absolute law, and is, perhaps, observed with more strictness than ony other law, religious or civil, by any nation under the sun.”

Never, surely, was the abiding influence of first impressions more evidently displayed, than in this firm and undeviating adherence to early principle, evinced by a people remarkable for feebleness of mind, and gentleness of manners. That the fortitude, or rather torpid resignation, with which this feeble race have been observed to endure the extremity of bodily suffering, may with more justice be attributed to early inspired sentiment, than to causes merely physical, is rendered obvious by the similar operation of similar causes on a people, whose character and manners are in other respects very widely different. That contempt of pain and death, which forms such a prominent feature in the character of the American savage, can by no means be ascribed to an organization and temperament similar to that of the Hindoo. It is explained by the honest traveller Charlevoix in a few words:

when, after having given some astonishing instances of the amazing constancy and firmness evinced by the savages of both sexes, in bearing the extreme of bodily torture," suffering for many hours, and sometimes for many days together, the sharpest effects of fire, and all that the most industrious fury can invent to make it most painful, without letting a sigh escape;" he adds, "the savages exercise themselves in this all their lives, and accustom their children to it from their tenderest years. We have seen little boys and girls tie themselves together by one arm, and tie a lighted coal between them, to see which of them would shake it off first."

If education can thus conquer the most powerful feelings of nature, subdue appetite, and render the soul superior to physical sensation; what may it not be expected to effect, when directed to the control of the malevolent passions, the subjection of the irregular appetites, the cultivation of intellect, and the improvement of benevo

lence? Why, then, does the religion which teaches us to control these passions, to subdue these desires, and to cultivate these dispositions, operate less powerfully in effecting its purpose than the superstition of the Hindoos? Is it that the eternal interests of an immortal soul are of less importance in the eyes of a Christian mother, than the loss of cast is in the eyes of a Hindoo? No. There is no mother, however lost to virtue, that does not anxiously desire her child to be virtuous; nor, in the regions enlightened by the gospel, is there a mother to be found, who would willingly forfeit for her child the hopes of everlasting glory. Yet, to form in her child the dispositions essentially connected with these hopes, is as far from being the object of her care, as if no such hopes existed!

In order to explain the cause of this incongruity, we must revert to the observation with which we set out. Human intellect is confessedly, in the female pagan, and in the female savage, reduced to a low

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and degraded state. But low and degraded as it is, it nevertheless enables them to comprehend and to discharge the simple duties of their situation. Susceptible of the prejudices which she deems it incumbent on her to inculcate, the Hindoo bends the force of her mind to impress upon her infants the terrors and superstitions to which she is herself enslaved. And how does she render this impression permanent, but by associating the idea of good with the superstitions to which she devotes him; and the idea of evil with the slightest deviation from the rules it prescribes? Nor is it by lessons merely, that she effects her purpose. Το lessons are added the powerful influence of habit and example. The forbidden food, and the forbidden thing, is held by her in the most lively abhorrence; and while her child knows her to be willing to meet death in its most dreadful form, he constantly witnesses with what agony the bare idea of loss of cast convulses her otherwise unimpassioned mind. The same feelings, the

same prejudices, imbue every member of the society in which he moves, so that the impressions he receives are never upon any occasion counteracted. He becomes all that his parents, all that his country desire him to be. Under the same species of tuition, the daughters acquire all that is necessary to enable them to perform to their children the same duty which their mother has performed to them; and for the due performance of which, the strength of their prejudices is the best security.

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Let us now, for a moment, imagine the women of Hindoostan pursuing a different course. Let us suppose, that in the indulgence of maternal tenderness, they, rather than cross the inclinations of their children, permitted them to eat of what is forbidden, and to do what is prohibited by the rules of their religion, trusting to the power of formal lessons for implanting in their minds, at a future period, an abhorrence of the practices in which they were thus, during the period of infancy, indulged. Let us