bulk of the language. What we most stand in need of at present is some Hindu Addison, from whose pen shall flow a prose work of ease, nervousness, and purity; or a Johnson, whose research and critical power shall fix with certainty the boundaries of the language. The task is no longer that of enriching a dry tongue, but that of setting a bound to encroachments,—with a due reservation for those which growing circumstances and civilization shall license. And then, amalgamating the contributions of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, the whole body shall grow together, no longer a chaos of ill-arranged materials, but a kingdom whose limits are well and clearly defined, and whose internal arrangements bear the evidence of a guiding and masterly hand.

It has been urged with considerable reason that the genius of Oriental nations and their languages are so diametrically opposed to those of the Western Hemisphere that any attempt to translate the productions of European masters into the dialects of the East, must prove impracticable; and that if those great originals are not transfused into the minds of the natives of India, no copies, worthy of being admitted even as copies, can ever be looked for with definite certainty. Shakespeare and Bacon cannot give out their wisdom in Bengali: Persian can convey no adequate representation of the rolling eloquence of Burke; nor the harp of Milton utter its melodies at the bidding of Urdu. It is worse than folly not to admit the difficulty of the task, but almost as bad to set it down as wholly hopeless. How little can men,-who only know Urdu as the jargon in which natives abuse each other, or as that in which a few daily recurring words of command are uttered,-how little can they appreciate the range of its powers or the facilities of its idiom! Even as it is, and with the few works at our disposal, we may command several subjects on which its strength has been efficiently tested. The most difficult of the departments of literature would no doubt be sublime poetry like that of Milton, or deep sonnets-pregnant with meaning-like those of Wordsworth. We could not reasonably expect that Urdu would shine in either of these. But is there any other language in which perfect translations of the above authors could be looked for? Take any other field and the superiority is evident at a glance. Urdu is admirably fitted for scientific discussions. Its idiom is not so completely opposed to that of the English, as to render the transposition of each sentence absolutely necessary in translating: the narrative proceeds with a due regard for idiom, but without any violent distortion; and trifling and serious subjects are handled with equal readiness

and ease. The minute details of art, the intricate wordings of philosophy, the most refined shades of meaning and the technicalities which naturally occur in the departments of medicine, law and theology may with accuracy and precision be transplanted into Urdu: and in History-should a second Ferishta arise—we have every thing which a writer could desire most conscious of the dignity of such a subject and of the image of power and beauty to be realized. Turn to works of a lighter kind, such as may allure the first awakened powers of infancy. Here again Urdu shall be found second to none. The nursery tales of youth, which have once pleased, and those which charm equally in after life-Jack the giant killer on his stalk, Robinson Crusoe in his kingly solitude, and Gulliver in his unrivalled travels, may put on an oriental dress and wander, changed, but still easily recognized over the arid plains of Hindustan. Gay and grave, severe and lively,-few European styles may not become familiar to the ears of our Eastern subjects; and were it conceivable that the works of Dickens should ever flourish in scenes so totally opposed to those of the West, Urdu alone might hope to monopolize some portion of that rich vein of humour, and amaze the ears of the Hindustani with specimens of the low life of England's metropolis.

In the hands of an able native writer who would carefully shun the extravagancies of his predecessors, and seek to infuse in his Urdu works, a genuine dash from the pure springs of European literature, it is difficult to say what state of perfection, as a vehicle for thought, Urdu might not attain. Fettered by no idle fear of encroachments on a pure stock, harmonizing all discordancies with a happy and correct judgment, joining into unity the opposite elements of Persian and Sanskrit, and yet conveying no shock to euphony and no harsh disruption of the harmony of sounds, revelling without extravagance in the riches of which he holds the key, and preserving in the exuberance of his treasures, a spirit of order and uniformity,—who can tell whether some creative genius of Hindustan may not worthily illustrate the combined and digested effusions of great writers, or even strike out for himself and his countrymen a new and unexplored path. We have here given nothing but the bright side of the picture, and whilst, dilating on the excellencies of the language, we may have forgotten to enumerate manifold smaller difficulties the ups and downs to be found in a path generally smooth and uniform. We at once frankly acknowledge that Urdu is burdened with a considerable variety of inflections,-a confusion of genders and grammatical rules, and various minute and fanciful distinctions which

have too often spoiled the best creations of the East. Perfect symmetry in the edifice of an oriental architect it is perhaps vain to expect. But with every allowance for the above failings it must be conceded, that the spectacle we have invited our readers to contemplate, is that of a speaking tongue so inviting as to be employed more or less in conversation over the whole of our Indian Empire, of a written language in which are united many of the best qualifications of those of the ancient and the modern world. The expressiveness of the verbs, the overflowing abundance of actives and neuters, and the additional aid of the comprehensive causal, the union of nouns and adjectives, or, to use the terms of oriental grammarians, of names and qualities, drawn from an old and a new source, the absence of all stiffness, and the clear but soft tones into which its sentences resolve themselves, these are a few of the advantages which stamp the Urdu language as one to whose perfectibility there is no definite limit.

To speculate much farther on the powers of Urdu, or to imagine a set of subjects to which it shall be constantly applied, would lead us to the great question of the regeneration of India. At what hour the spark may be communicated and the train catch fire-when the ashes so long smouldering may again burst forth into life and heat-whether the process shall be gradual and imperceptible, or startling and electrical-is beyond the comprehension of man. Some may doubt whether a literary regeneration-a deep thirst for knowledge already stored up by others or a new awakening of the creative faculties amidst a large body of Mussulmans, can ever be hoped for with reasonable chance of fulfilment. We may in time educate respectably a fair proportion and fit them for public offices by an English course of study, but we cannot excite a generous ardour for knowledge in itself, or a desire to extend its blessings to a large number of fellow-countrymen. We may prove clearly that a good education will make men useful members of society, but we cannot call forth the living fire of Firdusi or surround the British Durbar with spirits like the "nine gems." The most ardent must descend from the lofty heights of their aspiration, and calmly and dispassionately scan the means now at hand and the uses to which they can be put. It cannot be denied that from several incidental causes the want of knowledge is less keenly felt by the natives of the North West than by those of Bengal, and that the work seems likely to be one of much slower and more uncertain progress. Yet we cannot tell how soon the cry for education, now ringing in all the districts of lower Bengal, may produce higher and finer

motives than have as yet actuated the students of the Calcutta Colleges; or whether the echo of that cry may not extend itself to the North West Provinces and stir into life the sluggish waters of the Mahommedan population. Should the Government hold out liberal rewards for any good translation of standard works in English literature into Bengali or Urdu, we shall then see who will press forward, to be first in the race: and, in spite of the great and acknowledged difficulties of the task, and here and there the utter deadness of all disinterested motives, we may coincide in the hope, confidently but not unreasonably expressed by the President of the Council of Education, that the students of the Hindu College might be the means of bettering and enlightening the unlettered portion of their countrymen. The same may be predicated of the Free Church and other institutions. And should such a hope ever be fulfilled in the lower provinces, and a corresponding state of things arise in the North West, we shall there have a finer field for our work with machinery of a more powerful and extensive kind: we shall have to infuse the learning of Europe into a population composed of better materials than the Bengali, by a language more perfect than the vernacular of Bengal. And we now rise from the contemplation of our subject with a settled conviction that, be the day late or early, Urdu will have its part to perform in the civilization of the great territory committed to our charge.

Urdu fakat alfaz ke waste is a sentence which we have often heard from the mouths of well educated natives. Although we acquiesce in the notion that there are few books in the language worth reading, we are still no less deeply impressed with the idea that Urdu might be made a mighty engine in the civilization of India. It is for this reason that we have endeavoured in the above sketch to show its rise and progress, its present condition, and its future capabilities. Several parts of such a wide subject have of course been but slightly touched upon; and there is still plenty room left for disquisitions on the old Hindi, and the variety of dialects prevalent in Upper India. Besides the books enumerated in the above sketch, the poems of Mir Taki, Jurat and Tafish, are worthy of attention; and some of the Mahommedan religious tracts printed at Chinsurah deserve a perusal from their argumentative style. We are also informed on good authority that a translation of the Akhlaki Muhsini by the same hand which translated the Bagh-o-bahar, exists in the College Library of Fort William. Delhi is probably the place where the very best Urdu is spoken but beginning from Monghyr, educated Mussulmans are to be found in almost every large town, who speak the language almost as well as the inhabitants of the metropolis of Upper India.

ART. IV.-1. Biographical Memoir of the late Rajah Rammohun Roy, with a series of illustrative extracts from his writings Calcutta, 1834.

2. Translation of the Abridgment of the Vedant or "Resolution of all the Vedas, &c. London 1817.

3. Apology for the Pursuit of Final Beatitude, independently of Brahmanical observances (in Sanskrit). By Rammohun Roy. Calcutta, 1280. (Hindu Era.)

VIEWED, in reference to native amelioration, the present is perhaps the most interesting and eventful period in the history of this country. It might be properly called the age of enquiry and investigation. The metropolis of British India is now undergoing a remarkable transition. Customs, consecrated by immemorial observance and interwoven with the fibres of Hindu society are unhesitatingly renounced as incompatible with the laws of God and man. Hinduism is arraigned before the bar of an enlightened reason, and will ere long be swept from the land which had so long groaned under its domination. But in reflecting on the change now being wrought by educational and other instrumentalities on the native mind, we are irresistibly reminded of the impetus originally communicated to it by Rammohun Roy. His name is inseparably connected with a great moral revolution. It is therefore peculiarly interesting to trace the history of this extraordinary man, for it is in a great measure the history of that revolution.

This

Rammohun Roy was born in 1774. He was descended from a long line of Brahmans of a high order, who were from time immemorial devoted to the duties proper to their race. Religion was their vocation. They led a purely monastic life down to his fifth progenitor, who, more than a century and a half ago, "gave up," to quote his own language, "spiritual exercises for worldly pursuits and aggrandizement." change came over the spirit of his family in the reign of that able, energetic, but tyrannical Mogul emperor Arungzebe. Whether this change was voluntary, or the inevitable result of that bitter and fierce persecution to which the sacerdotal order had been subjected by that emperor is uncertain. The descendants of his fifth progenitor attached themselves to the Mogul Courts, held offices, acquired titles, and underwent the vicissitudes inseparable from a political life, especially under an absolute and arbitrary Government-" sometimes rich," as he himself assures us, "and sometimes poor, sometimes excelling