by improving the condition of its women, and all honour to those who are willing to devote their lives and labours to this end; but as regards the general statement, it would be more accurate to say that progress in India or elsewhere, if it is to bring forth lasting fruits, must consist in the collective moving forward of the whole body politic, not in the isolated advance of a single section of it. Those movements which have changed the face of the world have been, with few exceptions, profoundly religious; and we do not conceive it possible that by bread alone-that is, by the legislator and the schoolmaster-Indian society can be remodelled. The privileges of women fell away one after the other, as the abuses of Brahmanism-caste, sacerdotal tyranny, and a corrupt idol-worship-came into force; the restoration of those privileges may hardly be looked for, till the hydra-heads of polytheism be decrowned, and all men are acknowledged equals in the free service of God. Gloomy as is the prospect which at present confronts us in India, there is some encouragement in the thought that the unity of the Supreme Being is no strange doctrine to the Hindu mind, since a perception of it--not any pseudo-celestial patent for pious jugglery-is the transcendent secret which the Brahman priesthood have consciously transmitted from one generation to another, and of which their order has been the enduring, if unworthy reliquary. We see in India a system of life pricked out with gross and idolatrous rites. We see Juggernat'h's car, Kali's necklace of human skulls, immorality abetted, and woman degraded. We know our proudest dependency to be sunk in a mass of prejudice and superstition which may any day fire the torch to a new mutiny. By very slow degrees, all this is being undermined by the advancing tide of western civilisation. What is growing up in its stead? What manner of faith are we substituting to the vast religious organisation which has ruled every thought, every action, of its countless votaries from unremembered ages, even to this day? Is it Christianity? Who that knows India will answer in the affirmative? The causes, it is not for us to seek to explain, but this much we will say that those who hold England to be gravely to blame in this matter, should bear in mind the difficulty of the task; the tact, the genius-in one word, the inspiration needed to transform the religion of an ancient and utterly dissimilar civilisation, which has for us, and we for it, much of the nature of an illegible inscription in an unknown tongue. If it 'was rumoured,' writes La Bruyère, in the 17th century, that 'the real object of the Oriental embassy which lately visited 'Paris was to convert the most Christian king and all his sub'jects to the religion of the monarch of Siam, how absurd we 'should think it! How we should laugh at the notion of ' erecting brazen images in our towns for us to fall down 'before, and permitting heathen sectaries to penetrate into our 'homes, in order to direct the consciences of our wives and ' daughters! Nevertheless,' he adds-what is still in the main true- such an idea cannot appear more ridiculous to us than 'our own efforts to introduce Christianity into the East must seem to the people of that quarter of the globe.' By rational government, by education, by intimate contact, we are breaking down the idols of the higher classes of Hindu society. It is a most positive fact that our attempts to spread the gospel have been attended by no commensurate success. There can be no good in nursing illusions on this serious subject, more especially as the acknowledgment of past failures, so far from leading us to despair, should incite us to fresh endeavours. Meanwhile it cannot be doubted that the gulf is widening. British rule seems to be converting the Hindus, not to Christianity, but to an Atheism thinly cloaked by an outward conformity to the old observances. The crumbling authority of immemorial custom threatens to be replaced by the anarchy of a hopeless unbelief, and we behold India in the position of a prisoner, who, escaping from his dungeon, is lost in a desert. In this crisis it is our plain duty, without abating our own exertions, thankfully to welcome those of men, pure-minded and courageous, whatever may be their religious opinions, who strive no less than we for the time when regenerate India shall give voice to the silent orison of every pious Brahman: Greater than the sun, that sun's 'supremacy, GOD let us adore, which may well direct.' * * The Gayatri, or Mother of the Vedas, the Brahman repeats mentally after bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges, expressing its words on the fingers of his right hand covered with a cloth, but he never utters the words with his 100 ART. IV-Servia. (1.) The History of Servia and the Servian Revolution, with a (8.) Die Serbien. Wien, 1867. Kanitz. (5.) Les Serbes de Turquie. Par A. UBICINI. BUT a few months ago few Englishmen would have been able to describe precisely the position of Servia geographically or politically, few would have been able to say whether the country was a part of Austria or of Turkey, whether it was independent or an integral part of either empire, and still fewer would have been able to give the least account of its interesting political history during the last sixty years, during which it has become a not unimportant member of the European system. Within the last few weeks, however, Servia has claimed a large share in the telegrams of the morning papers. It has become of some consequence to Europe to be informed if Ristich still holds the post of Prime Minister in Belgrade, lips. The Brahman priests seck in every way to keep the Gayatri undivulged, partly from their intense veneration for it as a mystical symbol, and partly, it is conjectured, from the dread lest a knowledge of it should guide the common multitude to the highest truth. The following account of the manner in which Sir William Jones obtained the Gayatri in the Sanskrit character is taken from a MS. memorandum made at the time by his friend, Sir C. E. Carrington: May 10th, 1764.-About a fortnight before his death, Sir William Jones told me that he had procured the Gayatri of a Sunnyasi, to whom in return he gave all the money he then had in the house, and would have given, he said, ten times more, had more been within his reach at the moment. The Sunnyasi afterwards met one of Sir William's pundits, to whom he expressed himself amply satisfied, with much emphasis. Shortly after his death I begged Mr. Harrington to request his executor, Mr. Fairlie, to be careful that no pundits or Brahmans had access to his papers, as on starting to two Brahmans, as if by chance, the question what they would do with the Gayatri if they saw it in writing, they immediately an swered, “Tear it, most certainly." Mr. Harrington thought Mr. Morris more able to interfere, to whom I related these circumstances, and who, in consequence of this information, on searching, found the object of my concern and fears; and on going myself, Mr. Fairlie obligingly permitted me to take a copy.' or if he has been replaced by Marinovich; and the news that the Skouptchina, or National Assembly, has been removed from Kraguevatz to Belgrade is almost important enough to affect the money market of Europe. Servia, in short, has quite lately come before the world, and naturally people are beginning to ask, 'What is Servia ?' The country is part of that incoherent and troublesome empire for whom we have during the last twenty years shed much blood and wasted millions of treasure-an empire the name of which at this moment carries pain and grief to many a desolate English home-it is part of the Ottoman Empire, but only nominally a province of Turkey, for it has fought for and won home rule, and now merely pays a fixed and annual tribute to the Sultan. Geographically the country presents the form of a rough triangle. On the east and south-east it is bounded by Bulgaria, naturally a very rich country, but rendered poor by Turkish misgovernment. On the south-west Servia is bordered by Albania and Bosnia, the former of which provinces is chiefly peopled by savage Moslems, more addicted to war than husbandry. On the north run the magnificent rivers the Save and the Danube, the latter almost as good an outlet as the sea, nay, better, if the seaboard has not good ports. Here is the progressive civilising side of Servia; but here again she has not been highly favoured, for civilising influences have had to be filtered through the somewhat barbarous natives of Hungary, a nation whose culture is decidedly second-hand, for there is no question that the Germans or Saxons are the pioneers of human progress in these Danubian regions. Servia, like Hungary, has been overrun by the most barbarous of those Mahomedan Powers which at one time menaced the civilisation and religion of Europe. This must be the apology for her backward condition. She is the youngest of the European family. The earliest part of the history of Servia, like that of our own country, is much mixed up with fable and confused with the stories of other tribes; but we are told that the Servians (or Serbs) are a race of Slavonians who emigrated from a district north of the Carpathians in Gallicia, and came as an organised community, commanded by chiefs, to the Danubian lands, being invited by the Emperor Heraclius to people a desolated country laid waste by the Avars. These Servian colonists were politically very much in their present position, that is, living in suzerainty to the Emperor at Constantinople, though enjoying the advantages of autonomy, or self-government, under their native rulers. On their adoption of Christianity about half the tribe fell under the spiritual dominion of the Romish and half under that of the Greek Church, an unhappy event, which, by dividing the people and sowing the seeds of theological rancour in their midst, has had a sinister influence on their political life. As the Byzantine Empire grew weak the Slavonians grew strong (history repeats itself, for the same process is going on at the present time); they gained an independence so complete that the kingdom of Slavonia made its mark in medieval history: its kings intermarried with the royal and imperial families of France, Venice, and Constantinople, and even waged war with the latter. Mean time an Asiatic tribe of Tartary, having organised into a nation its numerous conquered tributaries, and received the fiery impulse of Mahomedanism, and, above all, having adopted the principle of a standing army in the form of the terrible Janissaries, recruited by levies of the finest Christian boys, was steadily advancing from the East. These new people were the Ottoman Turks. In place of the luxurious and feeble Byzantine Christian rule there was established the new Mahomedan power, nor was it long before it came into collision with the brave chivalry of the Servian Czar Stephen Dushan and his knightly following on the fatal field of Kossova in 1389, and there was lost the independence of Servia. And here we must needs leave a great gap in the history of Servia, which at that time included the present principality with Bosnia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, and most of the neighbouring Pashaliks. The people became Ottoman subjects, the nobles adopted the Mahomedan religion, which henceforward became the State Church, in order to preserve their feudal privileges, and were hereafter called Turks, while the common people clung to their faith and submitted to ages of tyranny and oppression. A deep sleep of Asiatic torpor and barbarism settled on the doomed land, which became one of the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty; nor did |
