touches thrown in here and there with a free bold hand, the writer might have given us some such sketches, had his intentions lain in that direction. From a chapter headed " What appointments to get, and how to get them" we take the following account of "how to get" into the East India direction, which is at all events smart-it is the only connected passage which we can afford to quote :

"An East India Director is one of twenty-four gentlemen to whom the Crown and the Legislature entrust, under certain ministerial control, the business of conducting the affairs of India. Once appointed, these gentlemen have a life interest in the office, although they go out every four years in rotation, to be succeeded by others who have already held the office. The Directors are elected by the proprietors of East India stock, a considerable body of persons, whose votes are determined by the number of shares or bonds they individually possess. These persons are to be found in every class of life, from the peer and the general's or civilian's widow down to the slop-seller, the latter having, of course, an eye to the smiles and patronage of the successful Director on whom he may bestow his vote. Freedom and independence among these voters are about as applicable as the same phrase used in reference to the ten-pound householders who select the representatives of the nation. Here and there we meet with a conscientious proprietor; but in nine cases out of ten a successful election is the result of industrious canvassing, and the exertions and favour of the men already in power. The process by which a gentleman reaches his place among the Honourable" conclave, whose official locale is Leadenhall-street, London, is almost uniform. We will suppose him to have served or resided in India, achieving a certain amount of distinction as a civilian, a soldier, a lawyer, a merchant, a sailor, or indeed in any capacity,-or we shall suppose him never to have visited India at all. He may be a London banker or a cidevant China supercargo. There is no condition exacted of the candidate, either as to his age or his previous position in life. Well; he has made up his mind to seek an East-India Directorship, for the sake of making his talents useful to his country, his friends, and himself. He procures a list of the proprietors-communicates with those among them who may happen to enjoy the honour of his acquaintance-seeks through them, the friendship of others; and having thus prepared the soil, fertilizes it with good dinners and other pleasant bounties. He then, through the medium of letters inserted in the advertising columns of the public newspapers, announces his intention to the proprietors of East India stock,-apprises them of his remarkable qualifications for the trust he seeks-professes a scrupulous and intense devotion to the interests of the Indian empire-promises to call upon them all and solicit their sweet voices in propria persona, and winds up, declaring with desperate energy that he will proceed to the ballot at the very next vacancy,-a declaration he often finds it convenient to rescind. The day of election arrives. One or two competitors are in the field. The East India House-on that occasion a gentlemanlike sort of hustings—is the scene of active contest all day long. The several committees move heaven and earth to bring the voters to the poll. The proxies are duly registered. At six P. M. the glasses close, and the scrutineers announce the triumphant candidate.

And for what has this often costly battle been waged? Not, assuredly,

for pecuniary profit; for the Director receives but 300l. a year while in office, and cannot sell his patronage without violating the laws of his coun try. But it is for the honour and dignity of the office, for the occupation it gives, and the opportunity it affords the incumbent of making powerful friends by providing for their children; of reciprocating delicate obligations; of paving the way to Parliament, or to some of the good things in the gift of Government, and various wealthy associations."

We wish that we could have given a better account of the recent additions to our collection of books relating to India, and the East. The "cumberers of the shelves" already are many, and we fear that the number is likely to be increased. It is but fair, however, that we should remark in conclusion that Mr. Hutton's book contains matter relating to China, which is more valuable than that which concerns our Indian possessions. But we are writing now of our Indian Empire and not of the peculiarities of the "flowery land." When we come to speak of recent works upon China we may perhaps revert, in more encouraging language, to Mr. Hutton and his book.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES.

The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. No. I. July, and No. II. August, 1847. Singapore: Printed at the Mission Press.

WE lose no time in directing attention to this new periodical, which promises to supply what has long been felt to be a grand desideratum in our Oriental Literature. India is now tolerably well provided for, with appropriate repositories for the record of observation and research in every leading department, literary and scientific, statistical and economic, political and religious. But the Eastern India Peninsula, with its magnificent retinue of Islands, has hitherto been treated with unmerited neglect being very much abandoned to the casual and hasty remarks of the passing traveller, or to the chance of an occasional volume from the pens of such really qualified observers as Marsden, Crawfurd and Raffles. But a continuous systematic effort to bring to the view of the English reader the vast variety of objects of interest in a region teeming with the richest materials, in the form of a regular periodical, devoted exclusively to Eastern India and Archipelagic Research, has not till recently been attempted. In this respect the Dutch have greatly got the start of us. Besides many former labours, about a year ago, the learned Dutchman, Dr. W. R. Van Hoëvéll, commenced a periodical in the Dutch language, entitled "Tijschrift ter bevordering van Christelijken Zin in Neerland's Indie, &c." But, being in a foreign language, so little studied as the Dutch, it is for the most part inaccessible to English readers. Its plan is in many respects comprehensive, and its execution praiseworthy in the highest degree. As in due time, however, we expect to bestow upon it a more worthy notice, we shall at once pass on to its new cotemporary and friendly co-adjutor in the comparatively unoccupied field of Physical Geography and Natural History, with the kindred domains of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce The Journal of the Indian Archipelago."

This Journal has started under the fairest auspices; and as our earnest wish is for its unbounded success, we shall present our readers with the entire original prospectus, in which the object of the proposed Journal is fully and distinctly unfolded :—

OBJECT OF THE PROPOSED JOURNAL.

"The attention which, for some time past, has been attracted to the Indian Archipelago, and its recent approximation to Europe by the establishment of steam communication, encourage the hope that the time has now arrived when a Journal devoted to this region may meet with readers. After the period when the writings of Mr. Marsden, Sir T. S. Raffles and Mr. Crawfurd first systematically brought the light of European observation and science to bear upon some portions of it, the Archipelago only at intervals awakened the interest of the English public, and, so far as they were

a

concerned, it nearly settled down into its previous obscurity. It is true there has generally been two and frequently more newspapers in the British Settlements on the Straits of Malacca, but their principal object having been the discussion of commercial, political or purely local topics, their European circulation has been chiefly amongst those who have an immediate interest in the Eastern trade. The consequence has been that many valuable and interesting observations, which from time to time have been published in them, never received that diffusion and attention which they deserved. While no adequate means have been taken during the last twenty years to preserve the interest of the English public in the Archipelago, and the writings of Marsden, Raffles and Crawfurd, deficient as their authors admitted them to be, have continued to represent the sum of English knowledge of its races and productions, a great amount of talent and research has, in reality been devoted to it. When we replaced the Dutch in their Eastern possessions, we seem, at the same time, to have made over to them the science of the Archipelago. The scientific ardour which was kindled in Java by Sir T. S. Raffles and his coadjutors, did not burn out when we retired from it, but was communicated to our successors, and has not only illustrated many subjects which we left in obscurity, but, receiving a fresh stimulus and direction from every advance of science on the Continent of Europe, has shed new light on those which had most attracted our regard. It was in the deep regret with which we saw that the Eastern researches of the Dutch were unheeded, because unknown, in England, that the idea of the proposed Journal originated. It is this feeling that, in the absence of any Society in the British Settlements, devoted like those at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Ceylon, and Hongkong to the collection of general information, has induced us to overcome our reluctance to appear before the public as the originators of a periodical partaking, in any degree, of a general scientific character. If a hearty zeal for knowledge, a willingness to give all our leisure to its extension, and a determination to be accurate and laborious, may enable us to do some service to men of science, we shall not regret that, in following up our own limited pursuits, we became acquainted with the extensive acquisitions of our Dutch neignbours, and at once saw that we should be more likely to make ourselves useful by communicating these to our countrymen, than by confining ourselves to original observation. The chief purpose of the Journal will be, by translations, compilations and notices from Dutch writings, to make English readers acquainted with their researches. They embrace a wide and singularly varied field†, and extend to so many subjects both of popular and of purely scientific interest, that we shall be compelled to give the Journal a more mixed character than may be altogether acceptable to any one class of readers. But as we do

Should the support which the projected Journal may receive, enable us to enlarge it hereafter, we intend to reprint the more important and scarce of these and other detached papers that have appeared, relative to the Archipelago.

To those who, in ignorance of the later researches of the Dutch, and of the new and attractive character which ethnographical science has everywhere assumed, chiefly through the discoveries of the great German philologists, may think that Raffles and Crawfurd exhausted the scientific wealth of the Archipelago, or even of the single island to which their personal observations were chiefly directed, it may be sufficient to remark that, if all the islands were brought together, they would form a continent as large as Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Prussia, Belgium, Holland and Demark united, and that they exhibit a greater diversity of tribes, languages, and natural productions, than any other region of equal extent in the world.

not doubt that all who may support the undertaking will cordially approve of its object--which is to gather and present to European readers, from all available sources, knowledge, in the widest sense, of the Indian Archipelago, we trust that the general reader who may take up the Journal will make allowance for the space occupied by scientific objects, and that the scientific reader, in his turn, will not quarrel with its more miscellaneous ingredients. We anticipate however from the prevailing taste for general knowledge, and the growing tendency to treat all kinds of subjects in a scientific or accurate and thoughtful spirit, that our largest class of readers will be sufficiently catholic in their sympathies to find "good in every thing" that we shall lay before them. It is only by the union of subjects generally kept separate that we can hope to attain sufficient support at the outset to enable us to proceed, and it is fortunate that many even of the scientific papers of the Dutch explorers are combined with so much of the personal narrative of their explorations that they are well adapted for our purpose. Should a desire afterwards be felt to have a strictly scientific separately from a popular miscellany, we shall readily alter our plan, provided our subscribers are numerous enough to maintain two periodicals.

While the Journal will principally be a channel for communicating to European readers the past and contemporaneous writings of the Dutch on the Archipelago generally, it will, we trust, serve as a focus in which the observations of English and American residents in Java, Bali, Borneo, the Philippines, Siam, &c., may be concentrated. We say English and American, because, although we shall of course be always happy to receive communications from any person, we are most anxious to avoid every appearance of offering the use of our Journal to the Dutch contributors to the periodicals of Batavia. We are indebted to Dr. W. R. Baron van Hoevell, the President of the Batavian Society, and the learned, able, and zealous editor of the leading scientific and literary Journal there, for constant and most liberal assistance in making ourselves acquainted with the researches of himself and his countrymen, and we shall be too glad to continue to do so, and to make our readers participate in the results, by translating from the Dutch. It will not be the least beneficial effect of our Journal, that we shall be able to introduce our neighbours to our English readers in a character in which they have not been accustomed to view them, and thereby, we trust, help to soften those asperities of feeling that are apt to be occasionally engendered when Dutch policy seems to conflict with British interest.

It will, in a more particular manner, be a Journal of the British Settlements on the Straits of Malacca, and of the Malayan Peninsula, to which our own observations are and will be chiefly directed. While Sumatra and Java have been investigated by English writers, the Peninsular extremity of Asia, with which we are now more immediately connected than with the Archipelago, has remained comparatively unexplored; for the published researches of Colonel Low have chiefly related, although they have by no means been restricted, to the Siamese language, in which he is one of the most distinguished scholars of the age, and Captain Newbold's original contributions, highly valuable as they were, hardly extended beyond Malacca and the inland states adjoining it. We have for some years omitted no opportunity of extending our knowledge respecting the Peninsula, and this will continue to be the chief object of our own enquiries. Those whose investigations have been more varied and searching, and all who have had, or may have, opportunities of adding to our knowledge of it in any particular, will, we earnestly beg, join in our labours. Occupied by many interesting states and tribes,-forming as it did one, perhaps the principal, channel by which