with the Sandracottus, or, as it is written by Athenæus, Sandracoptus, who reigned over the Gangaridæ, is said by Plutarch to have seen Alexander, and was the monarch with whom Seleucus Nicator entered into a treaty, and whose court was frequently visited by the historian Megasthenes. The Greek accounts describe this king as of low origin, the son of a barber; the Indian, though of royal birth, yet the son of a king who was himself born of a Sudra mother, by a woman of low extraction: and it is curious that in the description of the allies led by an invader against Chandra-gupta, appear the Javanas, who may be converted without much difficulty into Ionians. The interest of the play turns on the character of the minister Chanakya, to whose consummate ability Chandra-gupta owes his elevation to the throne. Chanakya, having been cruelly insulted, loosed the single tuft of hair which adorns the head of a Brahmin, and made a solemn vow never to tie it up again till he had obtained full vengeance from the house of Nanda. He has succeeded in exterminating the elder royal race, and his only object is now to secure the throne of Chandra-gupta. For this purpose he must provide him with a minister of equal ability to himself. Rakshasa, the only man worthy of succeeding to his place, is, on the other side, endeavouring to raise, or has already organized, a formidable invasion of the kingdom. It is the object of Chanakya to detach this man from the service of the enemy, and to this end he weaves a web of Machiavellian policy, which might have moved the admiration and envy of the late Duke of Otranto, though we doubt whether M. Fouchè would have laboured with such disinterested magnanimity to elevate a worthy successor to his office. Wherever he turns, Rakshasa finds himself entangled in the inextricable toils which his wily antagonist has spun around him; his plots recoil on his own head; his mines are undermined; his spies are in the pay of his enemy; his most trusty agents are the agents of Chanakya; he becomes an object of jealousy, of suspicion to his own party, of which he is the life; and at length is brought to the feet of his master in the art of oriental policy; who, having attained the high and disinterested object for which he has plotted all his villanies, at once abdicates his own ministerial power, and bestows on his master Chandra gupta the only minister worthy to succeed himself. Of this intricate plot it is impossible for us to give a distinct outline, and the poetry, though vigorous and animated, rarely breaks out in passages likely, whether for elegance or power, to form striking extracts in the pages of a review. With one remarkable simile, therefore, we shall close these notices of the Indian drama : 'RAKSHASA.-See, what is the hour? ATTENDANT.-Near sunset, Sir. RAKSHASA. RAKSHASA. Indeed! so near the time when, like the slaves That fly a lord whom fortune has abandoned, The trees that cast their shadows at the dawn Now turn them backward from his downward course Mr. Wilson has performed a valuable service to the European public by his translation of the Hindu drama. We repeat that, to those who have formed rigid and exclusive canons of taste on classical, or even more recent models, these curious plays will afford little pleasure or amusement. By those, however, who take wider range, and judge according to a more liberal philosophy at all events by all who are delighted with living and authentic pictures of the manners and of the genius of different nations-they will be read with very great delight and interest. The rapid progress of the study of the Sanscrit language is a remarkable event in literary history. In the course of thirty years nearly seven hundred publications have appeared relating to a language to which, certainly, not a hundred scholars have applied, and with which not fifty are accurately acquainted. Such is the statement of Adelung in his recent catalogue of works on Sanscrit literature. The language is taught in the schools of Berlin, Breslau, and Bonn. About the university of Cambridge, M. Adelung, we suspect, is misinformed. In the list of three hundred and eighty works described by M. Adelung, are one hundred and seventy Indian, six Persian, sixty-three English, seventy-eight German, forty French, eight Danish, three Russian, four Dutch, one Polish, and one Greek. It is not perhaps generally known, that by the bequest of a munificent individual, the late Colonel Boden, a professorship of Sanscrit has been founded and liberally endowed in the university of Oxford. The university, no doubt, will be anxious to do justice to their important charge, and will be desirous to nominate that candidate who shall be best qualified for the office, from whatever quarter he may come; though we confess that we shall have some feeling of national disappointment if the situation shall be wrested away by the superior claims of some learned foreigner, who cannot have pursued the study with the same advantages as a resident in India. For the best qualified English candidates the university will naturally look to the servants of the East India Companya class of persons whose contributions, not merely to the study of the Eastern languages, but to the general literature of their country, have scarcely received their fair meed of applause. The works works of Orme, Sir J. Malcolm, Colonel Wilks, and many other living authors,—it is almost invidious and unjust to make a selection, may claim a very high rank as historical compositions. Among those whose names are before the public as Sanscrit scholars-though we presume not to aver that there are not many of equal attainments-Mr. Wilson stands in the first rank.-He has rendered most valuable service to oriental literature, not only by the work which we have introduced to the reader, but by the far more laborious compilation of his Sanscrit dictionary. The want of a new, perhaps extended edition of this work, which cannot be obtained, retards the progress of the Sanscrit student,a want which is imperfectly supplied by the valuable but less comprehensive Radices Sancrita' of Professor Rosen, and the 'Glossarium Sanskritum' of Bopp. But to whomsoever the lot may fall, independent of the religious advantages contemplated, we believe, by the founder, in encouraging the study of the parent language of the numerous dialects spoken throughout that peninsula, which is, no doubt, sooner or later, to partake in the blessings of Christianity, we confidently trust that we shall receive from the Oxford professor continual accessions to our treasures of Sanscrit literature, and be enabled to complete our yet imperfect history of this remarkable branch of the poetry and philosophy of man. ART. II.-Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Straits, to co-operate with the Polar Expeditions. Performed in his Majesty's Ship Blossom, under the command of Captain F. W. Beechey, R.N., in 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828. London. 4to. 1831. MEN EN of science continue to be much divided in opinion as to what is, and what is not, the sort of encouragement which the government of this country ought to give to scientific inquiry. The views of Mr. Babbage, and many others, have been abundantly explained to our readers in a late article; but these are strenuously opposed by persons equally eminent, according to whom the case stands thus:— Whenever the investigation of certain topics would be useful to the public service, but, from whatever cause, such investigation is not likely to be undertaken by individual members of the community, it is the clear duty of government, acting as stewards or agents of the public, to employ the means placed in their hands for the advancement of such objects; but when the members of of the community are themselves willing and competent to prosecute the inquiries, the interference of government would be not only useless, but hurtful. There cannot, they proceed, be a doubt that the philosophical pursuits to which the learned members of the French Institute devote their time, are highly beneficial to their country; or that the government of France does well to pension the savans, and to invest them with honours, that these able men may be stimulated to fresh inquiries. If science in that country were not kept up by the protecting hand of government, it would soon languish and die;-not because those accomplished philosophers, who are the admiration of Europe, are at all lukewarm in their pursuits, but because there is not, in the community at large, either a sufficient degree of taste for such things to render them generally fashionable, or enough of wealth to make them profitable. In England, they assure us, it is quite otherwise. There is not only a very extensive taste for every description of science diffused throughout our country, but there is ample wealth, always ready, upon the slightest hint, to support the expenses of such investigations. For government, therefore, to interfere in England with such things, would be like dashing with the oar to accelerate the cataract. There is abundance of momentum already impressed upon the body, and any additional force applied to it would be wasted. It matters little what may be the object of inquiry in this country; whether it be abstract and refined, or practical and immediately useful or whether it combine the practical with the speculative -or even if it be altogether absurd and visionary. Let any subject of inquiry be started, it is straightway pursued with ardour; and there is no instance that they have heard of in which any such inquiry has been retarded for want of due encouragement. Proceeding to examples, they tell us there was a time when the Royal Society was supposed to be the only grand fountain of knowledge in the kingdom. At length, certain of its members conceived their favourite pursuit not sufficiently attended to, and, in a few months, was. established the Geological Society. Since that period, the astronomers have, in like manner, set up for themselves; and so far from being in want of further encouragement, these interesting bodies derive, from the pockets of their own members, every assistance they can possibly desire. These are only two out of many similar societies in London, all of them numerous, and all of them supported by the voluntary contributions of their own members. But the other day Mr. Barrow pointed out the want of a society which should devote itself expressly to geographical subjects, and in less than three months five hundred and fifty members came forward to enter their names, all ready to pay pay their subscriptions, and upwards of a hundred of them to compound by a ten years' purchase for their annual payments. We are asked if, after this, we can question the sincerity and zeal with which scientific objects are de facto encouraged in England? We are told that we should surprise our readers were we to lay before them an account of the sums of money actually paid annually by the scientific and literary bodies of the metropolis alone, to say nothing of those which may be found in almost every town in the empire. We are asked if the money thus raised by voluntary and cheerful contribution, and expended most judiciously on purely scientific objects, is not only fifty times greater than the whole amount so ostentatiously distributed by the government of our neighbours, but fifty times greater than the executive of this country could venture to collect for any such purpose, or would be permitted to bestow even if they did collect it? Then as to titles and other external distinctions, is it not precisely because such honours are distributed with a sparing hand in this country, that they are felt, when bestowed, as of real value by the individuals selected, and carry solid weight with the body of the nation? Having thus stated the substance of what has been urged among scientific people, in reply to Mr. Babbage, and part of our own reviewal of his late treatise, we consider ourselves as having given all readers the means of judging for themselves between the contending parties. Truth, as in most cases, may most probably lie between. That all Mr. Babbage's complaints and our own have been answered we do not think; but croaking is not our element, and it is a pleasing relief to do justice to the admirable style in which, with regard to one great object of scientific inquiry, the British government in our day has unquestionably done its duty-carrying the wishes of the country into effect, by bringing its resources to a focus, and applying them in a manner which the government alone could have had the means of doing, we allude to the case of arctic discovery. For a long period of time, and particularly since the peace consequent upon Napoleon's downfal, a lively curiosity had been manifested in this country on the subject of the north-west passage, and the possibility of reaching the pole. We are not discussing just now whether these inquiries were judicious or not— the fact of their great and general popularity is indisputable. But as it was utterly impossible that any private person, or even any scientific body, could undertake the equipment of expeditions for the investigation of these points, it became the duty of government, in obedience to the general wish, to put the resources trusted to its management into such operation as should satisfy the country that |