ency with the forms of science. Neither a theory of the created. universe, and of the human part of it in particular, nor a theory of the inaccessible Being on whom all depends, is revealed. They are not capable of being revealed. A child cannot be taught the full scientific significance of the Newtonian theory of the material world; but he may be taught useful rules which others have derived from it. If an infant were to apply its undeveloped reason and experience to the rules which it has thus been taught, in order to discover their most general principles, it would be acting less irrationally by far, than those who study the revelations of God to man, as if they were the scientific solution of the insoluble problem. The infant is more able to grasp the science out of which the rules issue, than human intelligence is to comprehend a science of the unspeculative knowledge, which must form the substance of any Revelation of God.

We have wandered too far aside from the text of the suggestive volume that has occasioned these remarks, and to only a few salient points in which we have at all alluded. We shall be delighted to learn that any of our readers are willing to pursue the course of meditation to which Mr. Calderwood's book and our disquisitions naturally invite them, and that they are disposed to travel along that highest and quite unique walk of inductive research, on which lie the natural and miraculous Facts of Divine Revelation,-in a spirit becoming those who are examining a region, in which every object is a direct illustration of a problem that the philosopher can prove to be insoluble. Defended on this course by true metaphysics against the false, the student of the "ways of God" learns that the greatest human minds have not been mistaken in assigning the loftiest place to Theology, which should be the grandest department of modern, as it was of medieval and ancient literature. Bacon is too sanguine, when he predicts that a sober treatise on the office of human reason in Divinity "would be like an opiate in medicine, and not only lay the empty speculations which disturb the schools, but also that fury of controversy which raises such tumults in the Church." But we may perhaps hope for some less comprehensive advantage from the maxim, that "man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins," applied by the few to the study of all Divine Revelation, in the spirit of Bacon and Pascal.

Kaye's Life of Lord Metcalfe.

145

ART. V.-The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe; late Governor-General of India, Governor of Jamaica, and Governor-General of Canada; from Unpublished Letters and Journals preserved by Himself, his Family, and his Friends. By JOHN WILLIAM KAYE, Author of the "History of the War in Afghanistan." 2 vols. London, 1854.

THE present work ought to add greatly to the reputation which Mr. Kaye has acquired by his former publications on Indian History and Politics. We have not many biographies of the same kind, and we have certainly few of the kind so well executed. Were it only as an example of the proper biographic mode of dealing with the unpublished letters and journals of deceased persons of celebrity, the work would deserve high praise and extensive notice. At a time when even men of some pretensions to literary eminence are discharging the biographic office in a way at once insulting to the public and injurious to the unfortunate subjects of their skill, by simply tumbling out into print, in any shape and order, all the old letters and papers they can lay their hands on, it is really pleasant to find a book like this of Mr. Kaye, in which the true duties of a biographer are so distinctly conceived and so conscientiously performed. Fully alive to the value of letters and documents, as materials for a biography, Mr. Kaye is evidently not one of those who think that the business of a biographer consists in merely collecting and editing such materials. He has not devolved upon his readers the trouble of procuring the information required for imparting connexion to the materials used, and weaving them into a continuous and intelligible story. All this trouble he has taken on himself. Hence the work, as it stands, is not merely Lord Metcalfe's Papers, edited by Mr. Kaye; it is really and strictly Mr. Kaye's Life of Lord Metcalfe. "I am not unconscious," he says in his preface, "that, in some parts of this work, I have suffered the biographical to merge into the historical;' and he apologizes for this on the ground that the events of Indian and Colonial history are far less known even to educated readers than those of general European history, or of the domestic history of Great Britain. The apology was perhaps not needed. It is the duty of every biographer to inweave into his narrative as much of general information relating to the matters introduced into it as may save the necessity of reference to other authorities. In the case of an Indian or Colonial biography, however, this duty is certainly more than usually imperative; and Mr. Kaye has amply fulfilled it. He has even gone to original and exclusive sources of information in preparing his work, so as to give it a char

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acter of independent historical value. Apart from this merit of extensive and original information in connexion with his subject, Mr. Kaye's affectionate admiration of Lord Metcalfe would have constituted an important qualification for his task. Nor are his powers of literary execution of a common order. With much previous practice as a writer, and master of an easy, vivid, and even sprightly style, Mr. Kaye has here produced a biography which may be recommended as, in some respects, a model for works of the same kind. From first to last, we follow the hero, Charles Metcalfe, with interest, seeing him distinctly at every point of his varied career, and becoming so attached to him in the course of our gradually increasing acquaintance, that, in the end, we feel as if we were parting from an old friend. To have accomplished this for a man of Metcalfe's stamp-not a romantic adventurer, not a leader of armies, not a brilliant and original man of letters, but a plain, painstaking man of business, whose whole life was spent in the toils of civil office and administration -is no ordinary success. There are, indeed, defects in Mr. Kaye's book. The information it supplies relative to the political and military events with which Lord Metcalfe's life was mixed up, is given perhaps in too diffuse and attenuated a manner, and is not massed out with sufficient boldness of relief, and sufficient strength and decision of colour. It may be objected also to the book, that its tone is more that of a continuous and conscious pleading in favour of its subject, than of a firm and resolute appreciation of his character and merits by a man judging vigorously and freely for himself. Altogether, however, the work is one of unusual excellence, and it would be well for the interests of the Civil Service if we had a few more such biographies.

Born in Calcutta in 1785, the second son of a Major in the Bengal Army, Charles Theophilus Metcalfe was brought over to England in early infancy: his parents having made up their minds to exchange the heat of India, before old age came upon them, for the dignified leisure of a town-house in Portland Place, and an estate near Windsor. Wealthy, active, and a Tory of the true Pitt stamp, the retired major became in time an EastIndia Director, and a respectable member of Parliament, with plenty of occupation for himself, and ample means of providing suitably for his sons and daughters. From the very first he destined his two eldest sons for the East. Accordingly, after the boys had been educated at Eton, where the elder, Theophilus John, was the more reckless and impetuous, and the younger, Charles Theophilus, the more mild and studious of the two, they were both shipped off sorely against their will-Theophilus John for China, and Charles Theophilus for India. A China writership was then the best piece of preferment in the world. India

Directors reserved such appointments for their own sons; and, naturally, the eldest son in this case had the preference. But the Civil Service in India was then also a splendid field for a young man who wanted to grow rich by honourable exertion during a few years; and in sending out his second son as a writer to Calcutta, the old Indian major knew what he was about.

It was in January 1801, that Charles Metcalfe, then sixteen years of age, first set foot on the land with whose history hist name was to be so long and so intimately connected. He was put on shore by himself, from a boat, on one of the ghauts or quays of Calcutta in the middle of the night, and had to stumble his way as best he could to the house of one of his father's friends an opening into life not unlike that of one of our most celebrated naval commanders, which consisted, as he used to say himself, in being pushed, at the age of thirteen, through the porthole of a ship into the midst of a coil of rope. Metcalfe was then a homely, rather squab young fellow, with nothing dashing or handsome about him, but intelligent, gentle, ingenuous, and well instructed, and with a very decided, though far from obtrusive, consciousness of superior abilities.

That was an important time in the history of India. The British, either directly or as protectors of allied states, were in possession of a large part of Hindostan; and they had already, in the course of the conquests by which they acquired this extensive territory, given evidence of their ability to increase it indefinitely and become masters of the whole peninsula. There were, however, in India, various hostile powers, relics of the old Hindoo-Mahometan anarchy which had prevailed before the British began their conquests; and these powers were not yet convinced that the British element was assured of the supremacy. Not to mention the numerous petty states, which singly were of no avail, and only existed as so much material on which any conquering force in the peninsula could operate, there were at least four or five great powers antagonistic by their very nature to British rule. There were the powerful substantive states of various independent Mahratta chiefs. There were also various military or marauding powers of a less fixed character. In the north-west, and as yet little known, were the numerous Sikh tribes, only waiting the action of some confederating influence in order to become formidable. That, with such a sea of hostility surging along its whole frontier, and threatening at every moment to break in, the British empire in India could persevere in a policy of non-extension was not to be expected. At the utmost, it was possible for an Indian statesman only to refrain from a contrary policy as long and as patiently as events would

permit. Herein, accordingly, consisted the great difference between one class and another of Indian statesmen. Some, sharing the commercial feelings of the Company's Directors at home, were strenuous for a peace policy, pushed to its last possible limits. Others, regarding the complete conquest of India by Britain as an inevitable necessity, represented it as, after all, the wisest and most humane and most economical policy to accelerate the process, by pushing forward the British armies and advancing the British standard wherever and whenever a hostile movement on or near our frontiers afforded a fair occasion.

Of this last class of Indian statesmen was the Marquis of Wellesley, Governor-General of India at the time of Metcalfe's arrival. This "glorious little man," as he was affectionately called by his admirers, had a genius for conquest hardly less vast and aspiring than that of his equally diminutive predecessor, Warren Hastings, the founder of our Indian empire. With such efficient military agents at his bidding as Lake and his own brother, Arthur Wellesley, he was engaged, at the time of young Metcalfe's arrival, in plans for the aggrandizement and consolidation of the British dominions, at the expense of Mahrattas or whatever other power opposed our sway. But a good staff of civil subordinates at Calcutta was no less necessary for his purposes than good military agency in the field. Already, under his predecessors, Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore, the Indian civil service had been greatly reformed. "Instead of a race of men," says Mr. Kaye, "who were more than three-fourths traders, growing rich upon irregular and unrecognised gains, there was fast growing up an army of administrators, receiving fixed pay for fixed service, and adding nothing to their stores that was not to be found in the audit-books of the government." Lord Wellesley did his best to complete this reform. He made it a practice to select the most hopeful young civilians of the Bengal Presidency as confidential secretaries, and assistants, and clerks, to be employed at the Government-House in Calcutta, under his own eye, and trained up, as it were, in his school, and under the influence of his ideas. In justice to the memory of this remarkable man, the elder brother of the great Duke, we will quote a passage from Mr. Kaye indicating the extent and nature of his reputation in India fifty years ago.

"In that grand vice-regal school the clever boys of the Civil Service ripened rapidly into statesmen. They saw there how empires were governed. The imposing spectacle fired their young ambition, and each in turn grew eager and resolute to make for himself a place in history. Of all men living, perhaps, Lord Wellesley was the one around whose character and conduct the largest amount of youthful admiration was likely to gather. There was a vastness in all his