subject, nor considered that it mingles, in a greater or lesser degree, with the most refined of our pleasures. How insipid would poetry be without romances and heroic poems, and history without convulsions and revolutions ! What would a library be with nothing but Shenstone and a few volumes of sermons? What would become of all those patriotic citizens who spend half their lives in coffeehouses talking of the British Lion, if he were to be laid asleep by an unfortunate millennium ?" There are several other letters conceived in the same vein of pleasantry. The following is an attempt to prove that Freedom. in France must of necessity be injurious to England. Murata is ironical ; but we have seen the question put seriously. "If, like you, I were liable to be possessed by blue or any other devils; the situation of affairs in France would be more likely than any thing besides to produce such an event, for as a friend to the glory and prospe- rity of Britain, [cannot behold with indifference the restoration of French liberty. That nation, already too powerful, wanted nothing but a better form of Government to render her the arbiter of Europe ; and the con- vulsions' attending so remarkable a revolution having subsided, France will soon assume that rank to which she is entitled from her resources, and the .enterprising.genius of her inhabitant's. You and I may live to 'see the day. when the -fairest provinces of Indirc(reversing Mr. Gibbon's 'boast) shall not beviubject to a company of -merchants-of it remote islandt in the Northern Ocean ; but when, perhaps, those merchants and their countrymen, being confined by the superior power of their rival to the narrow limits of their native isle, shall sink into the insignificance from which they were raised by their empire of the sea. With the freedom of Our Government we may retain our orators, our poets, and historians, but our domestic transactions will afford few splendid materials for the exercise of genius or fancy, and with the loss of empire we must relin- quish, however reluctantly, the idea so long and so fondly cherished by us all of our holding the balance of power. In looking forward to the rising grandeur of France, I am not influenced by any groundless despondency, but I judge of the future from the past; and when I consider that after the Revolution she opposed for some time, successfully, the united naval powers of England and Holland ; that she did the same under Queen Anne, and under George 11. till fifty-nine ; and that notwithstanding the almost total annihilation of her marine in that war—in the East, in Europe, America, and the West Indies, she never shunned, and some- times sought our fleets, and met us in this country (the East Indies), if not with superior force, at least with superior fortune, and perhaps bravery;—that she made all those exertions when she was left to the mercy of capricious women, who made and unmade ministers, generals, and admirals almost every month, and when commerce and even the naval profession met with no encouragement ; I cannot but fear that when she shall direct her attention to the sea, she may wrest from Britain her empire of that element, and strip her Of all her foreign possessions. When two countries have made nearly the same progress in the arts of peace and war, and when there is no material difference in the constitu- tion of their governments, that which possesses the greatest population, and the most numerous resources from the fertility of her soil, must in the end prevail over her rival."

On the subject of British dominion in India, and the facilities which the peculiar circumstances of that colony present, Sir THOMAS, in two communications remarks- " There are three things that greatly facilitate our conquests in this country ; the first is—the whole of India being but one nation, always parcelled out among a number of chiefs, and these parcels continually changing masters, makes a transfer to us he regarded not as a conquest but merely as one administration turning out another. The second is— the total want of hereditary nobility and country gentlemen, so that there is no respectable class of men who might be impelled by a sense either of honour or of interest to oppose a revolution. And the third is—our having a greater command than any of the native powers of money, a strong engine of revolution in all countries, but more especially in India."

"The antiquity of landed property, and the sharing it equally among all the male children, has thrown it into a vast number of hands. The average Sirkar waits of estates is perhaps twenty or twenty-five pagodas,

but there are some which pay near a thousand. The average of the Sir- kar rent is about one-fourth of the gross produce ; but, on many estates, not more than one-sixth. Litigations are endless in a country where there are so many proprietors ; and Punchayets are continually sitting to decide on the rights of the various claimants. Landed property being thus the subject of discussion among all classes of Rayets, everything relating

to it is as well understood as in England. The small landlords are probably

as comfortable as in anycountry in Europe. The never-failing monsoon, and the plentiful harvests of rice, far beyond the consumption of the in- habitants, secure them fronnever feeling the distress of scarcity. Rents

are therefore easily collebted=no complaints about inability—no abscond- ing at the close of the year. Even after all the disturbances of a civil. war, I had not a single application for remission, except from one or two

villagers near Jumalabad, which had been twice plundered by the garri- son; and in this case they paid the money before making the demand, saying, that unless it was returned, they could not replace their stock of cattle, so as to carry on to the usual extent the cultivation of the ensuing

year. I often felt a pleasure, which I never have experienced in any other part of India, in seeing myself at the time of the Jummabundy, under the

fly of a tent, among some large trees, surrounded by four or five hundred

landlords, all as independent in their circumstances as your yeomen ; I could not help observing on these occasions the difference that good feed-

ing makes on men as well as on other animals. The landlords of Ca- nna are, I am convinced, fatter in general than those of England. I was sometimes tempted to think, on looking at many who had large estates,

and particularly at the Potails, that they had been appointed on account of their weight. Many of them were quite oppressed by the heat, when I felt no inconvenience from it; and they used to sit with nothing on but

their blue Surat aprons, their bodies naked, and sweating like a corpulent Briton just hoisted from a Masulah boat on the beach at Madras; but their labourerswere as miserable-looking peasants as any in the Carnatic."

The two extracts that follow are more strictly personal. In the humour of the latter there is a pathos mingled, which is extremely affecting.

"I was in this place thirty-five years ago, on my way to India, and much more impatient than now to reach my destination ; for my head was then full of bright visions which have now passed away. I now, I am sorry to say, go out not to hopes but to certainties ; knowing exactly the situation in which I am to be employed, what I am to have, and when I may return. This to many people would be very comfortable; to me it is dull and uninteresting. I had more pleasure from my excursion of a few days to Paris, than I shall derive from a residence of two or three years in India. My inability to speak the French language with any kind of ease, was a great inconvenience, and could I have remained in Europe, I would have gone to France, and lived entirely in French society until I was able to speak the language fluently. By going back to India for a short time, I became unsettled, I am neither an Indian nor an European, and am prevented from forming any fixed plan of life. But it is idle to talk of life when the best part of it is past.' "My eyes have suffered so much, that I write with great difficulty at all times, and there are some days when I cannot write at all. Without sight nothing can be done in settling. It is a business that requires a maa to write while he speaks, to have the pen constantly in his hand, to take notes of what is said by every person, to compare the information given by different men on the same subject, and to make an abstract from the whole. Since July last I have been obliged to change the number o my spectacles three times ; and if you are a spectacle-man, you will un- derstand what a rapid decay of vision this implies. I cannot now do in two days what a few years ago I did in one, and I can do nothing with ease to myself. I cannot write without a painful sensation in my eyes of straining. The only chance of saving my sight is to quit business entirely for some months, and turn my eyes upon larger objects only, in ordet to give them relief. At the rate I am now going, in a few months more I shall not be able to tell a dock from a breckan. Before this happens I must go home and 'paddle in the burn.' This is a much nicer way of Passing the evening of life, than going about the country here in mr military boots and brigadier's enormous bat and feathers, frightening every cow and buffalo, shaking horribly its fearful nature, and making its tail stand on end. I shall willingly, now that all the great operations of war are over, resign this part of it to any one else. I am not like the Archbishop of Granada, for I feel that I am sadly fallen off in my homilies."

The first and second of the three short extracts that follow are from two letters to Sir THOMAS'S old friend and fellow townsman, Mr. KIRKMAN FINLAY ; the last is from a letter addressed to Sir GRAHAM MOORE. We class them together because of the senti- ments of home-love that they all express.

" I am thinking, as the boys in Scotland say, I am thinking, Provost, that I am wasting my time very idly in this country ; and that it would be, or at least would look wiser, to be living quietly and doucely at home. Were I now there, instead of running about the country with camps here, I might at this moment be both pleasantly and profitably employed in gathering black Boyds with you among the braes near the Largs. There is no enjoyment in this country equal to it, and I heartily wish that I were once more fairly among the bushes with you, even at the risk of being stickit by yon drove of wild knowt that looked so sharply after us. Had they found us asleep in the dyke, they would have made us repent breaking the sabbath ; although I thought there was no great harm in doing such a thing in your company."

" I am afraid, from what I have read somewhere lately, of there being twenty-five thousand Irish weavers and labourers about Glasgow, that there can be very few of what you call right proper Glasgow-men left. I suspect that you have not now many of the pure old breed of right pro- per Glasgow weavers whom I remember about the grammar-school wind and the back of the Relief Kirk. They are probably now like a Highland regiment, of which I once heard an old sergeant say, that what with Irish and what with English, they were now no better than other men.'" " It is nearly twenty years since I thought that I had taken a final leave of this country; but I am now, after a tour of nearly a thousand miles, sitting in my tent, at the head of one of the passes leading down from Mysore to the Carnatic, at the distance of about a hundredand thirty miles from Madras. I am anxious to leave India, yet I shall leave it with a heavy heart. I have spent so much of my life in it, I am so well acquainted with the people, its climate is so fine, and its mountain scenery so wild and beautiful, that I almost regret that it is not my own country ; but it is not my home, and it is time that I should go there, whether it is to be in Scotland or in England. If I am not too old when I get home, which I suspect I am already, I must take a journey to Italy or Greece, that I may have time to settle where my home is to be. Nothing is more diffi- cult to a man who has been long absent from his own country, than to de- termine in what part of it he ought to fix his abode."

We have room, at present, for but one extract more. It is from a letter also addressed to Mr. KIRKMAN FINLAY ; and is in a graver and more reasoned style than most of those which we have given. MUNRO understood the true principles of commercial policy as well as any economist among them.

"I hope that you are a friend to 'free trade for public servants, as well as for other articles ; and that you do not think that men ought to have a monopoly of offices, because they come from a particular town ; or that we should call them China when we know that they come from the Delft- 15ouse. I find, however, that there is no shaking off early prejudice, and becoming quite impartial, as a friend to free trade ought to be; I find that, notwithstanding my long exposure to other alunites, I am still Glasgow ware ; for if I had not been so, I should not, when I saw your opinion quoted by Mr. Huskisson, in support of his measures, have felt as Much gratification as if I had had some share in the matter myself "I remember when I was in Somerville and Gordon's house, about the time of the appearance of the Wealth of Nations,' that the Glasgow mer- chants were as proud of the work as if they had written it themselves ; and that some of them said it was no wonder that Adam Smith had written such a book, as he had bad the advantage of their society, in which the same doctrines were circulated with the punch every day. It is surprising to think that we should only just now be beginning to act upon them ; the delay is certainly not very creditable to our policy. Our best apology is, perhaps, the American and the French revolutionary wars, durinor tz.t. long course of which the nation was so harassed, that there was no time for changing the old system. The nation was just beginning to recover from the American war, whei. the Revolution in France began ; and had that event not taken place, I have no doubt that Mr. Pitt would have done what we are now doing. I am not sure that you are not indebted to your old friend, the East India Company, for the measure not having been longer delayed. The attack upon their monopoly by the delegates in 1812-13, excited discussions, not only upon their privileges, but upon all privileges and restrictions, and the true principles of trade, which pro- bably prepared the minds of men for acceding to the new system, sooner than they would otherwise have done. Even now there seems to be too much solicitude about protecting duties; they may, for a limited time, be expedient, where capital cannot be easily withdrawn, but in all other cases why not abolish them at once ? There is another point on which anxiety is shown, where I think there ought to be none—I mean that of other nations granting similar remissions on our trade. Why should we trouble ourselves about this ? We ought surely not to be restrained from doing ourselves good, by taking their goods as cheap as we can get them, merely because they won't follow our example ? If they will not make our goods cheaper, and take more of them, they will at least take what they did before ; so that we suffer no loss on this, while we gain on the other side. I think it is better that we should have no engagements with foreign nations about reciprocal duties, and that it will be more conve- nient to leave them to their own discretion in fixing the rate whether high or low."

We must now take leave of Mr. GLEIG'S third volume. It is worthy of its excellent subject and most respectable editor.