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THE

CALCUTTA REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Yad Namuh; a Chapter of Oriental Life. London. 1850.

2. Ten Years in India; or, the Life of a Young Officer; by Captain Albert Hervey, 40th Regiment, Madras Native Infantry. 3 vols. London. 1850.

3. Sketches of Naval and Military Adventure; by one in the Service. Bath and London. No date.

4. Sir Charles Napier's Indian Baggage Corps; reply to Lieutenant-Colonel Burlton's attack; by Major Montagu McMurdo, late head of the Quarter Master General's Department in Scinde. London. 1850.

EVER and anon a complaint reaches us to the effect, that in the general constitution of this Review there is discernible a want of light and amusing matter. There is really some justice in the charge; but we must plead extenuating circumstances." It is, certainly, our first object to instruct the reader; but we rejoice greatly in an opportunity of amusing him. The opportunity, however, is just what we want. The table of the European reviewer is ever covered with light literature. He has only to take his choice. He may be as dainty as he likes; something is sure to please his taste. No possible subject is prohibited; no description of literature is tabooed. Poems, plays, novels, travels, essays, written in any language and published in any part of the world, come within his jurisdiction. It is very different with us. Our range of subjects is limited. Our opportunities are few. All we can say is, that if people will write amusing books about India, we will undertake to review them. As it is, we are often compelled to review books, which are not amusing. A batch of "light literature" does not always afford materials for a light article. A large number of the lighter works relating to India, which find their way into print, are neither good enough, nor bad enough, to suit the purpose of the reviewer. They are of a kind to forbid all emotion. They do not fill him with delight; they do not inspire him with anger. He cannot work himself into anything like an enthusiasm over them. The most that

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it is permitted to him to do, is to gossip over their contents as familiarly as possible, and to ask the reader to be as tolerant and as good-natured as he is inclined to be himself.

The books now before us differ greatly from each other; but, inasmuch as they are all written by military men and relate mainly to military topics, they are grouped together without inconsistency in this article. Yad Namuh dates from the Oriental Club, and (as it purports to be the work of a man, who went out to India when the Duke of Wellington was a young Colonel, and Jonathan Duncan was Governor of Bombay) is written by one of the not most juvenile members of that not very juvenile congeries of AngloIndian life. It is not improbable that before long we shall have something to say about the cumbrous building in the corner of Hanover Square, and of the humanity that assembles within it. The Oriental Club were surely worth an article. Now, we purpose only to say briefly that we should not be sorry if the Club would send us forth a few more "chapters of Oriental Life." There are scores of idle men to be seen every day, lounging about the reading-room and library, or sauntering into the coffee-room to order their dinners and to recruit themselves, after the exertion, with a glass of sherry and a crust of bread, who, if they would only write down, with as little pretence of fine writing as possible, their own personal experiences during the last fifty years, could hardly fail to add some very interesting and suggestive volumes to our library of Anglo-Indian literature. The old Indians, who frequent the Oriental Club, complain of many disorders, and are doubtless afflicted with some-ennui not being the least: but the cacoethes scribendi is assuredly not one of them. It is hard to induce the greater number of them to write anything beyond a chit. Occasionally, in a paroxysm of energy, induced by the perusal of some stirring intelligence from India, one of them may rush to a writing-table, seize a pen, and endeavour to lay before the world, through the medium of the ubiquitous Times newspaper, his opinions of the manner in which a certain battle ought to have been fought, or certain political negociations conducted. But this is almost the extent of his literary industry. Even men, who in India, in the midst of incessant and burdensome official duties, found both time and inclination for literary pursuits, no sooner find themselves in England with absolutely nothing to do, than they protest their inability to write a line that is worth reading. There is something in British air, which seems prematurely to rust the minds of returned Indians, who often from active energetic men, possess

ing first-rate abilities and eager to turn them to good account, sink suddenly into indolent listless drones, with scarcely a thought beyond their breakfasts and dinners, the play-house, the opera, and the races.

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But we purpose to write of this another time; and, therefore, turn to the book before us. This stray gift from the Oriental Club is not to be much criticised. Adopting honest Sancho's maxim, we pray God bless the giver,' and do not much intend to look the gift-horse in the mouth. Yad Namuh is the autobiography of an Indian officer of the old school. In its pages, it will be difficult to recognise either events or characters, they are so transposed and compounded; which scrap of criticism (lest it should be alleged that we are incontinently departing from our intentions) we beg to say is nothing more than the writer's own account of his work. "In the following pages," he says in his preface, "it will be difficult to recognise either ⚫ events or characters, they are so transposed and compounded; yet an experienced observer (or a living cotemporary, of which 'few remain) may, perhaps, detect lights and shades of Oriental life, such as it used to be in by-gone times." We must indeed acknowledge, that there is something rather hazy and obscure about the book. Even the professed novelist generally condescends to tell us where it is, that he lays the scene of his romance. But the author of Yad Namuh, which is not to be called a romance so much as a personal narrative, leaves the reader to discover for himself to which of the three Presidencies of India his anxious parents were pleased to ship him. They bundled him off very hastily without a day's notice; and, after spending a few days in London, and going through certain ceremonies at the India House, he makes his way to Portsmouth, and is soon on board the capacious vessel which is destined to carry him to the East. In those days a cadet swung his hammock, or had a standing berth, in the steerage. Captain Hervey complains that he was billeted with a chum, and recommends every young man to have a cabin to himself. In no respect has a greater change taken place in the customs of Anglo-Indian life, than in this matter of the first start of the adventurer. The author of Yad Namuh had most probably, not one chum, but a score or two. Cadets went out gre gariously in those days, and roughed it throughout a long voyage, rendered endurable only by the occasional excitement of a pirate, a shark, or a storm. They had no notion of the extensive outfits supplied by the Silvers and Maynards of the present day they were guiltless of all knowledge of the magna caterva of bullock trunks and packing-cases,

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crowded with every conceivable description of articles, from absolute necessities to utter impossibilities, that the imagination of an outfitter can suggest. The goods and chattels of the young hopeful of Yad Namuh were all stowed away in a huge sea-chest. "At top," he says, "I found two long letters of advice, one of credit, very circumscribed indeed, several recommendatory epistles and other useless articles, a pair of hair curl-irons, a large quantity of hair-powder and pomatum-in short, every requisite for the decoration of the out'side of the head, as well as the body, but not a book of any 'description, excepting a pocket Johnson's Dictionary and a new Bible, the latter intended, I suppose, to keep the devil 'out of the box, much in the same way as we put camphor ' and sandal-wood to scare away vermin. I, however, took the precaution of turning over the leaves of the Bible most carefully, having heard of bank-notes (the current coin of those ' days) being sometimes deposited in such places to detect lukewarm Christians." This is not very reverential. But we have heard of bibles and bank-notes put to these traditionary uses, though we cannot say that we ever knew any one who had happened to find any of the latter between the leaves of the former. In our time, bibles were more plentiful and bank-notes more rare. We remember, however, that thrifty people used to put the bible to other uses. It was no uncommon thing some years ago, and perhaps is no uncommon thing now, for the embryo civil or military officer, on paying his farewell visit to some relative or friend, to be saluted with the question, "Have you got a bible and prayer book?" and on returning the answer-there was sure to be only one answer-" Oh! yes, of course, I have;" to meet with the rejoinder, "I only asked, because I intended to give you one." We do not know how many intentions of this kind we did not carry with us to India. Fortunately, they did not take up much room in our cabin. If they had been more cumbrous, we should not have known where to stow them away; for the generosity of a wealthy guardian, who stood in loco parentis, the comprehensive imagination of an outfitter, and an incurable bibliomania, which beset us early in life and has not yet been suppressed, filled our elevenfeet square of ship-room with such a strange menagerie of dead-stock, from pots of jam to works on the human understanding, that we could not have held many additions to the store, until, in progress of time, the sure process of human consumption reduced some portion of our supplies to a fraction of their original bulk. We well remember how, about the time of eight-bells at noon, we discussed with one or two

chosen companions, orange marmalade, the Berkleyan theory, and the progress of the ship. Though we had rather an extensive supply of perfumery, we had more aids to the embellishment of the interior than the exterior of the head (such have been the inroads of the school-master since the days of the young hopeful of Yad Namuh), and we pomatumed our brains with such a mass of metaphysical rubbish, that it took years to comb it out again. We should have found much better reading in the one book, that the Cadet half-a-century ago discovered in his single sea-chest. We do not mean by this, that books are not good (perhaps the best) components of a Cadet's outfit. We only mean that they may be chosen unwisely. We should like to see every Cadet with a box full of them-the larger the better and a cabin to himself to read them in. Libraries are to be bought cheaply in these days. You may buy for a shilling what once cost you a guinea, and find in a single volume the contents of half-a-dozen. At a cost of a few shillings may be purchased good reading for a voyage; and it will not take more room in one's cabin than a dozen pots of jam.

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In due course, indeed, after an unusually short voyage for those days, young Hopeful is landed at a place, which the "experienced observer" is left to discover to be Bombay. What the inexperienced observer may make of it, it is hard to say. Upon reporting himself to the Town Major, he and his companions are conducted to Government House," for the purpose of being exhibited to the Governor, while all the yellow-faced European settlers and the natives drew up, as we passed along 'the streets, to grin and stare at our fine fresh English com' plexions." Arrived at the great house, they were shown into an open hall, and were beginning to gape about them and to wipe the perspiration from their foreheads, when there entered from an adjoining room "a little sallow shabby-looking person, rubbing his hands together, as if to keep himself warm." Upon this, the staff-officer cried "Attention, gentlemen! here is the Governor!" "This intimation," says the autobiographer," occasioned a good deal of surprise amongst us, as from the appearance of a number of pompous and splendidly-dressed gentlemen, who were moving about, we had expected something more imposing than a striped peagreen silk coat, white cotton vest, and inexpressibles. The disproportion of the Governor's head to his body was even more striking than the singular simplicity of his dress; indeed, he carried it a little on one side, as if he felt the 'weight of it oppressive." After this picture of the external

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