It is impossible to pursue any farther the picture drawn by the venerable Las Casas, not of what he had heard, but of what he had seen-nature and humanity revolt at the details. Suffice it to say that, so intolerable were the toils and sufferings inflicted upon this weak and unoffending race, that they sunk under them, dissolving as it were from the face of the earth. Many killed themselves in despair, and even mothers overcame the powerful instinct of nature, and destroyed the infants at their breasts, to spare them a life of wretchedness. Twelve years had not elapsed since the discovery of the island, and several hundred thousands of its native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims to the grasping avarice of the white men."

"Sometimes," says Mr. Irving, tney would hunt down a straggling Indian, and compel him, by torments, to betray the hiding-place of his com panions, binding him and driving him before them as a guide. Wherever they discovered one of these places of refuge, filled with the aged and the infirm, with feeble women and helpless children, they massacred them without mercy! They wished to inspire terror throughout the land, and to frighten the whole tribe into submission. They cut off the hands of those whom they took roving al large, and sent them, as they said, to deliver them as letters to their friends, demanding their surrender. Numberless were those, says Las Casas, whose hands were amputated in this manner, and many anguish and loss of blood. of them sunk down and died by the way, through

The conquerors delighted in exercising strange and ingenious cruelties. They mingled horrible levity with their bloodthirstiness. They erected gibbets long and low, so that the feet of the sufferers might reach the ground, and their death be lingering. They hanged thirteen together, in reve rence, says the indignant Las Casas, of our blessed Saviour and the twelve apostles! While their victims were suspended, and still living, they hacked them with their swords, to prove the strength of their arm and the edge of their weapons. They wrapped them in dry straw, and setting fire to it, terminated their existence by the fiercest agony.

these things,' says he, and others revolting to human nature, my own eyes beheld! and now I almost fear to repeat them, scarce believing myself, or whether I have not dreamt them.'

These pictures are sufficiently shocking; but they do not exhaust the horrors that cover the brief history of this ill-fated people. The province or district of Xaragua, which was ruled over by a princess, called Anacaona, celebrated in all the contemporary accounts for the grace and dignity of her manners, and her confiding attachment to the strangers, had hitherto enjoyed a happy exemption from the troubles which distracted the other parts of the island, and when visited about ten years before by the brother of Columbus, had impressed all the Spaniards with the idea of an "These are horrible details; yet a veil is drawn earthly paradise: both from the fertility and over others still more detestable. They are related sweetness of the country, the gentleness of by the venerable Las Casas, who was an eye-witness its people, and the beauty and grace of the of the scenes he describes. He was young at the women. Upon some rumours that the neigh-time, but records them in his advanced years. All bouring caciques were assembling for hostile purposes, Ovando now marched into this devoted region with a well-appointed force of near four hundred men. He was hospitably and joyfully received by the princess: and affected to encourage and join in the festivity which his presence had excited. He was even himself engaged in a sportful game with his officers, when the signal for massacre was given and the place was instantly covered with blood! Eighty of the caciques were burnt over slow fires! and thousands of the unarmed and unresisting people butchered, without regard to sex or age. "Humanity," Mr. Irving very justly observes, "turns with horror from such atrocities, and would fain discredit them: But they are circumstantially and still more minutely recorded by the venerable Las Casas-who was resident in the island at the time, and conversant with the principal actors in the tragedy."

Still worse enormities signalised the final subjugation of the province of Higuey-the last scene of any attempt to resist the tyrannical power of the invaders. It would be idle to detail here the progress of that savage and most unequal warfare: but it is right that the butcheries perpetrated by the victors should not be forgotten-that men may see to what incredible excesses civilised beings may be tempted by the possession of absolute and unquestioned power-and may learn, from indisputable memorials, how far the abuse of delegated and provincial authority may be actually carried. If it be true, as Homer has alleged, that the day which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth-it | seems to be still more infallibly and fatally rue, that the master generally suffers a yet larger privation.

"The system of Columbus may have borne hard upon the Indians, born and brought up in untasked freedom; but it was never cruel nor sanguinary. punishments; his desire was to cherish and civilise the Indians, and to render them useful subjects, not to oppress, and persecute, and destroy them. When he beheld the desolation that had swept them from the land during his suspension from authority, he could not restrain the strong expression of his feelto Spain, he thus expresses himself on the subject: ings. In a letter written to the king after his return 'The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches of the island; for it is they who cultivate and make the bread and the provisions for the Christians, who dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the offices and labours both of men and beasts. I am informed that, since I left this island, (that is, in less than three years,) six parts out of seven of the natives are dead, all through ill treatment and inhumanity! some by the sword, others by blows and cruel usage, and others through hunger. The greater part have perished in the mountains and glens, whither they had fled, from not being able to support the labour imposed upon them.""

He inflicted no wanton massacres nor vindictive

The story now draws to a close. Columbus returned to Spain, broken down with age and affliction-and after two years spent in unavailing solicitations at the court of the cold-blooded and ungrateful Ferdinand (his generous patroness, Isabella, having died im mediately on his return), terminated with characteristic magnanimity a life of singulat energy, splendour, and endurance. Indepen dent of his actual achievements, he was un doubtedly a great and remarkable man; and Mr. Irving has summed up his general char acter in a very eloquent and judicious way.

"His ambition," he observes, "was lofty and noble. He was full of high thoughts, and anxious

to distinguish himself by great achievements. It has been said that a mercenary feeling mingled with his views, and that his stipulations with the Spanish Court were selfish and avaricious. The charge is inconsiderate and unjust. He aimed at dignity and wealth in the same lofty spirit in which he sought renown; and the gains that promised to arise from his discoveries, he intended to appropriate in the same princely and pious spirit in which they were demanded. He contemplated works and achievements of benevolence and religion: vast contributions for the relief of the poor of his native city; the foundation of churches, where masses should be said for the souls of the departed; and armies for the recovery of the holy sepulchre in Palestine.

"In his testament, he enjoined on his son Diego, and whoever after him should inherit his estates, whatever dignities and titles might afterwards be granted by the king, always to sign himself simply the Admiral,' by way of perpetuating in the family its real source of greatness."

our.

of glory would have broke upon his mind could he have known that he had indeed discovered a new continent, equal to the whole of the old world in magnitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all the earth hitherto known by civilised man! And how would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the cares of penury, the neglect of a fickle public, and the injustice of an ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the splendid empires which were to spread over the beautiful world he had discovered; and the nations, and tongues, and languages which were to fill its lands with his renown, and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!"

The appendix to Mr. Irving's work, which occupies the greater part of the last volume, contains most of the original matter which his learning and research have enabled him to bring to bear on the principal subject, and constitutes indeed a miscellany of a singularly curious and interesting description. It consists, besides very copious and elaborate accounts of the family and descendants of Columbus, principally of extracts and critiques of the discoveries of earlier or contemporary voyages navigators-the of the Carthaginians and the Scandinavians,-of Behem, the Pinzons, Amerigo Vespucci, and others-with some very curious remarks on the travels of Marco Polo, and Mandeville-a dissertation on the ships used by Columbus and his contemporaries-on the Atalantis of Plato-the imaginary island of St. Brandan, and of the Seven Cities-together with remarks on the writings of Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Herrera, Las Casas, and the other contemporary chroni clers of those great discoveries. The whole drawn up, we think, with singular judgment, diligence, and candour; and presenting the reader, in the most manageable form, with almost all the collateral information which could be brought to elucidate the transactions to which they relate.

"He was devoutly pious; religion mingled with the whole course of his thoughts and actions, and shines forth in all his most private and unstudied writings. Whenever he made any great discovery, he celebrated it by solemn thanks to God. The voice of prayer and melody of praise rose from his ships when he first beheld the New World, and his first action on landing was to prostrate himself upon the earth and return thanksgivings. Every evening, the Salve Regina, and other vesper hymns, were chanted by his crew, and masses were performed in the beautiful groves that bordered the wild shores of this heathen land. The religion thus deeply seated in the soul, diffused a sober dig. mary and benign composure over his whole demeanHis language was pure and guarded, free from all imprecations, oaths, and other irreverent expressions. But his piety was darkened by the bigotry of the age. He evidently concurred in the opinion that all the nations who did not acknowledge the Christian faith were destitute of natural rights; that the sternest measures might be used for their conversion, and the severest punishments inflicted upon their obstinacy in unbelief. In this spirit of bigotry he considered himself justified in making captives of the Indians, and transporting them to Spain to have them taught the doctrines of Chrisfanity, and in selling them for slaves if they Such is the general character of Mr. Irving's pretended to resist his invasions. He was counte-book-and such are parts of its contents. We nanced in these views, no doubt, by the general opinion of the age. But it is not the intention of the author to justify Columbus on a point where it is inexcusable to err. Let it remain a blot on his ilustrious name, and let others derive a lesson from it."

He was a man, too, undoubtedly, as all truly great men have been, of an imaginative and sensitive temperament-something, as Mr. Irving has well remarked, even of a visionary-but a visionary of a high and lofty order, controlling his ardent imagination by a powerful judgment and great practical sagacity, and deriving not only a noble delight but signal accessions of knowledge from this vigour and activity of his fancy.

do not pretend to give any view whatever of the substance of four large historical volumes; and fear that the specimens we have ventured to exhibit of the author's way of writing are not very well calculated to do justice either to the occasional force, or the constant variety, of his style. But for judicious readers they will probably suffice-and, we trust, will be found not only to warrant the praise we have felt ourselves called on to bestow, but to induce many to gratify themselves by the perusal of the work at large.

Mr. Irving, we believe, was not in England when his work was printed: and we must say he has been very insufficiently represented by the corrector of the press. We do not recollect ever to have seen so handsome a

Yet, with all this fervour of imagination," as book with so many gross typographical errors Mr. Irving has strikingly observed, its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in igno. In many places they obscure the sense-and rance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until are very frequently painful and offensive. his last breath he entertained the idea that he had It will be absolutely necessary that this be merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had discovered some of the wild regions of the east. He supposed Hispaniola to be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by the ships of Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. What visions

looked to in a new impression; and the author would do well to avail himself of the same opportunity, to correct some verbal inaccuracies, and to polish and improve some passages of slovenly writing.

(June, 1827.)

Memoirs of ZEHIR-ED-DIN MUHAMMED BABER, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, in the Jaghatai Turki, and translated, partly by the late JOHN LEYDEN, Esq. M.D., partly by WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq. With Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction: together with a Map of the Countries between the Oxus and Jaxartes, and a Memoir regarding its Construction, by CHARLES WADDINGTON, ESQ., of the East India Company's Engineers.

London: 1826.

THIS is a very curious, and admirably edited | work. But the strongest impression which the perusal of it has left on our minds is the boundlessness of authentic history; and, if we might venture to say it, the uselessness of all history which does not relate to our own fraternity of nations, or even bear, in some way or other, on our own present or future

condition.

them now.

Tartars to the Celestial Empire of China. It will not do to say, that we want something nobler in character, and more exalted in intellect, than is to be met with among those murderous Orientals-that there is nothing to interest in the contentions of mere force and violence; and that it requires no very finedrawn reasoning to explain why we should turn with disgust from the story, if it had been preserved, of the savage affrays which have drenched the sands of Africa or the rocks of New Zealand-through long generations of murder-with the blood of their brutish popu lation. This may be true enough of Madagascar or Dahomy; but it does not apply to the case before us. The nations of Asia generally-at least those composing its great states -were undoubtedly more polished than those of Europe, during all the period that preceded their recent connection. Their warriors were as brave in the field, their statesmen more subtle and politic in the cabinet: In the arts of luxury, and all the elegancies of civil life, they were immeasurably superior; in inge. nuity of speculation-in literature-in social politeness-the comparison is still in their favour.

We have here a distinct and faithful account of some hundreds of battles, sieges, and great military expeditions, and a character of a prodigious number of eminent individuals,-men famous in their day, over wide regions, for genius or fortune-poets, conquerors, martyrs -founders of cities and dynasties-authors of immortal works-ravagers of vast districts abounding in wealth and population. Of all these great personages and events, nobody in Europe, if we except a score or two of studious Orientalists, has ever heard before; and it would not, we imagine, be very easy to show that we are any better for hearing of A few curious traits, that happen to be strikingly in contrast with our own manners and habits, may remain on the memory of a reflecting reader-with a general confused recollection of the dark and gor- It has often occurred to us, indeed, to congeous phantasmagoria. But no one, we may sider what the effect would have been on the fairly say, will think it worth while to digest fate and fortunes of the world, if, in the fouror develope the details of the history; or be teenth, or fifteenth century, when the germs at the pains to become acquainted with the of their present civilisation were first disclosed, leading individuals, and fix in his memory the the nations of Europe had been introduced to series and connection of events. Yet the ef- an intimate and friendly acquaintance with fusion of human blood was as copious-the the great polished communities of the East, display of talent and courage as imposing and had been thus led to take them for their the perversion of high moral qualities, and the masters in intellectual cultivation, and their waste of the means of enjoyment as unspar-models in all the higher pursuits of genius ing, as in other long-past battles and intrigues and revolutions, over the details of which we still pore with the most unwearied attention; and to verify the dates or minute circumstances of which, is still regarded as a great exploit in historical research, and among the noblest employments of human learning and sagacity.

polity, and art. The difference in our social and moral condition, it would not perhaps be easy to estimate: But one result, we conceive, would unquestionably have been, to make us take the same deep interest in their ancient story, which we now feel, for similar reasons, in that of the sterner barbarians of early Rome, or the more imaginative clans and colonies of immortal Greece. The experiment, however, though there seemed oftener than once

It is not perhaps very easy to account for the eagerness with which we still follow the fortunes of Miltiades, Alexander, or Cæsar-to be some openings for it, was not made. of the Bruce and the Black Prince, and the interest which yet belongs to the fields of Marathon and Pharsalia, of Crecy and Bannockburn, compared with the indifference, or rather reluctance, with which we listen to the details of Asiatic warfare-the conquests that transferred to the Moguls the vast sovereignties of India, or raised a dynasty of Manchew

Our crusading ancestors were too rude themselves to estimate or to feel the value of the oriental refinement which presented itself to their passing gaze, and too entirely occupied with war and bigotry, to reflect on its causes or effects; and the first naval adventurers who opened up India to our commerce, were both too few and too far off to communicate to

and prosperity is owing to our greater freedom, | of its authors-the substantial advantages of we are immediately tempted to ask, by what honesty and fair dealing over the most ingethat freedom has itself been produced? In nious systems of trickery and fraud;—and the same way we might ascribe the superior even-though this is the last and hardest, as mildness and humanity of our manners, the well as the most precious, of all the lessons abated ferocity of our wars, and generally our of reason and experience-that the toleration. respect for human life, to the influence of a even of religious errors is not only prudent Religion which teaches that all men are equal and merciful in itself, and most becoming a in the sight of God, and inculcates peace and fallible and erring being, but is the surest charity as the first of our duties. But, besides and speediest way to compose religious differthe startling contrast between the profligacy, ences, and to extinguish that most formidable treachery, and cruelty of the Eastern Empire bigotry, and those most pernicious errors, after its conversion to the true faith, and the which are fed and nourished by persecution. simple and heroic virtues of the heathen re- It is the want of this knowledge, or rather of public, it would still occur to inquire, how it the capacity for attaining it, that constitutes has happened that the nations of European the palpable inferiority of the Eastern races; descent have alone embraced the sublime and, in spite of their fancy, ingenuity, and truths, and adopted into their practice the restless activity, condemns them, it would mild precepts, of Christianity, while the peo- appear irretrievably, to vices and sufferings, ple of the East have uniformly rejected and from which nations in a far ruder condition disclaimed them, as alien to their character are comparatively free. But we are wanderand habits-in spite of all the efforts of the ing too far from the magnificent Baber and apostles, fathers, and martyrs, in the primitive his commentators, and must now leave these and most effective periods of their preaching? vague and general speculations for the facts How, in short, it has happened that the sensual and details that lie before us. and sanguinary creed of Mahomet has super- Zehir-ed-din Muhammed, surnamed Baber, seded the pure and pacific doctrines of Chris- or the Tiger, was one of the descendants of tianity in most of those very regions where it Zengiskhan and of Tamerlane; and though was first revealed to mankind, and first es- inheriting only the small kingdom of Fergtablished by the greatest of existing govern- hana in Bucharia, ultimately extended his ments? The Christian revelation is no doubt dominions by conquest to Delhi and the the most precious of all Heaven's gifts to the greater part of Hindostan; and transmitted to benighted world. But it is plain, that there his famous descendants, Akber and Aurengwas a greater aptitude to embrace and to zebe, the magnificent empire of the Moguls. profit by it in the European than in the Asiatic He was born in 1482, and died in 1530. race. A free government, in like manner, is Though passing the greater part of his time unquestionably the most valuable of all human in desperate military expeditions, he was an inventions-the great safeguard of all other educated and accomplished man; an elegant temporal blessings, and the mainspring of all poet; a minute and fastidious critic in all the intellectual and moral improvement:-But niceties and elegances of diction; a curious such a government is not the result of a lucky and exact observer of the statistical phenothought or happy casualty; and could only be mena of every region he entered ; a great adestablished among men who had previously mirer of beautiful prospects and fine flowers; learned both to relish the benefits it secures, and, though a devoted Mahometan in his and to understand the connection between the way, a very resolute and jovial drinker of means it employs and the ends at which it aims. wine. Good-humoured, brave, munificent, We come then, though a little reluctantly, sagacious, and frank in his character, he to the conclusion, that there is a natural and in- might have been a Henry IV. if his training herent difference in the character and temper- had been in Europe; and even as he is, is ament of the European and the Asiatic races less stained, perhaps, by the Asiatic vices of -consisting, perhaps, chiefly in a superior cruelty and perfidy than any other in the list capacity of patient and persevering thought in of her conquerors. The work before us is a the former and displaying itself, for the most faithful translation of his own account of his part, in a more sober and robust understanding, life and transactions; written, with some conand a more reasonable, principled, and inflexi- siderable blanks, up to the year 1508, in the ble morality. It is this which has led us, at form of a narrative-and continued afteronce to temper our political institutions with wards, as a journal, till 1529. It is here prospective checks and suspicious provisions illustrated by the most intelligent, learned, against abuses, and, in our different orders and least pedantic notes we have ever seen and degrees, to submit without impatience to annexed to such a performance; and by two those checks and restrictions ;-to extend our or three introductory dissertations, more clear, reasonings by repeated observation and ex-masterly, and full of instruction than any it periment, to larger and larger conclusions has ever been our lot to peruse on the history and thus gradually to discover the paramount or geography of the East. The translation importance of discipline and unity of purpose was begun by the late very learned and enin war, and of absolute security to person and terprising Dr. Leyden. It has been comproperty in all peaceful pursuits-the folly of pleted, and the whole of the valuable comall passionate and vindictive assertion of sup-mentary added by Mr. W. Erskine, on the posed rights and pretensions, and the certain solicitation of the Hon. Mountstewart Elphinrecoil of long-continued injustice on the heads stone and Sir John Malcolm, the two indi