to treat a Frank with a politeness greater perhaps than his position might entitle him to in his own country. But amongst the commonaltysurudjis, soldiers, subalterns, aidesde-camp, and the like, a feeling of insolence is universal. The position of an European in the wilder parts of Turkey, struck me as being very much like what that of a Turk might be in India. Doubtless the GovernorGeneral would receive him with all civility, and so would most men of any position; but the private soldiers would pronounce him a nigger, and would treat him with respect when they had received a positive order to do so, and with none at all when they had not.

I experienced this Turkish impertinence the most fully at Schoumla, where, to get an order for posthorses to Varna, I had, for the only time during my stay in Turkey, to make my way to a pasha without special letters of introduction to him. I entered an ante-room, filled as usual with a mixture of orderly sergeants and aides-de-camp, the latter lounging higgledy-piggledy on a divan at one end of the apartment; the best of them looking like debauched dirty medical students in shabby uniforms, while the worst were more supremely filthy than anything I had yet met with, even amongst Turkish officers. Here, while my passport was being taken in to the pasha, they offered me a chair, stuck up in a place of humility against the wall, at a distance from their sacred selves, side by side with another occupied by a dirty Greek or Rayah of some kind. I

asked one of them, as I handed him my passport for conveyance to the great man, whether the pasha could speak French? "Yes, yes," he answered, in a tone expressive of nothing so much as an anxiety to be rid of the trouble of answering me. "Franciz bilir-he knows French." Then, with a sort of sneer and sidegrin at his comrogues, in an undertone, "Habchi bilir-he knows Habchi," which I should think was really about the amount of Hassan Pasha's accomplishments. At all events, he did not know a word of any European language. In this ante-room they kept me long, and would have kept me longer, but that, losing patience with these airs on the part of a set of flunkies, who, at a mere look from a pasha, would have rushed to present me with coffee in the Turkish attitude of humility, viz. one hand presenting the coffee, and the other placed flat on the stomach, in a fashion suggestive of unripe gooseberries; or to bring me my pipe, or to black my boots, if they had been told;-I sent in word that I had business elsewhere, and that if I could not have admittance then, I begged to have my passport back, that I might go. This procured me instant admission. The pasha, as pashas usually are, was civil; and with no more than the delay inherent in all Turkish affairs, I got my order and departed.

And so I take leave of the Osmanli, wishing them for the future every felicity except that of my company.

MR KAYE is fortunate in his choice of a subject. The thoughts of the most careless of our countrymen have been elevated to higher objects than commerce and territory by the revelations of the late Mutiny. Christianity, with its humble hopes converted by danger into heroic endeavour-faith in Christ sustaining the feeble knees, and arming with double energy the defending and avenging arm, have taken their place henceforth in the universal heart, as not merely the ornaments of a quiet and happy life, but as the guardians of empire and purifiers of national character. First, while our breasts were still glowing with hatred of the perpetrators of the ineffable wrongs and savage cruelties of Cawnpore, came out the thrilling narratives of soldierly courage in the defence of Lucknow. Infantry officers told us of the position of the garrison, engineers pointed out the performances of the guns, civilians recounted the efforts they made to equal or surpass the achievements of the regular troops; but it was only when, day by day, the private narratives of gentle ladies-the victims and heroines of that noblest of sieges-revealed the consolations which religion yielded in those trying hours, when the martyr-death of Polehampton was consecrated by the resignation and triumph of his widow, and, best of all, when the daily working of an unwavering faith was then displayed in its elevating soothings and attractive attributes in the journal of Mrs Harris, that all England was moved by the great truth, at once brought home to the thoughtless and the sceptic, as it had long been the conviction of the believer, surely "righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people."

By what steps, strange at first, and little likely to lead to so happy a consummation, the Christian faith began its career in India- by what means,

when the fulness of time is come, its triumph is to be increased and its holy influence to be breathed into the millions of Hindostan-is the great theme of the admirable volume named above; and if, as we said at the beginning, Mr Kaye is fortunate in his subject, we must also say that the subject could not have fallen into better hands than Mr Kaye's. It is little praise, indeed, of this book, to state that its style is clear and accurate, soaring at times into an eloquence worthy of the high matters of which it treats; or that it displays all the knowledge of Indian character and customs which might be expected from the biographer of Metcalf and Malcolm, and the historian of the war in Affghanistan. Its real merit consists in the spirit of earnest and Christian devotion, and the clear appreciation of the difficulties surrounding the questions of which it treats. There is no faintness of heart, no enthusiasm of fancy. If fault is occasionally found with the apparent negligence of the authorities in carrying on a good work, we attribute the warmth of objurgation to its right motive-zeal in the cause, not personal enmity to the individuals. A less interested narrator, indeed, might have made more allowance for hindrances in the way; a person with a less lofty standard might have been satisfied with a lower grade of perfection both in public bodies and private men ; but looking to the past as presented in these pages, and to the present as proved in the universal interest excited by the question he discusses, we cannot blame him for demanding greater exertion, greater sacrifices, and a more zealous performance of the work which God has evidently given us at this time to do, than has ever characterised our efforts before.

There is a danger, however, arising from the excesses of an ill-directed enthusiasm, he honestly confesses, as

By J. W. KAYE. London:

out fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus, and the banks of the Selinga." When India was thus penetrated and surrounded by Christian missions so early as the fifth and sixth centuries, we are prepared for the marvels related of Thomas Cana, an Armenian merchant, who devoted himself to the evangelisation of the Hindoos in the eighth. This admirable personage was naturally enough, in the lapse of time, confounded with the real disciple who bore the same name, but whose connection with the East is not so well established. Whether, however, this Thomas was mistaken for the primitive apostle or not, the circumstance that our great King Alfred sent an embassy under Bishop Sighelow of Sherborne to do honour to the tomb of a Holy Thomas at Madras, admits of no doubt. A pilgrimage to the Coromandel coast in the year 883 for such a purpose, shows a wider diffusion of the Christian faith, and greater toleration and teachableness in the natives, than the ancient prejudices of Hindooism, and the recent introduction of Mohammedanism might lead us to expect; and even if the carping suspicion of Gibbon be well founded, that the envoys got no farther than Alexandria, and in that great centre point of the East and West collected their cargo and their legend, the belief in a Christian shrine in the town of Madras remains uncontroverted. Mussulman fanaticism was limited to the destruction of hostile religions, or the subjection of hostile nations. It tried in vain to erect a barrier against the cupidity of the West, which it could neither convert nor conquer, and the truths of Christianity were conveyed from the capital of the Grecian Empire through Arabia, and across the Indian seas, by the merchants of Genoa and Venice. When Constantinople fell, commerce found out the passage round the Cape, and Christianity accompanied it--but Christianity in its mere earthly form, girding itself with the sword of Peter, and fighting for the dignity of the Pope rather than labouring

for the propagation of faith and the saving of souls. The contest for papal supremacy at once began. The churches already founded by the efforts of the Syrian patriarch resisted the Latin yoke, and the native converts had the shame of seeing the first application of persecution commanded by the Christian pontiff against a Christian congregation. The Franciscan friars, who accompanied the expedition of Vasco di Gama in 1502, considered that they were advancing the interests of the faith by showing, or rather by hiding, the virtues of Christianity in their monastic cells. They built monasteries and churches, but withdrew from the active duties of life, leaving the benefits of the faith as it is in Jesus to be judged of by the lives of the Portuguese traders and adventurers, who, from the " Admiral of the Eastern Seas" to the lowest follower of the camp, were the most abandoned reprobates who ever disgraced the name of true believer. "The first Christian settlers in India," says Mr Kaye, "were the most unchristian of men, and it has taken more than three centuries to wipe away the stain cast upon Christianity by the lives of its European professors." This senteuce, though applied to the Portuguese of the sixteenth century, we quote as the key-note of a great portion of Mr Kaye's volume. What indeed is the use of preaching and catechising, if the conduct of the great majority of the Christian inhabitants is in direct antagonism to the lessons of the teachers? The converse, at all events, of Pope's unorthodox line, "He can't be wrong whose life is in the right," is worthy of all acceptance-"He can't be right whose life is in the wrong ;" and as all was naught in those early days of Christian propagandism, Mr Kaye rejoices at the rise of one true man who does the work appointed him in a high and self-denying spirit, and rises into one of the most eloquent passages of his book when he describes the career of the sainted Francis Xavier of the Society of Jesus:

"It was in the spring of the year 1541 that the first missionary of the New So

ciety of Jesus turned his clear blue eyes, for the last time, upon the orange-groves of Spain, and set his face towards the shining Orient. A Portuguese vessel, destined to carry out to Goa a new InIdian viceroy and a reinforcement of a thousand men, suffered the great-hearted enthusiast to slink silently on board, and to mingle with the noisy crowd of soldiers and mariners on her deck. No pleasant well-fitted cabin was there for him-no well-supplied 'cuddy-tableno outfit that he did not carry on his back. He pillowed his head upon a coil of ropes, and ate what the sailors discarded. But there was not a seaman in that labouring vessel, there was not a soldier in that crowded troop-ship, who did not inwardly recognise the great soul that glowed beneath those squalid garments. No outward humiliation could conceal that knightly spirit; no sickness and suffering could quench the fire of that ardent genius. The highest and the lowest held converse with him; and, abject, prostrate as he was, he towered above them all, alike as a gentleman'and a scholar. And when, thirteen months after the vessel sailed out of the port of Lisbon, its rent sails were furled, and its strained cables coiled before the seaport of Goa, there was not one of the many enthusiasts who now, as they dropped down her weather-stained and shattered side, shaped for themselves in imagination so brilliant a career in the great Indies, or heaped up such piles of visionary wealth, as stirred the heart of Francis Xavier. But his career was only that of the Christian missionary, and the riches he was to gain were countless thousands of human souls.

But

"It was Xavier's will to suffer. The King of Portugal had ordered, that on his passage to India a cabin should be placed at his disposal, and furnished with everything that could render tolerable the discomforts of a sea life. he had rejected these kingly offers, and contented himself with the bare deck as his home; a single cloak to shelter him in the foul weather, and a few books to solace him in the fair. And now that he had reached the point at which were to commence his apostolic ministrations, the same spirit of self-denial and selfdependence animated him in all that he did. He had prayed before his departure for more stripes; he had asked the Divine goodness to grant him in India the pains that had been faintly foreshadowed in his Italian career. He had carried out all sorts of briefs and credentials from regal and pontifical hands; and the bishop now eager tendered

him assistance, and pressed upon him pecuniary support. But he refused all these episcopal offers, and sought no aid but that of God. The more dangers seemed to thicken-the more appalling the difficulties that beset his path-the more agonising the trials he enduredthe louder, the more earnest was his cry, 'Yet more-O my God!-yet more !

He

"Protestant zeal is only contemptible when it denies that Francis Xavier was a great man. Delusions he may have had, strong as ever yet wrought upon the human soul; but the true nobility of his nature is not to be gainsaid. faced the most tremendous trials with a courage and a constancy of the highest order, and prosecuted the most arduous and astounding labours with an energy and a perseverance scarcely exampled in the history of mankind. He found himself suddenly thrown into the midst of a mingled community of natives and Europeans, of which it was hard to say whether the one or the other were sunk in the deeper and more debasing idolatry. It was a privilege to him to endure hardship and to be beset with difficulty in the prosecution of his great work. His courage rose as the objects in his path loomed larger and larger, and he waded through the sea of pollution that lay before him as one who never feared to sink. He began his course by endeavouring to entice his countrymen at Goa into a purer way of life; and as none since the days of the apostle Paul have known better how to abound and how to be abased, he became as weak unto the weak, all things to all men, that by all means he might save some. The knightly spirit was never extinct within him; with the chivalry and the courtesy of the old noble, he united the fulness and readiness of the scholar; and whether among the gay and gallant officers who surrounded the Viceroy of Portugal, or among the degraded fishermen on the coast of Malabar, the gentle blood which flowed in his veins imparted dignity to his presence, softness to his speech, and the most winning generosity to his actions. Whether, placing himself at the head of a band of oppressed Christians, he charged down, crucifix in hand, upon a marauding enemy, or whether he braved death in fever hospitals and lazar-houses, performing readily the most sickening offices for their tainted inmates, the same noble courage and self-devotion shone out in everything that he did.

"That the doctrines he taught may not have been the soundest that his means of teaching were insufficient that he knew little of the native larges