that in the example just cited 'justice' is rendered by 'equity and justice;' on the same page he will find 'carelessness and inadvertency' where the original has only neglect; and so he will find throughout the book such geminous and even tergeminous renderings to the number of at least two hundred. Cui bono? Is it to exhibit the author's opulence of diction? such an exhibition, we fear, would be lost on the frontier officers whom Capt. Raverty expects to use his grammar. Or is it that Capt. Raverty has so little confidence in the expressiveness of his own tongue that he must use two or three words, where one has sufficed the Khatak or the Afridi ? Or is it that he wishes to give the purchaser his guinea's worth of type and paper and twaddle? One might forgive this and put it down as an unavoidable idiosyncrasy of the enthusiastic hierophant of Afghan mysteries, were there not other offences in his translations less pardonable: words omitted, sentences transposed, sense distorted, with a most reckless disregard of the wants of his pupils. It is absolutely harrowing to think how some young officer of the P. I. F. at Bahadur Khel or Tak will try to beguile his solitude with a dip into this handsome volume, and will be puzzled and bewildered by the heartless cruelty of Capt. Raverty. This notice has already become too long, so that we can give no more extracts; but some translations are so bad that they raise a doubt as to the author's knowledge of the language. In p. 72 a line reads, "though his house or goods be spoiled;' Capt. Raverty renders, whether his dwellings be sacked and pillaged, or filled with wealth and goods.' There is nothing in the original to correspond to the second clause, though it is easy to see that the translator was led wrong by the position of words in the Pushto line, which is, though his house be spoiled, or goods'; a grievous blunder, at best. P. 111 'Like as one forgetteth a deceased person of hundred years;' the original says, 'as one forgets a person dead a hundred years.' P. 119. "This unembellished firmament became adorned with ornaments and embellishments; which the diamonds of omnipotence and power have carved.' Delicious! The diamonds have probably taken the head of the table. Besides mistaking the construction, as usual, he also reads kandile for gandile; the proper translation of the second line is simply: 'Embroidered with the gems of his power.'-But enough. As far as the study of Pushto is concerned, it is really to be regretted that Captain Raverty turns out a charlatan, and all his statements of fact or science must be taken cum grano salis. He publishes (p. viii.) to the world that it is impossible for any one on the North West Frontier to know Pushto. He is as much mistaken in this, as when he calls the Prophet's flower a violet (p. 100), or derives the name of the Pathans from an imaginary place called Pash, and an impossible word tún. There are officers from whose pen we should like very much to see a concise grammar of the language of the Afghans. We have heard Captain James deliver a long address in Pushto, which was a model of idiomatic ease and vigorous native eloquence? Colonel Lumsden is said to be second to none in his knowledge of the language; or if Colonel Vaughan could be induced to prepare a second edition of his Grammar, it would be of great assistance. As it is, we do not hesitate to pronounce Vaughan's Grammar as an introduction to Pushto far preferable to the book here noticed. CRITICAL NOTICES OF WORKS ON INDIA AND THE EAST. Nemesis: a poem in four Cantos. By John Bruce Norton. London: Richardson and Co. WE claim this poem as the work of an Indian poet and recognize in it the happy style of the author of " Memories of Merton." To speak of Indian poetry, is to speak of a thing that future generations may hope to see, but which has not yet established itself as one of the things that are. Now and then, a good poem, or collection of poems, is written by one who has been some years in this country, but, as far as the subjects treated of are concerned, it might as well have been written in London by one who had never crossed the Channel. Poetry cannot flourish in the troubled atmosphere of the first phase of a nation's history. She waits for a period of healthy repose, when the sky is unclouded. Then she lifts up her voice and finds that the assemblage of hewers of wood and drawers of water, by whom her infancy was surrounded, has given way to a community of men of all occupations and tastes, among whom there are sure to be some sufficiently thoughtful and imaginative to be a fit audience. The first comers in a new country are too busy in their contest with nature to attend to any thing else. They must fight with savages and wild beasts, cut down trees, build houses, till the ground, and struggle hard for their existence. The next generation have easier work, and the next, and the next, until at last agitation gives way to rest, that again leads to solid comfort, to which is ultimately added artistic taste. In India there has been more to subdue than external nature. The task of our ancestors and our countrymen has been to subdue mind-the mind of an intelligent and semi-civilized race of men. This is a task that will take yet many a long year to accomplish. Those who have not been directly engaged in this the great national mission, are intent upon pursuits that concern almost exclusively their own material welfare. They are strangers and sojourners in the land. Both classes are fully occupied, and neither has much leisure for poetical studies. Mr. Norton has found time amidst the distracting calls of the legal profession for the indulgence of his higher tastes. He has sent forth to the world more than one volume; thus showing that, where the poetic vein exists, it will sooner or later find its way to the surface even in a man of business. It is common to find lawyers among the contributors to magazines and newspapers, the authors of historical works, and among the merciless censors, who criticise performances which. are far beyond their own powers to execute or even to appreciate; but it is comparatively seldom, that we find them among the worshippers of that muse whose devotees they find such pleasure in ridiculing. But here we have a lawyer among the poets. What the effect of his poetical aspirations may be on his practice, it is not for us to determine. "Nemesis "is the name, which our poetical lawyer or legal poet has thought proper, to give to the poem which we are now about to notice. Regarding the a fitness of such an appellation we shall have something to say hereafter. He commences with a prologue or poetical preface. It it is beyond us to imagine what possible advantage is derived from this practice. Good poets gain nothing whatever by it, and when ordinary or inferior poets resort to it, it leaves on the mind of the reader an impression of weakness in the writer. "Not always nor on light occasion, I "Seek with the crowd, nay, oft refuse, to sing, "Lest weak would grow the too oft shaken string. From such a commencement we might infer that the author is one of those gentlemen, who, though possessed of a tolerable voice, rather stringy perhaps, as the above lines would imply, yet " oft refuses to sing," under the pretence of modesty, but with the real object of enhancing the effect of his performance, when, at length, he does yield to the repeated solicitations of the eager company. These remarks apply with equal force to the lines with which the poem closes. "Go forth my poem: thine is not the roar "Of torrent or of cataract; thy flow "Is like a humble streamlet, winding slow Through England's southern meadows to the shore. These lines suggest the idea that the author contemplates, with a feeling of complete satisfaction, his finished work, a pleasure which even the highest genius is not often permitted to enjoy. "Nemesis" consists of four cantos, written for the most part in the Spenserian stanza, over which the author exhibits considerable power. This species of verse requires no little skill to sustain, and Mr. Norton has been very successful in the use of it. In the Alexandrine at the end of each stanza, he has avoided that heaviness of diction, which so often characterizes such lines. The poem is properly speaking a novel thrown into verse. The opening scene consists of an old man and his little grand-daughter sitting together before a rustic cottage, on the banks of the Darrent. He has no relative left in the world but this girl, and he is consequently bound up in her. As she arrives at mature years, a retiring young poet, named Hubert, falls in love with her, but conceals his passion. Of Hubert we hear little more. Mabel Lee had reached her eighteenth year, when "There came a lonely youth to dwell by Darrent's flood. Gerald is a young man of rank and fortune, highly talented and accomplished, but tired of a life of gaiety and dissipation, and desirous of returning to his better self, by a temporary exile from the busy town, and a season of musing and roaming in the country He has a faithful little spaniel, of the King Charles' breed, or, as the author mysteriously and somewhat periphrastically puts it, "Pure in his downward breed from that sleek pack This spaniel, by rescuing Mabel's kerchief from the Darrent, becomes the medium of introduction between the youth and the maiden. Gerald makes her a present of the dog. The animal runs away next day, and of course the handsome stranger brings it back, and thus an intimacy begins to be formed. They read together, walk together, talk together; and the first canto ends with the words -she fell. The next canto changes the scene to the banks of the Thames. The amorous couple are living in a cottage, surrounded by all the luxuries that taste can suggest and money procure. For a time they live happily enough, but ere long Mabel becomes conscious of her fault, Gerald grows tired of her, looks upon her as an obstacle to his mental happiness, and at last makes every effort to get rid of her. The means to which he has recourse are the vilest that human nature is capable of. The heartless seducer becomes the fiendish tempter. He introduces a young friend to Mabel, hoping to see her fascinated by his blandishments, and thus affording him a reasonable excuse for forsaking her. But the confiding girl does not listen to the voice of the charmer. Failing in this attempt, he makes another still more dastardly. He stays away from home night after night, spending his time among riotous, dissolute companions. Sometimes he brings a party of them to his cottage to offend Mabel's ear with their coarse jokes. He finds among his comrades one willing to be an accomplice in his villainy. This friend, after the whole party have left the cottage, returns to look for his purse; he takes an undue liberty with Mabel; at that moment Gerald enters and upbraids Mabel with her conduet. He pretends to be infuriated against his accomplice, and leaves the girl he has wronged to comfort herself as best she may. Almost distracted with grief, she entertains for an instant the idea of destroying herself. Her better feelings triumph. She resolves to suffer in silence. She returns to that home on the banks of the Darrent which she had so rashly left. But it is too late. She learns that her grandfather died broken-hearted, when he heard of what Mabel had done. A boy fishing in the stream tells her the sad tale. She sits for a while on the grassy bank, and when the villagers cluster round the spot in the evening to discover her retreat, they find nothing but a dripping scarf and riband, and a spaniel wet with the waters of the Darrent. "Whether she plunged, or if in trance she fell "While musing on the bank, what man may judge or tell ? The fourth canto is like the fifth act of a tragedy. Gerald repents to some extent. He goes to the mountains of Scotland to obtain comfort for his bruised spirit. He returns to his cottage on the Thames, and devotes himself to the education of his orphan boy. The boy grows up thoughtful and delicate. He dies young, and Gerald seeks to drown his sorrow in the din of battle. He joins the English army fighting against the Sikhs. In eager quest of death he performs prodigies of valour, and returns home to be knighted. He then becomes the most powerful and brilliant statesman of the day. At last the weight on his mind becomes too much for him, and his reason forsakes him. His mental faculties return for a few hours before death, and enable him to recognize in the pastor who watches his last moments, the dearest friend of his boyhood, but who had preferred the rewards of virtue to the pleasures of vice. "Too late, dear William, as we sow, we reap "Mark your own course-and his-the wretch who dies." ""Tis done; with him went down into the dust "No sculptured epitaph, no marble bust, "Points where he lies unhonour'd and alone. "Far in a village churchyard, all unknown, "Where o'er it weeds and two dwarf fir-trees wave, Just rais'd above the soil there lies a stone, "Whose date and deep initials scarcely save "The record for a while of lordly Gerald's grave." Such is the outline of the story which Mr. Norton has written in the shape of a poem. We cannot help saying that it is far better suited for the co-. lumns of the London Journal or Family Herald, than for a poem which exhibits in its execution so much merit. The subject is a most gloomy and |