"Well, I wish you would find your fun some other way. Come, Larkins, recollect yourself a little-you have a home not so far off. How do you think your father and mother would fancy seeing you reading the book you had yesterday, or coming out of Ballhatchet's with a bottle of spirits, called by a false name?'

"Larkins pinched his fingers; home was a string that could touch him, but it seemed beneath him to own it. At that moment a carriage approached, the boy's whole face lighted up, and he jumped forward. Our own!' he cried. There she is!'

"She was, of course, his mother; and Norman, though turning hastily away that his presence might prove no restraint, saw the boy fly over the door of the open carriage, and could have sobbed at the thought of what that meeting was." (Page 214, &c.)

There are many very pretty school scenes of this kind in the book, and those amongst us who received the rudiments of our own education at any of the numerous foundations resembling Stoneborough, scattered amongst the country towns of England, will sympathise, almost as heartily as the good Doctor himself, in all the school politics and parties, here described with so much zest.

It will, of course, be constantly objected against Norman that he is too good for a school-boy; but we can only answer, that he is by no means perfect, that he is not intended to be a picture of what school-boys generally are, but of what the few are, and the many should and might be, if they chose.

Perhaps we ought before this to have given a slight sketch of the plan of this story. It is very simple. The Daisies are Dr. May's eleven children, who are left motherless at the beginning of the book, in consequence of an accident which, at the same time, injures Margaret, the eldest daughter, a girl of seventeen or eighteen, and makes her an invalid for life. The subject of the remainder of the volume is the history, rather inward and mental, than external, of these children; having especial regard to their several youthful hopes and aspirations, and the ways in which in each case these were more or less completely fulfilled. Ethel is the most prominent character among the girls, and Norman among the boys. Flora is the shadow of the picture. She marries grandly, according to her aspirations, but is not happy amidst her wealth and distinctions, and is brought back at last to a more healthy frame of mind by various trials, particularly the loss of her child. Ethel devotes herself to the neighbouring village of Coxmoor and to her father. Her plans with regard to the former are gradually accomplished, chiefly owing to her perseverance and force of character; and we are left to conclude that

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she carried out her intentions respecting her father also. It is unnecessary to particularise each separate Daisy,-Richard, the eldest, we like very much and respect still more; but we feel inclined, like Ethel, to be provoked sometimes at his excessive matter-offact prosiness. Margaret also, we scarcely know why, tries our patience occasionally. There is a primness in her sentences that almost amount to affectation in some places; and we feel this the more, because all the other characters in the book are remarkably free from faults of this kind. Nevertheless she is a very good, conscientious girl, and we like her very much; but we do not think that the author has been successful, if she meant that Margaret should engross anything like the same amount of interest as Charlie in the Heir of Redclyffe," for instance. Our own favourite, we confess, is the Doctor himself, the father of the Daisies. His honest, manly, simple heart, his practical religion, his ready sympathy with all that interested his children, his boyishness, for, says our author, "The best men-and it is the best that generally are so-have the boy strong enough, on one side or the other of their natures, to be a great provocation to womankind." (Page 460.) His very faults, even, are all of an endearing kind; and when we see him bearing up so cheerfully and resignedly under a trial which still he feels so deeply and lastingly, which is the more bitter and crushing because he knows himself to have been the unintentional cause of it, but which he never allows to become morbid or to interfere with his duties in life, we feel for him the greatest admiration as well as affection, and we cannot wonder at the devotion and love felt and expressed for him by his children, or at the influence which he exercised over them.

There are many interesting details and bits of story scattered about the volume; and as we choose out a passage here and there for our extracts, we feel half inclined to do battle against our own verdict of lengthiness and tediousness; but the truth is, that the story and events, which would probably have been interesting if told historically and graphically, become wearisome as each incident is dragged through pages of dialogue, interesting and characteristic enough as dialogue, but hindering the natural course of the story at every turn, and spinning out ten or twelve pages of matter into fifty pages of print.

This is not felt in detail, but it is sufficiently apparent in reading the entire book. There is so much to like and admire in it, in spite of its faults, that we are the more grieved that an author like Miss Young, of great and increasing reputation, should have,

knowingly (as appears from the preface) risked her fame, and much perhaps of her future usefulness as a writer, by publishing, in an entire form, a work originally designed to be written for the several parts of a magazine; and we cannot help thinking that, for her own sake, she would have exercised a wiser discretion had she adhered to her first plan regarding it, instead of allowing it to become" an overgrown book of a nondescript class," as she has herself very accurately described it.

We have no doubt that Miss Young acted from the best motives in doing as she has done, wishing (as she says), "That the young should take one hint, to think whether their hopes and upward breathings are truly upwards, and founded in lowliness.” But a writer who has achieved a reputation and influence like Miss Young's, should recollect that these are her "talents," held by her in trust, to be used so as to produce the greatest amount of good, and not to be lightly risked for the sake of inculcating any single moral, however excellent, still less for the purpose of indulging that passion for writing, which seems to overcome at times the discretion of the best and wisest authors.

ART. VI.-AN AGE OF PROGRESS IN BOMBAY.

1740-1762.

1. A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. By the ABBE RAYNAL. Vol. 1.

2. Voyage en Arabie et en d'autres Pays circonvoisins. C. NIEBUHR. Tome Second; 1780.

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THE upheavings of a nation rising to its high tide of greatness are really more regular and uniform than they appear to be: its historical periods are as waves rolling up one after another, and then receding, perhaps every ninth wave being the most towering, and sweeping far beyond those which preceded it. Weak nations look on for awhile, and suppose that it is the great nation's flood-time; that it will rise no higher; until, with one great rush, it overwhelms and swallows them in its abyss. Since the days of Saxon Harold how many obscure men have croaked, like ill-boding ravens in the hollow oaks, of England's decline

and fall! The Normans conquered her, the French reclaimed their rights and swept her armies from their soil, the wars of the Roses brought her to the last stage of exhaustion; these were receding waves. But the advance of many was gradual, of some extraordinary. And Western India, too, has had her rushes of prosperity. The period when Bombay was first reduced to order, was one of her ninth waves; the period of which we are now to tell was another.

We know no stronger evidence of the Company's prosperity than the abundant capital which was always in their hands, not only seeking for, but in due time finding, employment. They were the Rothschilds of all the maritime states in India. On the western side there was scarce a petty prince or chief, whom the Government of Bombay had not accommodated with a loan. From Anjengo, near Cape Comorin, to Tatta on the Indus, their little bills were dropped into the hands, and their importunate duns besieged the ears, of unwilling monarchs. His warlike Majesty of Travancore had a long account with them, and they could only bribe him to pay them with investments of pepper by acceding to his application for great guns and muskets. His Majesty the Zamorin lay under heavy pecuniary obligations to them, which he sometimes acknowledged with the humility of one who intends to ask for more; sometimes defiantly denied like a dishonest bully. Their Majesties the Kings of Colastry, the First and Second King, and the King Regent, of Cotiote, the First, Second, and Third Kings of Nelleasaroon, His Highness Ali Raja, the Boyanore, the Cartenadu, beside many other Nairs and Namburis, had pecuniary transactions with the Government of Bombay, through the Factory of Tellicherry, and never by any chance was the balance in their favour. The name of the Raja of Soonda was in the books of the English Resident at Onore for a considerable amount. The demands of the President and Council on the Viceroy of Goa threatened His Excellency with bankruptcy. Then came Angria, against whom they had many scores for stolen property; but as he only laughed at their polite requests for payment, they were waiting until they could lay upon him an iron grasp. Siddee of Rajapore and Jinjeera was better disposed, and always expressed himself as wishful to pay a debt of long standing; but really just when the money was wanted he happened to be out at elbows. The Nawab and the Siddee of Surat owed to the Factory debts which were constantly fluctuating. To the Nawabs of Cambay but little credit was given, yet they too were often in the

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Resident's books. The Jams of Cutch and Prince of Sind were also debtors. The accounts of all these Chiefs, with large amounts due at Gombroon and Bussora, often made the Diary of the Government little more than a record of mortgages, debts, defalcations, and urgent appeals for payment. Thus their politics often became indissolubly mixed with their pecuniary dealings; and questions of peace or war, of alliance or antagonism, depended on the number of rupees or fanams due to the gigantic creditor. At one time the Zamorin was so resolutely bent upon being dishonest, that an appeal to the sword was imminent, and Vivre sans payer ou mourir was his cry. The Cotiote craved the armed assistance of the English to reduce a rebellious subject, and the reply was, Please your Majesty, pay and you shall have it. The King of Colastry applied for arms and ammunition that he might surprise a French post, and it was deemed politic not to comply and offend a European neighbour, only because the applicant had never paid for supplies which he had previously received. The Siddee of Surat could not discharge his account for war charges, and the belligerent Factors were on the eve of removing to the bar that they might stop the trade and distrain the defaulter's fleet. In fact the Government of Bombay had thrown a net-work of debt over the shores of Western India, through the meshes of which the Native Chiefs were ever struggling, but in vain, to make their escape.

Another symptom of progress were the efforts-more or less successful-which were being made to open a new line of communication with Europe. From the moment that Vasco de Gama discovered the via invia of the Cape, Europeans had become the more anxious to reach India without traversing the vast expanse of the Atlantic; even as all travellers who plod along a circuitous route, consider how they may approach their object more directly. Many of the first adventurers, when outward-bound, doubled the Cape, then parted from their ships on the shores of India, and attempted to return overland; but the difficulties they encountered were so great, so many of them perished, or were detained in heart-breaking captivity by the savage inhospitable princes of the intermediate countries, that for nearly a century we hear no more of such enterprises. A hundred and twenty years ago, however, letters were frequently forwarded by what is now called the Euphrates Valley route; but under the most favourable circumstances the transit occupied so long a time that probably only duplicate copies of important despatches were sent, because there