fortune in qualifying themselves for the profession-after sacrificing all the better hours of life to toil and study with health decayed, and hopes for ever crushed, have abandoned the pursuit, and ended a miserable existence in need, obscurity, and pain. But it is the best attribute of human wit that it may divert the frowns of Fortune, and chalk out plans uncontemplated before, if not to riches, at least to notoriety. It was truly gratifying, therefore, to find that the Royal Society of Musicians, forsooth, had unanimously, as publicly, expressed their thanks to a professional gentleman "for offering his gratuitous opinion on any legal question" connected with that eminent body! Here are your fooleries-the Genius of Discord in the sanctum sanctorum of Harmony itself a bar without notes-anticipated crotchets-Guitarre cases exemplified—a sharp among flats-Fi-fa and Sol-fa-a legal opinion set to music! What next shall we have? Let the most timid aspirant no longer fear renown. There are yet counsel wanting to steam-engines, and what an opportunity is there offered for vapouring! an advocate for the prosecution of the Thames Tunnel might, surely, find a place! Chamber-advisers to iron rail-roads, showing the road to railing; and, surely, some sympathising spirit might even not refuse to patronise the claims of those headless blocks, the Elgin marbles."

"Do you know any thing of the officers of the King's Bench court?"

66

Only that more than one half of them are apparently useless, from other occupations, habit, or station; or, if not, must be gifted with talents for the performance of various as conflicting duties denied to ordinary men. Let Mr. Brougham turn his attention that way, even though he himself may lose something by his motion. We have a Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, who disdains not to act as Clerk to the Master of the Court of King's Bench!—another peer of Parliament, who is one of the Custodes Brevium!-a barrister, who is also clerk at Nisi Prius!-a noble Duke, who receives the profits of the Seals on two tribunals!! In another court, two baronets officiate, or are nominated, as subaltern officers to the Judges! a Lord President of the Council, who, but lately, with all our colonial concerns to occupy him, found ample time to fulfil the functions of Clerk of the Crown to the Chancellor! The Hereditary Grand Falconer himself assumes place as his Lordship's Registrar-an hereditary Registrar too!! There is, too, a poetical lord, who, in addition to his contributions to the Gentleman's,' finds time for the less important avocations, lay and ecclesiastical, of— but I have not breath to spare, so do consult the Court Calendar, if you have one. One but now Master in Chancery, and at present an officer of the House of Peers, who condescends to supply attorneys with subpoenas! A Governor-General of India, who adds to his Oriental titles the homelier denomination of "Clerk of the Pipe in the Exchequer !" --a viceroy and a hookah-bearer!! An English Earl and Prussian Count, who, although a Chief-Justice in Eyre, officiates as Prothonotary in a county court!-and last, although not least, a Sergeantat-Arms, who, justly acknowledged to be the first orator of the age, is the advocate of freedom in the uniform of a Gendarme, and who, in the exercise of opposing duties, may haply be doomed first to advocate the cause of a defendant, and, if he fail in that, he has but to doff his robe, and seize the mace, and take his hapless client into custody! But we will be content to leave him his humbler honours for the good he pro

poses to effect; and if he adopt the suggestion I have advanced, of relieving the tribunals of that dead-weight on justice-sinecurists, we will retain him in his office that he may complete the reform (in which it is to be hoped he may succeed), and in his executive and ministerial character, drive the mere money-changers from the precincts of the Temple."

* We have received the following correction of our correspondent respecting the late Sir Giles Rooke, in our last Number of "The Bar:"

"The charge brought against him, I own, is not a very serious one, and I may, perhaps, appear somewhat over-sensitive in noticing it, yet I should think myself wanting in respect for the memory of my friend if I suffered so idle a representation to remain uncontradicted. I therefore request you will insert in your journal these few brief remarks. It is asserted in the essay that Sir Giles Rooke was seized in his patriarchal days with a love of novel-reading, and was so little choice in the selection of writers, that he would read with avidity even the emanations of the Minerva Press, and used to sacrifice the hours of repose to the enjoyment of maudlin sentiment and the horrors of over-strained romance. 'Often,' continues this accurate chronicler, 'would the morning sun find Sir Giles pursuing, with no wonted ardour, the progress of some tale of sorrow or of love. It was strange to see one of learning and taste so employed; but, if I remember well, this was a romantic family. He had a brother, who, after having served his King with credit in the army, abandoned his country for the land of the olive and myrtle, and established his head-quarters at Rhodes, &c.' In reply to this, I must observe, that Sir Giles, so far from being a brother of the Colonel Rooke here referred to, was not in the remotest degree allied to him; and that the statement of his passion for novels bears precisely the same conformity to truth as that of his relationship to Colonel Rooke. I can aver, and all who knew him well will confirm the correctness of my assertion, that he had no predilection whatever for this species of reading: as for tales of false and high-flown sentiment, and the vamped-up publications of the Minerva press, his mind was of too strong and manly a texture, and too quick in its perception of absurdity, to endure them for a moment. to the merit of the superior works in this class of literature: he duly appreciated Not that he was insensible whatever productions displayed the powers of original genius; but I must repeat, he was not in the habit of reading novels; nor did he approve of their being read by his family except very rarely, and with much selection. Having little leisure, he confined his reading to works of the highest order; our elder poets were among his chief favourites. Of an evening, when alone with his family, he was in the habit of reading to them, and on these occasions the volumes most frequently resorted to were the plays of Shakspeare. His voice was fine and flexible, and I well remember the impression he used to make on his audience by the spirit and discrimination with which he entered into the varied conceptions of the poet.

"It is most true that he was often up before the dawn; and there was one book, the Bible, which the rising sun not unfrequently found him reading: for it was his custom, when much occupied by professional business, to rise earlier than usual, that he might have time to devote the allotted portion of his morning to this study: it was

'His earliest' meditation, and his last
At evening.'

"Though twenty years have elapsed since his death, it has often given me pleasure to find that Sir Giles Rooke still lives in the memory of his friends and acquaintance, and is invariably spoken of with kindness and esteem. He was, indeed, one of the most agreeable of companions. None enjoyed more highly than he did, the society of the gifted and enlightened; and few contributed more largely to the pleasures of the social hour. He had an unfailing flow of spirits, and a mind fraught with ideas, and rich in the recollections of the past; and so varied and playful was his conversation, that while it interested persons of his own age, it was peculiarly attractive to the young. I shall merely add, that he never attained a 'patriarchal' age; he died in his sixty-third year; in the full vigour of his faculties, retaining, to his latest hour, the cheerfulness and serenity of his spirits."

THE DYING RAVEN.

" WHITHER goest thou, Bird of night? Whither art thou wandering? There is dulness in thy flight,

And earthward droops thy heavy wing.
I hear no longer the rushing sound

Of thy pinions swooping from sky to ground;
Thou cleavest no longer the sullen cloud,

Through its closed breast forcing thy way;
And I hear not thy shriek exulting loud
Over thy helpless prey.

There is about thee many a token,

Which says that thy mighty heart is broken.
Bird of ages, thy grief unfold,

Whither goest thou, Raven old?”—

"I go to seek for myself a grave

In a hole of the rock, in the mountain cave; go to throw off my mortal shroud

I

Far from the ken of the staring crowd;
I go to die, as my fathers have done,
Seeking, needing, aid from none.
Not like Man, who, the tyrant in life,
Is a slave when past is his mortal strife;
And, mighty as was his day of power,
A doubting wretch in his dying hour.
He knows not what his soul may be
In his so feared Eternity;

He knows not that his bones will rest
Beneath the sod that he loves the best;
He is still obliged to crave

From Man the favour of a grave;

And daylight mocks the solemn show

With which to the tomb his reliques go;
While the smother'd laugh of the happy heir
Mingles well

With the hired groan, and the feigned tear,
And the choral swell

Of the anthem's voice around the bier.

"No! not like his, in fear and doubt, Doth the light of the Raven old burn out. Not like him doth the Raven fear

The young heir's scorn, the mockery tear.
Not like him doth the Raven feel

Aught in the future of woe or weal.
The Bird of ages would scorn to say

He had sympathies with these sons of a day.
A mightier knowledge is his,―his eye
Looks far in the dun of futurity;

And he sees unshrinking the shadow dull
Of the distant hour when his days are full;
And when it comes, he makes his

grave

In the still obscure of the mountain cave;
And falls, as the son of old Night should fall,
Under the folds of her ebon pall!"

G.

66

SOCIETY IN INDIA, NO. V.

So long as we are rather clamoured than philosophized into the greater part of our opinions, it will be a matter of some peril to utter a word in behalf of many things that nevertheless may be susceptible of excuse. It is enough that they are in the index expurgatorius of those who profess the fashionable morality of the times; and no one, unless he is a candidate for the downright abhorrence of half the decent, respectable, and well-dressed persons he meets with in society, would breathe or whisper an apology for them. Candid reasoners, indeed, may admit that there is a wide distinction between excuse, which is merely relative, and defence, which rests upon some unqualified and absolute principle. But where are candid reasoners to be found? Upon the subject of the religious customs of our native subjects in India, there are a hundred unthinking declaimers to one candid reasoner. It might be thought, however, that understandings capable of extended surveys of our nature, and familiar, by means of such inquiries, with that copious chapter of its errors and obliquities which is implied in the word superstition," would be aware that there are many palliations that charity or philosophy may suggest for religious usages, however alien from our best feelings, and the genius and spirit of Christianity, unquestionably the only perfect wisdom which has yet beamed upon mankind. Indeed, the most heated enthusiasts for diffusing the Christian faith in India disavow the idea of appealing to force; not that there is any great magnanimity in the disclaimer, seeing how ridiculously inadequate to that end must be all the force they could summon. But the very same persons, when they talk of specific rites and ceremonials, although part and parcel' of the ancient superstition of India, and entwined with it by a coeval root and a simultaneous growth, in one moment forget the forbearance they profess, and feel no delicacy in calling for restrictive measures to suppress them as nuisances and abominations. Take that singular usage for instance, of which so much more has been said or written than is understood, the Suttee, or the self-immolation of the Hindoo widows upon the funeral pile of their deceased husbands. You will perceive the marked inconsistency between the politic tolerance they think it prudent to entertain towards the Hindoo religion generally, and the zeal with which they recommend the compulsory restriction of its vital and essential parts, or what is still considered to be so in India. Happily, however, it is a zeal which, for the present, must content itself with being merely a verbal one. "Words, words, my Lord," seem to be the coin in which the universal philanthrophy of the day discharges its debts. Were it otherwise than verbal, denunciations like these would be ominous to the quiet of India, and to the stability of our Indian empire; for they evince a total departure from every maxim of reason, justice, and policy, that has hitherto influenced our relations to that country. A few years ago, what would have been thought of a petition signed by one solitary gentleman, and actually presented to Parliament, calling for an immediate penal enactment against this very practice-one of the religious ceremonials of a people removed from the natural sphere of our ecclesiastical legislation, not more by physical distance, than the strong

est discriminations which Providence has impressed on the various families of mankind; and that usage, an integral portion of an immense pile of opinions or errors, that during a long cycle of ages have become wrought, as it were, into their moral identity. But, as no practical results are likely to follow, the worthy petitioner is at liberty to expatiate over the vast field he has opened for the overflowings of his benevolence, and wander unrestrained amidst the soothing dreams of human amelioration that float before his entranced vision, with the whole chart of Brahminical superstitions, all the

"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum"

of Hindostan, unfolded before him. Against these he has the constitutional right of petitioning by lines of latitude and longitude-and this, without the slightest appeal to his pocket, or any tax or burthen but the paper on which he ingrosses his petition. A species of philanthropy, which, happily for the peace of India, is as noiseless and inaudible, as it is economical; for, after being consigned by the solemn requiem" ordered to lie on the table," to that limbo of unamended grievances and forgotten wrongs, a bourne from which no traveller returns," it will soon expire in the gentlest of euthanasias.

66

But to speak gravely, pure and exalted as the zeal may be which dictated so new and unheard-of a procedure, obeisance surely is due to time and season, and the great law of expediency. But there is a danger, lest the natives of India, contemplating the matter through optics peculiar to themselves, and shrinking with a sensitive jealousy from the slightest invasion of their religious institutions, should not distinguish between projects laid before the legislature, and their actual legislative adoption. They are too little schooled in our political constitution, and have been nurtured to maxims of government too dissonant from the frame and genius of ours, to separate an act done permissively under the state, from the solemn and authentic act of the state itself. That which is permitted, they will erroneously, but with their habits of thinking naturally, infer to be sanctioned.

Assuredly, the sacrifice of the Hindoo widow is a dreadful rite. But, shocking as it is to the moral taste, its horror is in some degree diminished by its being purely voluntary. It is right also to observe, that it is not imperatively enjoined by the Hindoo law. On the contrary, one of the most authoritative of their sacred texts declares,* that “ a wife, whether she ascends the funeral pile of her deceased lord, or survives for his benefit," (that is, to perform a perpetual course of expiatory ceremonies in his behalf,) "is still a faithful wife." It is, in fact, a voluntary martyrdom, considered highly meritorious, and conferring great distinction, but by no means a duty of strict obligation. Nor is it an evil of such very frequent occurrence, as it has been represented. It will be found indeed to occur rarely, if the immense population of Hindostan Proper is taken into the consideration. It was a most unfair computation adopted by the missionaries, when they took the number of immolations in a particular province, and then multiplied them by equal extents through the whole area of India. It is a prerogative also confined to the highest caste; and they who aspire to it undergo an exami