Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

The Tae e yuen, or grand medical hall; Ke ying and King ching, Manchoos, superintendents.

The Lwan e wei, for attending the imperial carriages, banuers, harness, &c. He ngan, a Manchoo, superintendent.

OFFICERS COMMANDING AT PEKING.

Superintendent of the city, Shin ke hëen, a Chinese of Ho nan.

Yin, or mayor, Seu Yung, a Chinese of Gan hwuy.

Te tuh, or commanders of the city guards, Ke ying, Yih king, and Paou hing, Manchoos.

THE CITY OF THE SILENT..

THEY are gone, those glorious cities,
With their gardens of delight,

And their thousand marble domes, that shone
Upon the gloom of night.

The Assyrian heaven rings no more
With the loud triumphant cry,
Her crowned citterns loved to pour-
The victor-harmony!

Yet thou, O Silent City,

Art standing all alone,

With thy watchers at thy gates,

Thy king upon thy throne.

No palaces, O city,

With golden towers hast thou,

Like a glittering wreath of jewels hung

About thy pallid brow.

But thou hast many peaceful homes,

In shady copse and sunny dell,
Where the wild bee delighted roams,
The summer moonlight loves to dwell.

The eye may look around in vain

For precious shrine or altar-stone;
From thee no proudly solemn strain
Of gorgeous prayer hath ever flown.

But here, at balmy even-time,

When Silence her pale watch doth keep,—
Poor wanderer from a distant clime-

The alien mother comes to weep.

She brings no offerings, rich or rare,
To scatter on the sleeper's bed,

But a wreath of flowers, sweet and fair,
The garland of the dead.

How many weary pilgrim-feet,

Long doom'd upon life's waste to roam,
Have pray'd thy blessed fields to greet,
Thy dewy calm-thou quiet home!
There meek-eyed Joy will wipe away

The sorrows of our by-gone hours,
And Peace and Love, at fall of day,
Will strew our pillows with fresh flowers.

The beautiful appellation given to the burial-places of the dead in some parts of India.

W.

HINDU METAPHYSICS.-No. II.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN AND AN EUROPEAN.

EUR. Since we last discussed the Sanchya philosophy, I have been thinking very closely on the subject of our conversation and I—but what do you smile at?

BR. I smile, my good friend, at your notion of thinking. It is little more than three weeks since the conversation, to which you allude, took place, and in the course of that time you have been at five dinner parties, you have made an excursion to Brighton, and you have read four new novels, to say nothing of newspapers and magazines; you have also, as I have heard, made several good bargains at the Royal Exchange. Now, what time can you possibly have had for thinking?

EUR. I have had abundance of time, notwithstanding all these occupations, to think so much of your theories as to be assured that they are totally without foundation.

BR. If they be so totally without foundation, why have you not overthrown them? or rather why have they not fallen of themselves? You say you have thought, and that the result of your thought is, that the Sanchya philosophy is without foundation ;-permit me now to remind you, that you have yourself, in our former conversation, laid the foundation of it, even in your principle that knowledge is power, and that the mind may progress to a point of which you have no conception. Here is the foundation: now, do you retract what you then said? Do you think that the mind is incapable of all advance, or can you say positively, and for an unquestionable truth, how far it is capable of advancing?

EUR. I have no wish to retract anything I have formerly said, but I cannot see on what principle you can maintain that it is possible for a man to have or attain unto Irresistible will, Dominion over all things, Faculty of changing the course of nature, and Ability to accomplish every thing.

BR. I maintain these doctrines, I say again, on the principle which you yourself allow, namely, the power of the mind to improve and advance to an inconceivable and unlimited extent.

EUR. Yes; but when we speak of the power of the mind to improve and advance, we have reference merely to the exercise of its faculties; to the strengthening of memory by practice, to the sharpening the discriminative faculty and brightening the imaginative. And it is easy enough to conceive of this as being very possible and rational; we have evidence of it, indeed, by actual experiment; but your notions are absolutely outrageous and extravagant.

BR. May not the Sanchya philosophy appear to you outrageous and extravagant merely for want of thought on your part? You have never used the means to attain to the glorious objects which it proposes.

EUR. What are the means, I pray you? for truly I should like to make the experiment, if I thought it possible that I could succeed, even in a degree. If I could make myself as tall as the monument, I should make my fortune by letting myself out for a shew.

BR. This is truly English; you are always meditating upon the means of making money. But it would cost you a fortune to build a house large enough to contain you.

EUR. Very true-and where should I find a tailor to make clothes for me? -I did not think of this.

BR. And yet you talked this minute of thinking very closely.-Now permit

me to ask you a question. If you have a desire to accomplish any object,-a real and earnest desire,—would you not naturally use the means for its accomplishment?

EUR. Certainly.

BR. Now, in our last conversation, perhaps you may recollect, you said that you did not think touching the moon with the tip of your finger to be so very desirable as to surrender every thing else for the sake of it?

EUR. That is still my feeling ;-yet to make myself as tall as the monument is comparatively nothing to touching the moon with my hand.

BR. Ah, I see how it is; you are disposed to use our philosophy as you Christians are too much in the habit of using your religion; you will just take a little of it, so much as will not interfere very seriously with your worldly pursuits. You people of Europe are mightily calculating :-you have been computing that if to reach the moon would take your whole life and your whole thought, it would require a very short time and a very little thought to grow as tall as the monument.

EUR. I must confess, that is my feeling.

BR. And yet I fear that, even for so small a growth as to the height of the monument, you would scarcely have patience to use the means;-for all the attention and all the thoughts are required, and the mind must not wander away to foreign objects. If you were to hear of the arrival of an India fleet in the river, you would be interrupted in the most profound contemplation that you could possibly be engaged in, and I much question whether a card of invitation to dine at the Mansion House would not put to flight all your philosophy, as the firing of a gun disperses the crows from one of your cornfields.

EUR. I think if I had an object to attain and a desire to attain it, I could patiently use the means.

BR. Do you really and truly think you could keep your eyes resolutely fixed on the top of your nose, when the Times newspaper is brought into your apartment? Would not your curiosity be prompted to take a peep at the price of stocks?

EUR. Now, indeed, you are only laughing at me. For what can the keeping my eyes fixed on the top of my nose have to do with the attaining of a transcendental power?

BR. It has very much indeed to do with the attaining of transcendental power. I beseech you to make trial.

EUR. For how long a time?

BR. Say for ten or fifteen years.

EUR. For ten or fifteen years! I should be weary of it in less than as many minutes.

BR. Or, if you prefer it, you may sit with your hands folded above your head for the same time.

EUR. I should lose the use of my arms.

BR. But you would recover their use by the time that you grew to the height of the monument.

EUR. And not before, I think. But are you quite sure that in ten or fifteen years I should be as tall as the monument?

BR. I am not quite sure; but if you should not find fifteen years long enough, you might try thirty.

EUR. Oh, most horrible!

imposes !

What a dreadful penance your philosophy

Asiat. Journ. N.S. VOL. 12. No.45.

G

BR. Say, rather, what a glorious object it proposes.

EUR. An object not at all commensurate with the labour required to attain it.

BR. On the contrary, it seems to me that the object which it proposes is infinitely beyond the labour which it imposes; because it gives you all things for the sacrifice of some things.

EUR. But if it might take me thirty years to reach the height of the monument, how long would it take me to reach the moon?

BR. Concerning the time which it might take to accomplish such things, I may not speak positively; for modern writers doubt, considering the shortness of life, whether the end can be gained in the present age. However, if you

have any doubts, you may try.

EUR. Have you ever tried yourself?

BR. I have not, because I have no doubt. I am content with my present stature and my present powers, and as I do not question the dogmas of our philosophers, I make no efforts after greater powers or loftier stature.

EUR. And, I think, I may as well be content also.

BR. Yes, but your content arises only from doubt and scepticism. I know that, such is European ambition, you would undergo much in order to obtain dominion over all things.

EUR. I acknowledge that I do doubt,-or, I should speak more correctly if I said that I do not doubt, but rather I feel assured, that there is no verity whatever in your philosophy; that it is altogether a thing of the imagination— a wandering of the fancy. It is so essentially absurd-so totally out of nature. BR. Excuse me, my good friend, excuse me—but I must say that you Europeans know nothing at all of what is in nature or out of nature. You are art all over; you give no time to contemplation; you spend all your time and thoughts merely and entirely on the surface of things; you give your undivided attention to that which concerns the body only; your very minds are bodily, and what you call improving the mind is merely sticking the memory all over with a multitude of facts, which are too numerous to sink into the mind or produce any effect in it. You read so much that you can never think, and you are so absorbed in politics and merchandize, that absolutely you do not believe in the existence of mind or philosophy.

EUR. I confess there may be some truth in what you say.

BR. Ay, very great truth, and that in almost every individual, yourself not excepted. Your minds are of no use to you. You think only with your bodies, and all your thoughts are merely recollections of bodily sensations. You believe in nothing that may not be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. So far from making any endeavour to render yourselves more spiritual, to deliver yourselves from the body and rise to a glorious transcendentalism, you give all diligence to make your bodies more entirely the prisons and dungeons of your minds.

EUR. This is rather severe, though perhaps not entirely unjust. But may there not be an opposite error, in so far abstracting the mind from that which is visible and rational, as to fill it with all manner of useless speculations and extravagant notions? And is it not as possible to be too negligent of the body as to be too negligent of the mind?

BR. Is this your mode of reasoning? Do you think, because a little stillness and abstraction produces truth, a great deal will generate falsehood?

EUR. I think that the continued application of the mind to one object may be the means of producing a certain degree of absorption more favourable to

fancy than to truth. Intellect requires comparison, and comparison requires many objects to be presented to the mind.

BR. But the mind can know nothing of that which is hastily presented and as hastily withdrawn. You know too much to know anything. You say you know that there is no truth in our Sanchya philosophy; now let me as a friend implore you as a lover of truth to keep your eyes fixed upon your nose for ten years, just by way of experiment, and I feel convinced that, at the end of that period, you will entertain a different opinion of the Sanchya philosophy from what you do now.

EUR. Nay, nay, you are too unreasonable in your request. How would you like to do so yourself?

BR. In my search after the true philosophy, I might be willing; but, as I am a believer in it, I need not to make the experiment.

EUR. And I believe, if I were to make the experiment, it would fail for want of faith.

BR. Well then, now I see how it is; you are fully determined that you will not believe, and you will not use any means by which you may convince yourself; yet, with all this inveterate and obstinate prejudice, you plume yourself on being rational. Surely, I have never met with any people under the sun more prejudiced and narrow-minded than you people of Europe! And I dare say that you fancy yourself a bit of a philosopher, even for questioning the truth of our system, and for speaking of it sceptically and superficially. Now, I shall meet you again soon, and then I will have a little closer talk with you; and I must beg of you, that you will endeavour to be truly rational, and either to deny at once the existence of mind, or be prepared to allow its power.

EUR. I must beg that you will not call me prejudiced: I am open to conviction.

BR. Nay, you are not open to conviction, because you will not allow the consequences of your own premises, when they seem to lead to my conclu. sions. But we shall meet again.

CANZON.

(From the Spanish.)

THE silent pang, that wastes my powers,
Can only with existence die;

And moments pass, and lingering hours
Doom but to suffer and to sigh!

I saw the sun's refulgent beam
Illume the bright horizon round;
But ah! how soon the gladd'ning gleam
Sank, in obscuring darkness drowned!

Then, strike no more the golden chord,

But weep for me, fair nymph of Spain !

Lost is the gem my heart adored,

And Love but wears a captive's chain.

No more my lip the smile retains,

But ceaseless sorrows dim my eye;

For to the wretched but remains
The doom, to suffer and to sigh!

B. E. P.

« PoprzedniaDalej »