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;
I go to throw off my mortal shroud
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.

SOCIETY IN INDIA, NÓ. 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

nation into the chastity and fidelity of their lives, which every wife cannot conveniently submit to. Besides this, there are many provinces where it has been never practised; and in others, even in some of the northern ones, it seems to be gradually wearing itself out. In all probability, it will sink into desuetude altogether, unless some of those injudicious interpositions of authority, which the petitioner invokes so ardently, should rekindle the fanaticism in which it originated. When M. Bernier visited India, during the Mogul government, more widows sacrificed themselves in one year, and in a single province, than have sacrificed themselves within the last twenty years throughout the whole country. The Suttee is prohibited also within certain distances of the Presidencies. Beyond this, it would be unwise to extend our interference. On the other hand, mild remedies are frequently found to succeed with fanaticisms much more detestable than this. What a world of wisdom did the old Senate of Rome, in their memorable decree against the most execrable ceremonies that ever dishonoured the name of religion, bequeath to the knights-errant of too officious a philanthropy! "Si quis tale sacrum solenne et necessarium duceret, nec sine religione et piaculo se id omittere," &c. &c. The whole may be seen in Livy.

Those who have described the Suttee, with the view of decrying the Hindoo religion in general, are not chargeable with having given too faint a colouring to their pictures. But absurd, or even inhuman practices, are not always conclusive arguments against a whole religious system. The Hindoos are in the main a virtuous people. I know not whether their virtues are the offspring of their religion, or of their habits; but their religion, imperfect as it is, when compared with the purer morality, or more efficient sanctions of our own, must not be excluded from the influences that have formed their character. Their sacred books contain the leading maxims of ethical philosophy, imparted in the varied forms of apophthegm, and allegory, and precept. Conjugal duty, temperance, parental and filial affection, hospitality even to enemies, with the whole category of minor offices, are strongly enforced and beautifully inculcated. It would be unfair to deliver the whole system up to indiscriminate condemnation on account of this usage, inhuman as it is. With equal justice, an enemy of the Christian faith, in the spirit of a Porphyry, might array against it the inhumanities that have been committed in its name. To a reasoner of this description, what a topic would be the horrid sacrifice once prevalent over Christendom, and still lingering in some parts of it, that dooms youth and beauty to the gloom of the convent! With what nice touches might he not describe the living death, in comparison with which the flame that consumes the Hindoo widow is mild and merciful! How might he dilate on the sufferings of the victim, when every image of joy, and every vision of hope, recedes for ever from her view, and the feverish enthusiasm which lifted her for awhile above the world, begins to subside, and its beloved scenes of home, of friendship, of love, recur

* Bernier was one of the earliest, and the most authentic traveller in India. His book is deemed of high authority, and was received in the House of Lords on the trial of Mr. Hastings, as good evidence of Hindoo customs.

in vain to her remembrance. It is in this spirit, and with such exaggerations, that the Hindoo rite has been clothed in horrors not its own. For this purpose, the victim is usually presented to us in the flower of youth, (the inhumanity would be less with regard to an old hag of sixty,) led, like the Iphigenia of Euripides, with tottering steps to her death-bridal, with all the lingerings after life natural to the vernal season of it, and bidding an eternal farewell to its pleasures, its duties, its connexions.

Ιω, ἰω· λαμπαδουχος άμερα
Διός τε φέγγος, ἔτερον,
Ἕτερον αἰῶνα,

Καὶ μοῖραν οἰκησομεν.
Καῖρε μοι, φίλον φαος·

These, however, are pangs to which the Hindoo widows, on such occasions, are impassive. There is scarcely an instance, amongst those recorded by European spectators, in which they seem to have betrayed the compunctious visitings of nature, or the slightest wish to abandon their resolve, although, to the latest moment, the locus pœnitentiæ is open to them, and the entreaties of their relatives and friends are often united with the remonstrances of the Brahmins to invite them back to life and its duties. The fact is, the species of existence, it scarcely deserves to be called life, to which she is destined as a surviving widow, has nothing in it to make death, in its most appalling form, an image of terror; for it is a life of penance, seclusion, and solitude, filled up by an unceasing round of ceremonies in honour of her departed husband. It is this fearful perspective, rendering life distasteful, and death a haven of rest in the comparison, joined to the honourable distinction both here and hereafter attached to the martyrdom, that, acting upon an enfeebled and enslaved understanding, becomes an irresistible motive to the fatal determination; nor can it, under such circumstances, be denied to be a powerful motive, unless

"The weariest and most loathsome worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on Nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death."

Add to this, that, by the delusions of superstition, she is insensible to the fears and agonies of her dissolution. She secures a place in her husband's mansion in Heaven, and the honourable epithet of Sádwi, "good and faithful;" whilst by a vicarious suffering that scarcely exceeds a few moments' duration, she redeems him from a thousand years of purgatory, and is admitted in his society into the seats of the blessed, till they are both absorbed into the boundless infinity of Nature, the illimitable ocean of eternity, and become again portions of the diffused creative power, that sustains and renovates the universe. Amidst such beatific visions, she knows no taste of death; and every outward sense of worldly pain or satisfaction is lost in the intoxicating dream of futurity.

Mrs. S, the accomplished lady of Mr. S, the AdvocateGeneral at Calcutta, was once present at this singular ceremony. Being of Portuguese extraction, and entirely educated in India, she was skilled in all the native languages, but particularly conversant with the Hin