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    October 6, 1855.] T H E L EAJ)ER. 965

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    LEWIS'S RIVERS. An Account of Hie Rivers...

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    India, China, And Japan. A Visit To Indi...

    gu w The robber agreed , and no sooner had be gone into the city -upon this errand , than he 6 ent for a very cunning little old woman . There is no * no woman living who is so cunning as Bhe was , although "—interpolated the Shekh , with a sly twinkle f the eye— " there arc still some , ' who would be a match for Kbliz himself . Well , this little cunning old woman went to licer-bul ' s daughter and engaged herself as maid , and she gradually so won her confidence that Ueer-bul's daughter showed her the box with three locks and the rulty . So she filched the keys , opened the locks , took the ruby , and gave it to the robber , who brought- it to Akbar . Then Akbar threw it into the Jumna , and sent for Beer-bul . ' Bring me the ruby , ' said he . * Very went home to but behold ! it stolen Well

    well * said Beer-bul , and bring it , was . ' , where's the ruby ? ' said Akbar . ' Your Majesty shall have it in fifteen days . 1 Very well ' said Akbar , but remember that your head is security for it . " Beer-bul went home , and said to his daughter , ' We have but fifteen days to live jet ua Speud them in festivity . ' So they att % and drank , and gave feasts and dances , till in twelve days tbey had -spent many lues of rupees , and there was not a pice left them to buy food . They remained thus two days . On the fourteenth morning , the daughter of a fisherman who fished in the Jumna suid to her father : ' Father , the Rajah Beer-bul and Iiia daughter have had nothing to eat for two days ; let me take them this fish * for breakfast . ' So she took them the n » h , which Beer-burs daughter

    received with many thanks , and immediately cooked . But as they were eating it , there came a pebble into Ucer-bul ' s mouth . lie took it out in his fingers , and , wah ! it was the ruby . The next morning he went to Akbar-Shah , and said : * Here is the ruby , as I promised . ' Akbar was covered with surprise ; but when lie had heard the story , he gave Beer-bul two crores of rupees , and said that he spoke the truth—it was better to rejoice than to grieve in mis-fortune . " At Delhi and Oude Mr . Taylor saw—as who could fail to sec?—in the one , a humiliating spectacle of decrepitude ; in the other , to use Rymer's phrase descriptive of Othello , " a bloody farce . " Tlmt the mighty Subah of the Decean should be ruled by a prince ( under treaties which he has repeatedly and systematically broken ) who pivys liko a liourbou upon villages and

    cities ; or that the poople of Oude . should be tortured by an idiot who burns thirty or forty villages whenever the taxing season returus , is a reproach to the British Empire . It is to be hoped , at the same time , t !> : it when the octogenarian Akbarll ., the impotent representative of the Mogul dynasty , dies , the exhibitions will cease of our Imperial Government paying theatrical homage to a man who is not even peraiitted to be the tyrant of his own household . l' \> r fifty years has he sat on the crystal throne , a piteous image of imbecility . But the ignominy of his situation is mild compared with that of the drivelling King of Oude , who , retaining only the powers of domestic oppression , subjects myiiads of human beings to the rigours of bis malignant idiotcy . Mr . Taylor ' s anecdotes of this phantom court illustrate the worst that lias been said of it by Residents and travellers .

    To extract passages from Mr . Taylor ' s pictorial description of India would be to cut squares out of a panorama . We will ask the reader to glance , instead , at a prim Chinese interior : — We are curious to inspect the dwelling of a Chinaman of the better class , and our friend , who is fortunately able to assist us , conducts us to the house of a wealthy old merchant . It is a stone building , recently erected , and everything about it indicates great neatness , and an approach to taste in the owner . In the open veratulalus are boxes of the nuiti tun , or rose-scented peony , with gorgeous white and crimson blossoms , aiul the / . * . -irA * .- / , a w : tU'r-plnut of an orchideous nature , with a long spike of yellowish-green lluwer . s . The in tit-tan also decorates tlio rooms , which

    arc hung with lanterns of stained glass . The furniture is of wood , of a sun , uncomfortable pattern , but elaborately carved . The owner , an urbane , polite old gentleman , regales us with cups of stewed tea , whose del ' n-ate aroma compensates for the absence Of milk and sugar , and asks us u ; i stairs into his library . The-. shelves are covered with Chinese works , bound in their wooden covers , and in the centre of the room stands a bronzd frame , with thro- api-itur . s at the top . and a bundle of arrows . The latter are the implements of a g . im .- which the h > -c explain- * to u « , by taking the arrows to the further en < l of the room , seizing one by the tip of the shaft with hia thumb ami forc-tinger , and throwing it mi as to fall into one of the small circular openings of the frame . We try a game , where . > f the victory , owing to his more extensive practice , remains with him .

    The following , which refers to the environs of Shanghai , might serve to illustrate the sides of some mighty porcelain jar , only it lias a better perspective : — The country is a < loa < l level , watered with . sluggish creeks , and intersected with ditches and canals . it is ( studded far mid near with shapeless mounds of earth erected over obsolete natives : sparingly duttc . l with clumps of dark cedar-trees or plantations Of the inestimable bamboo , and enlivened by occasional hamlets , which , shaded with bushy willows , have a pleasant , rural aspect when seen from a distance , but are mostly disgusting when you draw near . The boil is n very rich clayey loam , and yields abundant crops of riei \ whe . it , awoct potatoes , beets , beans , pen-nuts , and the other staples of Chinese food . Much of it must have lK-en originally marsh land ,

    which has been drained by canals and the gradual rise of the eoa .-t , from the deposits of the Vang-tsc-Kiang . Tin * paths faun village to village an ; on narrow dykes , winding between the fields , and eroding the tUtihes by bridges formed of single large slabs of granite , which are brought down from the hills . Occasionally you s-ce a hig hway , six or eight feot broad , paved with blocks of stone , laid transversely , but I 4 oubt whether u earringe could go in any direction further than two or three miles from the city . 1 Nonietimes met u Chinaman of the better class mounted on a sturdy little pony , and once encountered a traveller from Soo-Chow in the national conveyance of China —the whculh .-iiTow ! lie was seated hidew . iyrt , with his legs dangling below , while his baggage , placed on the opposite side , served to trim the vehicle . It was n One-horse wheelbarrow , propelled by a stout coolie , with a strap ov « . T his shoulders , nd made a doleful creaking as it passed .

    Accompanying ( ho American mission to Japan , Mr . Taylor paid a visit to the Loo-Choo Islos . In this group , as in the island of Java , vast natural amphitheatres am terraced with rice-fields , lawns , and villages , n . s noav to the ideal—in u distant view — as the valley of Kasselas , At the L ' . k > -CIioi > capital worka in sculpture wore observed , especiall y at tho 4 l viceroy's " palace , " the Klcgimt Enclosure of Fragrant Festivities . " Thence passing to the JapaneBe count , Mr . Bayard Taylor had some experience of Japanese affectation and jealousy " . It is probably on account of the rulo in the American navy , that all journals kept by ollieers ( our traveller was an officer pro ton . ) ' should bo suirendeivd to ( Jovornment , that , this part of the book is less animated than the rest . Wo will wait for Commodore Perry's narrntive , and roturn westwards through the Indian seas : — From dawn until dark wo wont wlowly loitering past the lovoly islands that gem

    those remote seas , until the last of them sank astern in the flush of sunset . Nothing can be more beautiful than their cones of never-fading verdure , draped to the veryedge of the waves , except where some retreating cove shows its beach of snow-white sands . On the larger ones are woody valleys , folded between the hills , and opening upon long slopes , overgrown with the cocoa-palm , the mango , and many a strange and beautiful tree of the tropics . The light , lazy clouds , suffused with a crimson flush of heat , that floated slowly throug h the upper heavens , cast shifting shadows upon the masses of foliage , and deepened , here and there , the dark-purple hue of the sea . Retreating behind one another until they grew dim and soft as clouds on the horizon , and girdled by the most tranquil of oceans , these islands were real embodiments of the joyous fancy of Tennyson , in his dream of the Indies , in " Locksley HalL" Here , although the trader comes , and the flags of the nations of far continents sometimes droop in the motionless air—here are still the heavy-blossomed bowers and the heavy-fruited trees , the summer isles of Eden in their purple spheres of sea . The breeze fell nearly to a calm at noonday , but our vessel still moved noiselessly southward , and island after island faded from green to violet , and from violet to the dim , pale blue that finally blends with the air . This narrative is bright in . style , and in matter at once varied and entertaining .

    October 6, 1855.] T H E L Eaj)Er. 965

    October 6 , 1855 . ] T H E L EAJ ) ER . 965

    Lewis's Rivers. An Account Of Hie Rivers...

    LEWIS'S RIVERS . An Account of Hie Rivers of England and Wales . By Samuel Lewis , Jun ., Author of " The History and Topography of the Parish of St . Mary , Islington . " Longman and Co . A book full of suggestive matters , and jet disappointing . " The dripping of other men ' s wit , " as Margaret of Newcastle said of this sort of thing , unless cemented together by a mind sympathetic with the subject , is at the best uneven reading . Carlyle says we are all poets when we read a poem well ; but by that rule a compiler , if he understand his work , ought to be equal to his authorities . Now , the English rivers , without a pun , are a fertile source—almost too fertile . They are perplexing from their number :

    while many of them , though of tiniest dimensions , have some importance from the lauds through which they run , and the uses they serve . A dictionary of English rivers , therefore , is a good idea ; it is one of the desirable companions to the newspapers , and to the railway guide , for the traveller , and the commercial traveller . Air . Lewis has still left the work a desideratum . We hj » ve a thick post octavo volume , with a vast number of streams alphabetically noted ; but the description of each fails for most things that would be sought in such a dictionary . The author gives you a description of the stream , its source , the towns it passes , its scenery , its junction with the sea or some other stream—in short , such description of the stream as might be given by a guide from a mountain-top or a balloon ; but no account " of the river . " The breadth is tjiven only at rare intervals :

    the depth seldom ; the soil through which the stream passes hardly ever , and only in the rapidest terms ; the nature of the trade , the size , population , and character of the towns , are mostly omitted , or touched in phrases so slight , as to be worth nothing . It is much if you get the length of the stream , its breadth here and there , and the 7 iamcs of the towns which it passes . In short , it is the description of the rivers by a painter—without a powerful command of descriptive language . Yes , there is one particular often noted—the description of fish to be found . Mr . Lewis ' s sources of information are of very various worth ; they are given at the end of every article , so that the reader may modify his opinion of a description according to his estimate of the books consulted . Yet even imperfectly treated the subject is fertile—even without the practical and commercial there was much to tell—much more than Mr . Lewis

    has told . There is hardly a stream in England which has not its bright particular poet . Every bank is haunted by a sentiment , aud images of beauty in themselves lovely are heightened and increased by their genius loci . Perhaps every one has experienced a feeling of unrest in looking at running water ; and if the heart were not so secret in its workings , if the mirror were not so transitory in its reflexions , water , with its mysterious influence , might let one into the marrow of many a man ' s history . Wordsworth writes of the power of waters over the minds of poets ; " Shelley evidently had an immense sympathy with the crystal element , with its beauty , its change , its power . But for this sympathy we should never have had that perfect but desperately mournful complaint of his written near Xaplcs ; and ou referring to the stanzas , we see Shelley must have been affected by the unrest we have

    spoken ol : — The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me , and a tone Arises from id measured motion : How sweet did any heart now share iu my emotion . Poets with nerves less stretched than Shelley ' s have become , as it were , wedded to the waters of their home . Wordsworth , Southey , and Coleridge , inspired by the scenery amid which they thought , earned for themselves the title of" Lake poets . " The Duddon , a mountainous stream on the confines of Westmoreland , Cumberland , and Lancashire , furnished Wordsworth with subjects for thirty-three sonnets , clear and stately us the spotless flood

    which inspired them . The Kothn , another river in the Lake district , seemed to vie with " long-loved Duddon" in exciting the untirod exuberance of the virtuous poet : he composed thousands of verses beside it , many of them commemorating the lake , the valley , and the surrounding scenery . Hartley Coleridge , the unlmppy man whom some one has doscm > u «! as " w : inuVrm «* like a brcezo , " ended his troubled life in a cottigo on the LhiuJcs of the Kotha . Yet Mr . Lewis , for all his exclusive attention to tlw picturesque , shirks the duty of describing the beauties of this river ; "JjP ™" ' y , to hi , notice , by way of apology , that it is - inipossH . le '' ^ KVeniSr Tho plea reminds one of the young lad y who excused huwcH horn » courting her lesson because she knew it too well . re irk a White ; and The -rippling Trent" is the well-beloved «> ' « | r « -f ,. J | lln « J Xho istot ^ s ^ fefe ^ irn ^^ rsr ^^ x - * .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 6, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06101855/page/17/