cess, and of ambiguous authority. Sometimes, they are said to have issued directly from the lips of the gods, sometimes to have been promulgated by the inspired favourites of heaven, or compiled from the ample stores of sacred tradition. They are, nevertheless, perpetually blended with the wildest doctrines of absurdity and error. The passions, which they might otherwise purify and guide, are kindled by the tenets and observances of a sanguinary and a libertine superstition; and he who attends the rites of the demon of Juggernaut, can scarcely be prepared to practise precepts, if he could collect them, which may inculcate the purity and necessity of virtue.

II. By the moral code of the Bramin, charity, as we have seen, is represented as the most essential of all duties. Yet the voice which proclaims and extols the maxim, sanctions, as a virtue of higher and more holy obligation, the unperforming apathy of ascetic life. He may be wise who goes forth among sentient beings to protect or bless them; but the man of the most exalted wisdom, is he, who, careless of all other things, retires to waste his days in the solitudes of woods and deserts. Such a person, wandering over the earth in silence and abstraction, or lingering away his life at the root of a tree, or in the glooms of a cell, and subduing all the better feelings and affections of his nature, acquires perfection in this world, and secures felicity in the next; and thus the great law of moral wisdom, which, binding man to man, and including each and all within the circumference of universal brotherhood, requires beneficent actions as the best test of obedience, and the most acceptable to heaven; is opposed and superseded, in the religion of the Bramin, by that which says to man, Be human no more, retire from all the gracious offices of life,

forget the parent who gave you being, the child who demands your care, and the wife who merits your love; and associate yourself with privation, and solitude, and misery, till, converted into a pure and perfect Yogee, the grave receive you into its bosom, and the gods prepare your reward.

III. In the system of moral precepts sanctioned by the religion of the Hindu, we may further trace the most extravagant inconsistency, and the most pernicious injustice. That which is deeply criminal in an inferior cast, may be considered as a light or venial trespass in a higher. The slightest offence to the least of the priestly order, is to outweigh the last of injuries inflicted on the inferior Hindu; and the worst and most unpardonable of crimes in the afflicted Chandala, becomes expiable in a Bramin by an insignificant mulct. Even mercy is to be meted out according to the most absurd and barbarous distinctions. The Paria, who but breathes upon his superior, is declared worthy of death, by the same code which proclaims compassion and tenderness to the worm; and, while the beast of the field is protected, by the just and gracious tenets of religion, from wrong, the ancient parent may be exposed without blame to the incursions of the tide, and left, unpitied, to struggle and perish in the retiring waters.

IV. It is obvious, too, that many of the causes by which the mythology of the Greek was impaired in its moral tendency, must operate, with equal effect, in the mythology of the Hindu. The Hindu professes a faith similar in its objects to that of the Greek. The gods of both exhibit examples of violence, of wrath, of malignity, and of wantonness, alike unfavourable and offensive to virtue. Each might equally justify his vices by celestial precedent; and

to each the authority of his creed might furnish a plea for the most contradictory qualities, the cruelty that delights in the human sacrifice, and the debauchery which seeks and finds indulgence in the recesses of the temple.

Of such a system the influence and effects are analogous to the corruption of its principles. The guiding precept is rarely to be found, and he who seeks it is entangled in inconsistency and contradiction. The man of charity is reminded of the superior sanctity of the fanatic, and the fanatic is taught to rely, with implicit faith, on the saving efficacy of useless penance. The mulct is paid to enrich the priest, and the crime is more readily perpetrated, because it is so easily to be redeemed. We behold the poor and unhappy outcast, driven without mercy, and often for an imaginary offence, from the society of his fellow creatures, and from the temples of his gods. Cruelty and obscenity are transformed into devotional virtues. The gravest votary is not ashamed to witness the wantonness which dances round his altars; and the Gentoo, while he treads cautiously on the earth lest he should crush a reptile, and diffuses his charities as his priest requires, and performs his task of oblation and prayer with pious scrupulosity, is found to delight in the wild sacrifice of the funeral pile, and to mingle in the mercenary impurities which are encouraged for priestly gain in the pagodas of his idols *.

From a religion thus feeble for good, and efficient

Orme, who was well acquainted with the Hindu character and institutions, adverts indignantly to both. Histor. Fragm. 432, 433, 434, &c. Indeed, to admit the institutions, is to admit the character. They are cause and effect.

for evil, we turn with mingled astonishment and sorrow. Admitting the beauty of its incidental precepts, we lament the insufficiency of its moral influence; and we behold another instance of the facility with which human reason abandons the lights of wisdom, to wander in the darkness of error and superstition.

SECT. III.

Advantages enjoyed by Mahomet-Moral precepts-Frequent excellence-The doctrine adopted to the sensuality or policy of its author-Cruelty, and vengeance, and persecution, and wrath, sanctioned by divine authority-Effects on the popular mind, and on the world-Humility and meekness in theory, arrogance and presumption in practice-The morality framed for a sect, and not for mankind.

IN the views which I have hitherto taken of human legislation, I have discovered little more than evidences of human frailty. Of every code, much that is good, and all that is evil, in man, may plead the authority and the sanction; and the mazed and erring disciple is submitted to a guide which exhibits for his imitation contradictory examples, or enjoins for his observance conflicting doctrines. Every system is a chaos in which the seeds of truth and falsehood, holiness and impiety, rectitude and crime, have been sown with a strange and wonderful inconsistency; and, while we contemplate those monstrous productions of mortal capacity, those temples of Babel which indicate at once the strength and weakness of man, the most opposite emotions may justly be excited in the mind, and we know not how to silence the discordant impressions of exultation and of pity, of admiration and of contempt.

The Apostle of Mecca might have avoided, without much difficulty, many of the vices which have been thus interwoven in the frame of other religions. He was admitted to the sources of Christian wisdom, and he drank largely and freely. In the Koran, accordingly, we discover precepts of unblemished excellence. The imagery of poetry is often employed to recommend the maxims of virtue. The lawgiver commands obedience with an authority frequently justified by the purity and utility of his laws; and the disciple, instead of being left to fluctuate in uncertainty and doubt, is edified by truths too explicit to be misinterpreted, and too clear to be misunderstood.

"Whoso chooseth the present life and the pomps thereof, unto them will be given the recompence of "their works, for that which they have done in this "life shall perish, and that which they have wrought "shall be vain. Slay not, except in a just cause. "Meddle not with the subsistence of orphans. Per"form your covenant. Give good measure, and weigh with a just balance. Walk not proudly int "the land, for thou canst not cleave the earth, "neither canst thou equal the mountains in stature. "Know ye not that life is only a long and a vain

amusement, and that worldly pomp, and the affec"tation of glory among you, and the multiplication "of riches, shall at length wither, and become dry "stubble? Shew kindness to the poor and to your "neighbour who is of kin to you, and your neighbour "who is a stranger, and the captive whom your "right hand possesseth, for God loveth not the i proud nor the covetous, who conceal that which "God hath bountifully given them; and that which