21. Art thou weary then of our neighbourhood? O, wo to him, who flies from his beloved !

22. Have pity at length on my afflicted heart, which seeks relief and cannot obtain it.

have in different ages divided among themselves, as a kind of inheritance, the vast continent of Afia, with the many islands depending on it, are the Indians, the Chinese, the Tartars, the Arabs, and the Perfians: who they severally were, whence, and when they came, where they are now settled, and what advantage a more perfect knowledge of them all may bring to our European world, will be shewn, I trust, in five distinct efsays; the last of which will demonstrate the connection or diversity between them, and solve the great problem, whether they had any common origin, and whether that origin was the same which we generally afcribe to them.

India, on its most enlarged scale, in which the ancients appear to have understood it, comprizes an area of hear forty degrees on each side, including a space almost as large as all Europe, being divided on the weft from Persia by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the east by the Chi nese part of the farther peninfula, confined on the north by the wilds of Tartary, and extending to the fouth as far as the isles of Java. This trapezium, therefore, comprehends the stupendous hills of Potyid, or Tibet, the beautiful valley of Cashmir, and all the domains of the old Indofcythians, the countries of Nepal and Butant, Camrup or Afam, together with Sciam, Ava, Racan, and the bordering kingdoms, as far as the China of the Hindus, or Sin of the Arabian geographers; not to men

the celebrated island Sinhala, or Lion like Men, at its fouthern extremity: by India, in short, I mean that whole extent of country, in which the primitive religion and lan-. guages of the Hindus prevail at this day with more or less of their ancient purity, and in which the Nagari letters are still used with more or less deviation from their original form.

The Hindus themselves believe their own country to have been the. portion of Bharat, one of nine brothers, whose father had the dominion of the whole earth. The inhabitants of this extensive tract are described by Mr Lord with great exactness, and with a picturesque elegance peculiar to our ancient language. "A people, fays he, prefented themselves to mine eyes, cloath-ed in linen garments somewhat low descending, of a gesture and garb, as I may fay, maidenly and wellnigh effeminate, of a countenance shy, and fomewhat estranged, yet. fmiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity."

With respect to Letters, Sir William observes, that the pure Hindi language was primæval in Upper India; and that the Sanscrit was introduced by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age.

'The Sanfcrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquifitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a strong

er

er affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could poffibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have fprung from one common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a fimilar reason, though not quite so forcible, for fuppofing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the fame origin with the Sanfcrit: and the old Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the place for difcufsing any question còncerning the antiquities of Perfia.!

The characters, in which the languages of India were originally written, are called Nagari, from Nagara, a city, with the word Deva sometimes prefixed, because they are believed to have been taught by the Divinity himself, who prescribed the artificial order of them in a voice from hea

ven."

The Hindus were in early ages a commercial people; and in the first of their facred law-tracts, which they suppose to have been revealed by Menu.many millions of years ago, we find a curious passage on the legal interest of money, and the limited rate of it in different cases, with an exception in regard to adventures at sea; an exception, which the sense of mankind approves, and which commerce absolutely requires, though it was not before the reign of Charles I. that our own jurisprudence fully admitted it in respect of maritime

contracts.

We are told by the Grecian writers, that the Indians were the wifest of nations; and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent: their Niti Sastra, or System of Ethics, is yet preserved, and the Fables of Vishnuserman, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient, collection of apologues in the world: they were first

translated from the Sanscrit in the fixth century, by the order of Buzerchumihz, or Bright as the fun, the chief physician, and afterwards Vezir of the great Anushirevan, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitopadesa, or Amicable Instruction; and as the very existence of Efop, whom the Arabs believe to have been an Abyssinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not difinclined to suppose, that the firit mo ral fables, which appeared in Europe, were of Indian or Ethiopian origin.

The Hindus are faid to have boafted of three inventions, all of which, indeed, are admirable, the method of instructing by apologues, the decimal scale adopted now by all civilized nations, and the game of chefs, on which they have some curious treatifes; but if their numerous works on grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, all which are extant and accessible, were explained in fome language generally known, it would be found that they had yet higher pretenfions to the praise of a fertile and inventive genius. Their lighter poems are lively and elegant; their epic, magnificent and fublime in the highest degree; their Puranas comprise a series of mythological hiftories in blank verse from the creation to the supposed incarnation of Buddha; and their Vidas, as far as we can judge from that compendium of them, which is called Upanishut, abound with noble speculations in metaphyfics, and fine difcourses on the being and attributes of God. Their moft ancient medical book, entitled Chereca, is believed to be the work of Siva; for each of the divinities in their triad has at least one facred composition ascribed to him; but as to mere human works on hiftory and geography, though they are faid to be extant in Cashmir, it has not been yet in my power to procure them. What their astronomical and mathematical writings contain, will not, I trust, remain

a book on astronomy in Sanfcrit bears the title of Yavana latica, which may signify the Ionic sect; nor is it improbable, that the names of the pla. nets and zodiacal stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldest Indian records, were originally devised by the fame ingenious and enterprising race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race, who, as Dionyfius describes them,

Sermons by the late Rev. Mr Logan, one of the Ministers of Leith. Edinburgh. Bell and Bradfute. 1790. THESE Sermons now published, though unequal upon the whole, are the most splendid compositions of that description which haveappeared. More regular difcourses may have been written, and as elegant ones compiled; but in vain shall we seek for Sermons where the fiashes of genius so much astonish and delight. The author's talent for defcription is of a very fuperior kind. Some paf. sages are remarkably sublime. In every page we perceive the pen of a man of genius. In his Prayers and Addresses to Communicants, the majesty of devotion and the fire of eloquence are alike confpicuous.-At the fame time it is to be regretted that too much freedom is generally used with posthumous publications. We always wish to fee the author; but are frequently disappointed to find only the cold corrections of the

In fine, the volume now delivered to the Public will be a permanent memorial of the author's piety and literary fame. The Cuckoo's Note, and the Complaint of Nature; the Field of Runnamede, andthe Roar of Yarrow, will also perpetuate the name of LOGAN.

This general character might be juftified by the critical examination of paffages in detail.

The I. Sermon is less animated than many of the following ones; yet the influence of religious institutions

on domestic life is illustrated in a beautiful, concife, and lively mannet; and the two last paragraphs are far from being destitute of animation.

In one passage in the II. Sermon, our ardour in temporal concerns, and indifference in what relates to religion, is eloquently described.

The III. On Early Piety, furnishes many examples of beautiful and picturesque description.

In the IV. Sermon on Redeeming the Time, we perceive the workings of a superior mind. Indulging the ardour and impetuosity of a generous nature,

nature, the author carries the reader along with him on the tide of high emotion. In one passage, he thus expresses himself." When the mind is ftruck with the grand and the fublime of human life, it disdains inferior things, and kindling with the occafion, rejoices to put forth all its strength. Obstacles in the way, onJy give additional ardour to the purfuit; and the prize appears then the most tempting to the view, when the afcent is arduous, and when the path is marked with blood. Hence that life is chofen, where incentives to action abound; hence ferious engagements are the preferable objects of pursuit; hence the most animating occafions of life, are calls to danger and hardship, not invitations to fafety and ease; and hence man himself, in his highest excellence, is found to pine in the lap of repose, and to exult in the midst of alarms that feem to threaten his being. All the faculties of his frame, engage him to action; the higher powers of the foul, as well as the fofter feelings of the heart; wisdom and magnanimity, as well as pity and tenderness, carry 'a manifeft reference to the arduous career he has to run; the difficulties with which he is destined, to struggle, and the forrows he is appointed to bear. Happiness to him is an exertion of foul. They know not what they say, who cry out, "Let us build tabernacles of rest." They mistake very much the nature of man, and go in quest of felicity to no purpose, who feek for it in what are called enjoyments of life, who feek for it in a termination of labour and a period of repose. It is not in the calm scene; it is in the tempeft; it is in the whirlwind; it is in the thunder that this Genius refides. When once you have discovered the bias of the mind; when once you have recognifed your path in life; when once you have found out the object of the foul, you will bend to it alone, like VOL. XI. No. 64. Mma

an eagle when he has tasted the blood of his prey, who difdains the objects of his former purfuit, and follows on in his path through the heavens."

The following extract from the V. Sermon is truly brilliant:

66

Who knoweth what awaits him in life? Who knoweth the changes thro' which he is destined to pafs? Son of profperity! Thou now lookest forth from thy high tower; thou now gloriest in thine excellence; thou sayest that thy mountain stands strong, and that thou art firm as the cedar of Lebanon, - But stand in awe, Before the mighty God of Jacob, and by the blaft of the breath of his nostrils, the mountain hath been overturned, and the cedar in Lebanon hath fallen like the leaf before the whirlwind. At this very moment of time, the wheel is in motion that reverses the lot of men; that brings the profperous to the duft, and lays the mighty low. Now, O man! thou rejoicest in thy strength, but know, that for thee the bed of lar guishing is spread; pale, ghaftly, and stretched on thy couch, thou shalt number the tedious hours, the restless days, the wearifome nights that are appointed to thee, till thy foul: shall be ready to "chuse death rather than life." Thou now removest from thee the evil day, and sayest, in thy heart, thou shalt never fee forrow, but remember the changes of this mortal life; for thee the " cup of trembling" is prepared, and the " wine of astonishment is poured out." How often, in an instant, doth a hand unseen shift the scene of the world! The calmest and the stilleft hour precedes the whirlwind, and it hath thundered in the serenest sky.* The monarch hath drawn the chariot of state in which he was wont to ride. in triumph, and the greatest who ever awed the world, have moralised at the turn of the wheel."

The VI. Sermon (on death) abounds in striking and noble imagery. : The