INDIA.

HERE is an extraordinary production. Its merit as a poem is great. Its object is singular—to call the attention of the English public to the fiscal condition of India ; and this object it would accomplish in a novel manner—stimulating the curiosity by excit- ing the feelings, and inducing the people to study the finance and statistics of Ilindostan, by bringing imagination to their aid, and singing the effects of the neglect of judges and the legal extor- tions of collectors in immortal verse.

" If," says the author, " the numerous and valuable works on the politics and statistics of India have hitherto taken only an insignificant hold on public opi- nion, and utterly failed in their attempt to direct it against the sins and abuses of Indian governments, the reason is obvious. The previous interest was want- ing, without which few could be expected to master the details of a difficult and Intricate subject. The passions of mankind must be aroused before their facul- ties can act ; and some appeal to the national feeling must prepare the way for the exercise of the national will."

Such being the views of the writer, he has not aimed at dis- playing the evils of Anglo-Indian taxation, or at conveying an exact idea of the system whose effects he denounces ; on the con- trary, he trusts that his poem will drive the people of England to study the system for themselves. This notion has not been bene- ficial to the unity of the poem : but the writer has produced a suc- cession of striking pictures, such as we have not met with for many a day ; whether we look at his digressions—such as the invocation to the Ganges, the view of the early condition of India, the rapid narrative of the Mahometan conquests and rise of the English power; or at those passages which bear more immediately upon the matter in hand—the misgovernment of India, and the tyranny exercised upon the Hindoos.

Our selections shall be made without method. Here is a picture of English rule in India.

We live among them like a walking blight, Our very name the watchword of affright; No symathy, no pity, no remorse, Our end is profit. and our means are force; We're always taking and we never give; We care not if they die or if they live: Ilard taskmasters f beyond a Pharaoh's law, We first %ennui(' and then we take the straw, Yet look to see the tale of bricks the same; If not, 'tis them, and not ourselves we blame: We drive them birth to labour in the heat, We irk and gall them in their home's retreat ; We sit beside them in the livelong light, We call upon them in the dead of night ; For joy or wretchedness, for weal or wo, We've one sole sentence, "Pay us that you owe."

The following quotation continues the same subject. The illus- trations are not only poetical, but philosophical.

Remember Spain ! the hot Arabian came, •

But brought no swords of blood, no brands of flame; He plundered not because his arm was strong ; His sway was gentle, therefore it was long; And yet, eight hundred years of power unshook, Gave him no footing in the land he took : And why? the broad deep line of holy scorn Was drawn 'twist him and those the land had born ; The power he spared to crush, but scorned to gain, Grew, till it hurled him fighting o'er the main.

Remember Sicily ! the Gallic lord

Reigned by the iron title of his sword,

And heelless of an injured people's groan, In sullen quiet sIumlwred on his throne. There passed some difference, sonic casual fray, Some trilling incident of every day, Wherein a hot Sicilian's ready knife Redeemed an insult with a Frenchman's life: At once, as though a mine of madness sprung, Contagious fury rose the crowd among; Our heart, one arm, one weapon, and one blow,

Fell at one moment upon every foe;

The moody tyrant started from his bed, And to ! the crown had vanished from his head.

We should have been glad to have found room for his picture of the young enthusiast fresh from England, startling at the pros- pect suddenly displayed before him, struggling with the official chains which are gradually woven round him, and sinking in un- merited obscurity, or succumbing at last : but we have only space for the apostrophe to the memory of those who have perished victims to their convictions of the right. If the passage be not altogether a poet's dream, the Company has its holy army of mar- tyrs as well as the Church : and we seem toqather from the Pre- face (dated from " Bengal Upper Provinces ) that the writer is one of them, and that it is doubtful whether his publication may not be posthumous.

Oh ! who shall tell how many a mighty mind

In proud obscurity like this has pined ! How many a heart bath bowed beneath the yoke ! In silence suffered, and in silence broke?

Dear brothers of my soul! though never tongue But mine your sacred martyrdom bath sung, I cannot weep for ye, the trembling lyre Breaks into triumph's soaring tones of fire. What though ye lived to find yourselves betrayed ; What though ye saw your youth's high promise fade, And all that lifted you above your race, Become the very means of your disgrace;

What though the heart's be,t, dearest ties ye tore,

And left your country to return no more ; What though ye sunk amidst aloreign land, In the cold graspings of the stranger's hand ; What though ye struggled on the dying bed, Without a friend to raise your sinking head; What though ye mouldered in the last low cell, With none to breathe a prayer or say farewell ; A holy glory beamed upon your fall That soothed your sorrows, or outshone them all ;

There was an eye that o'er your anguish wept, There was a heart that blessed you when you slept ;

The mighty pulse which beats through space and time Throbbed to your own, with sympathy sublime!

The earth that closed above each narrow lair

Ching round your relics with a mother's care; The roaring tempests howled o'er every grave, Vast nature's requiem to the good and brave;

The sun by day, the noon and stars by night,

Shed on your tombs a holier, fonder light : And now, though years have passed since your release, 'Ti, said the white-winged messengers of peace Still pause awhile in hurrying to and fro, To hover o'er the spots none else can know, And drop a hallowing tear upon the dust Of those who gore existence to he just.

This is not the only time we have had to observe that the Nabobs have studied in a good school : and it appears at a first glance singular, that the Anglo-Indian taste in literature should be so respectable, when in other matters it is so very indifferent. But it admits of an easy solution. The original education of the Com- pany's civil servants has been good; they had subsequently to educate themselves ; they must of necessity have seen much; and they are more full of things than of words. Then, they are not distracted by a struggle for subsistence, nor excited by the pro- mises which speculative undertakings hold forth. They are re- moved from the current of fashionable literature; they are not overwhelmed by the mass of rubbish, or of bare mediocrity, which every week brings out. In the listless leisured a distant station, they have time for study, and they study the best models. In se- lecting a library to carry out to India, nothing is taken but the first-rate works; in adding to it, the Mite of the year alone are chosen ; the distance and the cost of transport inducing caution, and acting as sharpeners of the judgment. In the plains, the heat of the climate will militate against the production of any work which requires the continuous labour of years; but it is not im- probable that some aspirant may build the lofty rhyme on the Neilgherry Hills or the Himalaya Mountains, and bring forth in those cool retreats some work which posterity " will not willingly let die."