racterized, it is by a deep and reverential respect for the learning and genius of Jonson, of whom he never speaks but with mingled emotions of awe and love. In his prologues, in his dedications, nay, in his plays, where nothing but fulness of heart can account for the introduction of Jonson's name, these sentiments appear in all their force. Two passages are now before us, which, in addition to the one produced by Mr. Gilchrist, will suffice to shew that we have not misrepresented the genuine feelings of Shirley.

'Jonson, t' whose name wise art did bow, and wit
Is only justify'd by honouring it-

To hear whose touch, how would the learned quire
With silence stoop? And when he took his lyre
Apollo dropt his lute, ashamed to see,

A rival to the God of Harmonie.'-POEMS, 159.

Again,

'When the age, my most honoured lord, (the Earl of Rutland,) declineth from her primitive virtue, and the silken wits of the timesthat I may borrow from our acknowledged master, LEARNED JONSON,' &c.

Yet this is the person, whom the Dioscuri of the Shaksperian hemisphere, (Mr. Weber is out of the question,) accuse of taunting Jonson with malice,'' impudence,' and ' voluminous ignorance!' Much has here been done for this injured poet: much still remains to do: and we know not that we can recommend the completion of the task to a more competent person than Mr. Gilchrist.

The Letter to Mr. Kemble' requires merely to be mentioned. It is a slight performance, and professes to be so. The writer notices a few of Mr. Weber's more prominent mistakes in the text and notes of his edition; but he has not, we perceive, consulted the original copies; and is not, perhaps, very conversant with the peculiarities of our ancient writers. Other publications of a similar kind have reached us; but we can discover nothing in them which calls for particular observation.

ART. X. Voyages aux Indes Orientales, pendant les années 1802-3-4-5 & 6, &c. &c. Par C. F. Tombe, Ancien CapitaineAdjoint du Génie employé près de la Haute Régence à Batavia, &c. Revu et augmenté de plusieurs Notes et Eclaircissemens, par M. Sonnini. Paris. 1810.

Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java and its immediate Dependencies; comprising interesting Details of Batavia, and authentic particulars of the celebrated Poison-tree. Illustrated with a Map, &c. Stockdale. London. 1811.

The the eastern hemisphere, is now struck to

HE Gallo-Batavian flag, which for a little while had been suf

wave no more. The fears and anxieties which had arisen in the minds of many well-informed persons, as to the result of the expedition against Java, are happily relieved-not that any doubt could be entertained of the skill and valour of those to whom it was entrusted; but the season of the year, in which it set out from Malacca, was unfavourable; and the adverse monsoon generally blows with such violence, that the best equipped ships of war are but ill calculated to contend against it. Those, therefore, who argued the best, looked forward to a protracted result. It was thought by many that the Governor-General of India had unnecessarily augmented the strength of the expedition, and thereby delayed its departure, for the mere gratification of putting himself at the head of an armament so formidable as to bear down all resistance. We pretend not to decide on the wisdom of the measures pursued by the Governor-General; but he appears entitled to a due share of credit for having ascertained the practicability of a new route, by which a saving of six weeks was effected in point of time, and one of infinitely more importance, in the health and lives of troops, cooped up in transports under a vertical sun. On leaving the straits of Sincapore the fleet stood across to the western coast of Borneo, where, by the shelter afforded against the monsoon, and the influence of the land in producing variable winds, they made good a southerly course as far as the south-west point of this immense island, called point Sambaar, whence they were able to fetch the coast of Java off point Indremaya, two degrees to the eastward of Batavia.

The troops landed on the 4th August, and on the 8th, the city of Batavia surrendered at discretion on the 10th a sharp action took place with the corps d'élite of the Gallo-Batavian army, who was driven into their strongly entrenched camp at Cornelis, which, on the 26th, was carried by assault, when the whole of the enemy's army, upwards of 10,000 disciplined men, were either killed, taken or dispersed, with the exception of 50 or 60 horse that escaped with the Governor-General Jansens, who is described as a fugitive in the mountains of Java. Jansens, however, as appears by his own dispatch, retreated upon Cheribon, whence he doubtless proceeded, with the garrison, to Surabaya, at the eastern extremity of the island, (where the remains of Admiral Hartzinc's squadron was destroyed in 1807 by Sir Edward Pellew,) a strong position, and defended, as appears by a weekly report which fell into our hands, by a division of the army amounting to 3,700 men. The assault of Cornelis, however, we are inclined to think, may be considered as decisive of the fate of Java; and, as Lord Minto observes, 'an empire, which for two centuries has contributed greatly to the power, prosperity, and grandeur, of one of the principal and

most respected states of Europe, has been thus wrested from the short usurpation of the French government, added to the dominion of the British crown, and converted, from a seat of hostile machination and commercial competition, into an augmentation of British power and prosperity.'

A multitude of reflections crowd upon us, suggested by this consoling paragraph in the dispatch of the Captain General of India, It brings to our recollection the rapid strides by which the commerce and dominion of the Indian islands conducted the states of Holland to a pitch of wealth and grandeur and power almost unexampled in the history of nations. It reminds us of the wanton and tyrannical abuse of that power; of the base ingratitude of those states to the nation by whose disinterested aid it was attained; and of the causes which led to its decline and final overthrow. It suggests, moreover, to our consideration, how far and in what manner the conquest of the Dutch settlements in India, but more particularly those in the great eastern archipelago, usually called by the Dutch the Groot Oost, can lead to an augmentation of British power and prosperity.'

More than a century before the Dutch name was known in India, the Portugueze had astonished the European world with their daring enterprises, and brilliant conquests in the east. Urged on by the same kind of zeal which conducted our heroes to the holy wars, and prompted by a more encouraging prospect of wealth and dominion, their success, in establishing their religion, language, and commerce, among the most enlightened and powerful nations of Asia, was as rapid as extraordinary. In those days Lisbon became the great mart for the commodities of the east. The produce and manufactures of China and Japan, of Siam, Cambodia, and Malacca, of the whole coast of Malabar, Persia and Arabia, Melinda, Soffala, and of the great and populous islands which form the oriental archipelago, were all transported to the shores of the Tagus. So quick an advancement to wealth and power led, as quickly, to indolence and luxury. The natives were oppressed to support the profusion and extravagance of their new governors, and persecuted by the monks for their religious prejudices. The officers and merchants abandoned themselves to those voluptuous excesses so well understood in a tropical climate, left all their concerns to the management of slaves, and, in the course of two generations, the successors of Vasco de Gama had become a degenerate and effeminate race, corrupted in mind and body by every species of vice and debauchery. There was wanting, besides, some systematic arrangement, some bond of union, between the mother country and the colonies. Wealth flowed into Lisbon they knew not why and cared not wherefore;' but, at the time when the favours of Portu

gal were bestowed on the Brazils, and its revenues exhausted in the struggles with Spain, the current suddenly stopped. The Portugueze government, then, for the first time, began to experience the fatal consequences of not having adopted some system of security for those sources of wealth which the sagacity of their countrymen had discovered, and their valour and enterprise acquired.

It was not to be expected that these treasures would long remain concealed from, or unmolested by, the rest of Europe. Hol land and Zealand, from a train of favourable circumstances, and under the protection of England, had raised to some importance the United Provinces as a free and independent state in Europe. By industry and frugality their fishing-busses were increased to tradingvessels, and their trade produced a navy to protect it. At the close of the sixteenth century, they began to push their commercial speculations into the Indian seas; and their first attempt was crowned with complete success. An East India Company was immediately established and invested with extraordinary powers by the statesgeneral. They conferred on it the privilege of making peace or war with the sovereigns of the east, of erecting establishments, building forts, appointing governors, entering into alliances, &c. They sent large fleets into the eastern seas; and their first exploits, in return for the protection and support which they had received from the English government at home, were, by intrigue and violence, to drive its mercantile subjects from their infant establishments abroad; expelling them by force from some of their factories, and rendering them, in others, odious to the natives, by accusations as false as they were scandalous.

England, in fact, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, had scarcely felt the conviction that wealth was the great source of power, and that colonies and plantations, and consequently foreign commerce, contributed largely to the strength and security of the mother country. Though her fleets of war never failed to beat the De Ruyters and Van Tromps at home, the Van Necks and Van Hagens were far superior to her mercantile marine abroad. We had an East India company, it is true, with an exclusive charter; but it was at that time scarcely a national concern, and its limited capital, exclusively employed in trade, could scarcely be deemed worthy the attention of its more ambitious rivals.

The splendid establishments of the Portugueze were the game which principally attracted the avarice of the Dutch. Those enfeebled descendants of a race of heroes, whom the vices and luxuries of a warm climate had enervated and debased, were wholly unable to resist the unwearied and persevering energies of the Dutch; who captured or destroyed their trading vessels wherever they met with them, and applied the produce of their cargoes, in part, to the

raising and paying of native troops, with the aid of whom they attacked and carried the Portugueze settlements.

We have seen in a preceding article* in what manner they succeeded in rooting the Portugueze out of Japan, and forming an establishment for themselves, on which they have continued to the present day. Hither, in two annual ships, they carried from Batavia a few European cloths, silks, printed cottons, sugar, logwood, drugs and trinkets, for which, in return, they brought away copper, wrought silks, lacquered ware, porcelaine, and gold in ingots.

In China they were less successful. They endeavoured to establish themselves on Aimoy on the coast of Fokien, on the Pescadores, and on the great island of Formosa, from all of which they were successively expelled by the Chinese. Batavia and Bantam had long been in their possession, and they had driven the Portugueze from the more eastern settlement of Timor; but the rich and populous empire of China, the vast field it opened for their commercial speculations with Tonquin, Siam, Pegu, and Malacca, inflamed their avarice, and induced them to send a splendid embassy with valuable presents to Pekin, in 1655. At first they were received with due consideration by the Tartar monarch; but the famous jesuit, Adam Schall, who had long been a favourite at court, and whose hatred of heretics was unbounded, represented them in so bad a light to the emperor,- mere pedlars and pirates,' without law or religion, who by their intrigues and cruelties had established themselves in various parts of the east, and expelled the lawful and native princes, that they were speedily dismissed.

To do away the effect of the impression made in China, and which they were aware would spread by the annual junks of this nation which visited Batavia, they prevailed on the sovereigns of Java and the neighbouring islands to send ambassadors to the Prince of Orange, which, while it flattered the pride of the Stadtholder, might impose on the credulity of the simple orientals. Five sons of princes were also sent to be educated in Hollaud, and brought up in the principles of the Christian religion.

Their early attention had been drawn to the spice trade of the Moluccas, which, in the latter part of the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, was in the possession of the Spaniards and Portugueze. They determined on expelling them from those valuable settlements, which they effected without much difficulty, but not without a considerable slaughter both of Europeans and natives. But the nutmeg and the clove were produced in such abundance, in the whole group of islands, as greatly to diminish their value; they, therefore, bribed the princes of Ternate and

* Art. II. of the present Number.