almost any man of our age. An immense mass of materials for such a work is already before the public;-but there is reason, we are informed, to believe that his family could furnish much that has never yet appeared. Amongst the earlier worthies of British India, Job Charnock, the father of Calcutta, as he is called-its founder and first governor-occupies a prominent place. The private life of Governor Charnock' (we are told by Miss Roberts) presents a romantic incident not very uncommon at the period in which he flourished. Abolishing the rite of Suttee, in a more summary manner than has been considered politic by his successors, he, struck by the charms of a young Hindoo female about to be sacrificed for the eternal welfare of her husband, directed his guards to rescue the unwilling victim from the pile. They obeyed, and conveying the widow, who happened to be exceedingly beautiful, and not more than fifteen years old, to his house, he took her under his protection, and an attachment thus hastily formed lasted until the time of Yer death, many years afterwards. Notwithstanding the loss of caste, which the lady sustained in exchanging a frightful sacrifice for a life of splendid luxury, the governor does not seem to have been at any pains to induce her to embrace Christianity. On the contrary, he himself appears to have been strangely imbued with Pagan superstitions, for, having erected a mausoleum for the reception of the body, he ordered the sacrifice of a cock to her manes on the anniversary of her death, and this custom was continued until he was also gathered to his fathers. This mausoleum, one of the oldest pieces of masonry in Calcutta, is still in existence. Monuments of the like nature, with the exception of the annual slaughter of an animal, are to be seen in many parts of India; connexions between Indian women and English gentlemen of rank and education being often of the tenderest and most enduring description. Nor do these unions excite the horror and indignation amongst the natives that might be expected from their intolerant character; so far from it, indeed, that in many instances they have been known to offer public testimonials of their respect to those who have been faithful in their attachments throughout a series of years.'-vol. ii. pp. 55-57. The native women of India are dark but comely;' many of the higher classes have great beauty of features, and an exquisitely delicate and feminine elegance of form which, though of a different character, is perhaps not inferior to the most admired models of symmetry in Europe. Even amongst the lower orders, where there is generally less to admire in the countenance, there is almost always something graceful in the gait and elegant in the outline of the figure. But, like the natives of other warm climates, their beauty begins early to decline, and women of twenty-five exhibit signs of the advance of age. Their dress, though singularly VOL. LV. NO. CIX. graceful graceful on the young, is little calculated to conceal the decay of their charms, and a more degrading spectacle than an Indian grandmother sometimes exhibits, it would be difficult to imagine. The skull of Yorick could but faintly convey the lesson of humility which a youthful beauty might receive without the aid of a comment, from the shrivelled forms enveloped in pendant wrinkles that are seen crawling about with little artificial covering in the villages of Hindostan. Women of the higher castes rarely form connexions with Europeans, and the days are gone by when, like the gallant Job Charnock, an Englishman could employ his guards to transfer a fair Brahminee from the funeral pile of her husband to his own zenana. As the facilities for contracting more respectable engagements have increased, a greater proportion of Europeans have availed themselves of them, and the number of Englishmen who now have harems is comparatively small. Instances of great devotion in Indian women to their European protectors are not uncommon, and to their assiduous attentions and tender care during sickness many owe their recovery. It rarely happens, however, that an intercourse of this description fails in some degree to dete riorate the European character-there is more or less of approximation on both sides, and the influence of the woman, as usual, in some moment of weakness, is too often sufficient to tempt the man to some dereliction of duty, which, but for her persuasions, he might have avoided. We cannot concur in Miss Roberts's opinion, that Asiatic women consider it no hardship to be shut up as they are; nor can we admit the reasoning, by which she supports it, to be satisfactory. That the females who reside with Europeans voluntarily continue to seclude themselves, is no evidence that they may not consider themselves, when they do so, as sacrificing a certain amount of comfort and enjoyment to the appearance of respectability,―it merely shows that they submit to the rules of propriety, which regulate the only society with which they are acquainted, or to which they can belong. Miss Emma Roberts may think it hard that she cannot go to a ball or a play without putting herself under the charge of some married lady of her acquaintance-but she submits to the conventional rule in these cases, though no one may be entitled to take her to task should she choose to violate it; and she probably would be displeased with us should we presume to infer that she was capable of disregarding so generally received a maxim of decorum. Still she may not the less feel the hardship of being subjected to the restraint. A Hindoo woman voluntarily mounts the funeral pile of her husband, and dies in the flames, because she considers it her duty so to do; but would it be reasonable to infer from thence that it is not to her a painful duty? ART. VII.-1. Ueber den Halleyschen Cometen. Von Littrow, Wien. 1835. 2. Ueber den Halleyschen Cometen. Von Professor von Encke. Berliner Jarbuch. 1835. &c. &c. &c. THE intellectual powers of man have never been exercised with more transcendant success than in the theory of astronomy. The discovery of the gravitating force at once revealed the immediate cause of the great phenomena of the universe. The courses of the heavenly bodies are the visible effects of its influence to it are also due the innumerable irregularities to which their motions are liable; and even such as seemed at one period to be at variance with this law of nature, now bear testimony to its universal empire. By that power the stability of the solar system is maintained, and the forms of the celestial bodies show that this was the agent employed by the Almighty Architect at its creation. Comets, which wander for ages in the depths of space, return to the sun in obedience to his attraction. Nor is gravitation confined to our system, which forms but a point in the immensity of the works of God; as far as telescopic vision has hitherto extended, sun revolves about sun in the far distant heavens, by the same power that causes the rain to descend and the tides to flow. This unseen agent of the Supreme Intelligence, mysterious in its nature as spirit itself, connects the parts of the universe so intimately, that action is instantaneously answered by re-action through distances which elude even the grasp of imagination; yet the law of this force, though the most general and exalted that man has discovered, is so simple, that the effects of gravitation, however numerous and complicated, have been, or may be, predicted with unerring certainty. How Practical astronomy, being necessarily a work of approximation, has not kept pace with the brilliant career of theory. ever diligent or skilful the practical astronomer, he must wait time and opportunity. His progress depends also upon the perfection of his instruments; the observer and the mechanician must go hand in hand. Much admiration is due to the perseverance and acuteness of early astronomers, who, possessing such defective means, were still able to determine the paths of bodies moving in the heavens from a spot which is itself in motion. They even detected some of the more prominent disturbances to which the courses of the celestial bodies are liable, especially those that affect the moon; but it was not till theory had pointed the way, that astronomers arrived at a knowledge of the greater number of these inequalities, and added to the triumph of the Newtonian theory, by showing the exact fulfilment of its prophecies 1870 even in their minutest details. For the accurate determination of the motions of the planets, it is necessary to ascertain their size and solidity compared with those of the earth; the exact form and magnitude of their paths round the sun, and the position of these paths with regard to that of the earth; quantities which could only be known after many successive years of observation, and the more so, as most of them are liable to slow variations which it is likewise necessary to estimate. In consequence of these circumstances, the tables that were formed in accordance with observation, and employed for finding the places of the planets in the heavens at any given time, soon became defective, and that, in proportion as the means of observing were improved. It therefore became necessary to correct these tables perpetually, or to compute new ones, till the place assigned to the planet by theory was found to correspond with its actual position. Both departments of astronomy have now arrived at a very high state of perfection. A difference of half a second between the computed and real time of the passage of a planet at the meridian is not looked upon as any extraordinary degree of accuracy; and a difference of five seconds, which has lately been detected between theory and experience, is reckoned so much beyond what can be attributed to error in observation, that it has led M. Bessel, one of the greatest astronomers of the present age, to suspect some new and unknown cause of disturbance-so that this minute discrepancy may even be the means of discovering some unsuspected agent in the economy of nature. The planets, revolving round the sun in paths which never extend beyond the bounds of vision, perpetually afford opportunities for observation, and consequently a thorough knowledge of their motions is obtained in a comparatively short time; whereas comets, seen only for a brief period, are generally invisible for ages, and therefore, although the theory of their motions is perfectly established, a remote posterity alone can arrive at a knowledge of their tracks in the heavens, and of the periods of their revolutions. Only three comets return to the sun at known periods. By far the greater number of those that frequent our system wander in unknown paths. The mystery attending their motions, as well that of their physical character, is no doubt one of the reasons of their having produced such a sensation in all ages. The planets, however beautiful, are too constantly with us to attract much general attention; but comets make a most vivid impression upon the imagination by their unusual aspect, their sudden arrival, and the prodigious velocity with which they dart through our system, and return to the deep recesses of the heavens. And this is heightened by the uncertainty whether they are only to re-ap pear pear to generations yet unborn, or never again to revisit these regions. The earth and all the planets revolve about the sun from west to east, in nearly circular paths confined to a very narrow belt or zone of the heavens; and but for the brilliancy of the sun's light would always be visible. But comets appear to range through the wide extent of the heavens, and in every direction, with regard to the path of the earth. Some move in a plane at right angles to that path, others nearly in the same plane with it; many revolve from west to east, and nearly as many from east to west; they often approach very near the sun, and then retreat to the remotest distances. It was reserved for Newton to show that there is an order as perfect in the motions of these bodies as in all the other works of creation; that comets, which seem to move by no fixed rules, are subject to the very same laws which guide the planets in their motions; that, like them, they revolve about the sun, but that their paths, instead of approaching to a circular form, are very much elongated, having the sun near one of the extremities. Hence, on the first appearance of a comet, it seems to move in a straight line; its motion becomes more curved in approaching the sun, till at last it sweeps round him; and in retreating, its path is perfectly similar to that in which it came. The shape of the paths of comets is much more varied than those of the planetary orbits. The earth moves in a path whose length, in proportion to its breadth, is as 7001 to 7000, which differs so very little from a circle, that we are always at nearly the same distance from the sun, the proportion of our least and greatest distances from him being as 30 to 31; and in the orbit of Juno, which is much more elongated than that of any other planet, the greatest and least distances from the sun are only as 5 to 3. According to Professor Encke, Halley's comet, now the object of so much attention, moves in a path four times longer than it is broad-in consequence of which, the comet is sixty times farther from the sun at one extremity of its orbit than it is at the other; and many go to a much greater distance; for example, if the computation be accurate, the comet of 1763 retreats fortythree times farther from the sun than Halley's. Two small comets, however, belonging to our system, seem to form a link between these extremes. One, whose orbit was determined a few years ago by M. Encke of Berlin, accomplishes its revolution about the sun in twelve hundred and four days nearly, ?/2 and, therefore, never goes farther from him than the orbit of Pallas. The path of the other, which was computed by M. Gambart of Marseilles, does not extend much farther, since the period of its revolution |
