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OCTOBER, 1878.]
will be rendered by scholars trained to take nothing for granted.
In the meanwhile, the work under review may safely be recommended as a text-book fully equal to any that we possess, and especially suited to those students, sufficiently numerous in AngloIndian society, who are striving to make up in the leisure hours of manhood for time wasted by themselves or their teachers in youth. It is, though much larger, more simple than Mr. Peile's little hand-book of Philology, which lands the beginner rather too abruptly among such terrible words as agglutinative' and 'analytic;' and it is written in a style always clear, and sometimes, where the dignity of the subject requires it, rising to eloquence. Take, for example, the fine passage (p. 231) describing the rise to importance of the European races and tongues. It has, besides, not only a good index, but an exhaustive analytic table of contents, most useful to the student. At the end of the book, indeed, Professor Whitney seems to leave his safe ground, and to abandon for a moment, when contemplating the future, the reserve and caution which characterize him in dealing with the past.
He expresses (with many saving clauses, it is true) an idea that English may yet become "a world language," by which we presume that he means, if not the universal speech of civilized man, at least one as generally intelligible as Hindustani is in a great part of India. And, with a view to this glorious future, he thinks that we should seriously consider the phonetic reform of our orthography. If other proof were wanting of the baselessness of such a dream, it would be found in his own work. He states expressly that it is in the communion of literature, and of the cultivated classes, that the hope of preserving one common language to England and the United States must be based. Of those classes we could find no more competont representative than himself; yet so far has the disintegrating influence of altered circumstances and of separate national life gone, that the English reviewer cannot help remarking, here and there in his work, differences of expression, at which, indeed, we have no right to cavil, but which indicate that the thing which has been shall be, and that English must submit to the fate which has already overtaken Greek and Latin. The most striking instance is the use of the word 'doughfacedness' as an example. This may have been introduced half in jest, to recall the flagging
BOOK NOTICES.
The last named, fannily enough, is brought in under head "Madras under the Moghuls." Khafi Khan was conduned by Mr. Wheeler, and without a hearing (in his istory of India), as a "type of the flatterers who #turished during the Moghul period." Now that Mr. W. es read some portions of Khafi Khân's invaluable history
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attention of the class. But its mere presence in this book is significant; and if we go further, to such a work as General Sherman's Autobiography, which may be taken as fairly representing the speech of educated Americans, we shall find silailar new expressions in every page. It is to be hoped that when the American language does become a separate tongue its literature will contain many works as useful as Professor Whitney's.
EARLY RECORDS of BRITISH INDIA; a History of the English Settlements in India, as told in the Government Records, &c. &c. By J. Talboys Wheeler, late Assistant Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department, &c. (8vo, pp. 391.) London: Trübner & Co. 1873.
Mr. Wheeler, he tells us in his preface, "was originally employed to report upon the records of the Home Department in Calcutta, and intended to confine his extracts to the papers preserved there. As, however, he proceeded with his task," he found that it was not enough for him; the papers of the earliest period had been destroyed by a storm in 1737, or in the sack of 1756. In Madras, however, he found a more perfect and valuable series of documents, and has already given the substance of them to the world in three volumes, under the title of "Madras in the Olden Time", of which the part of the present volume relating to the affairs of " the coast" appears to be a judicious condensation. With Bombay he does not appear to have any acquaintance, and contents himself with giving a few extracts from Mandelslö, Fryer, and Khafi Khân,' the only authorities upon the early affairs of that Presidency of whose existence he appears to be aware.
Although, therefore, Mr. Wheeler speaks of his volume as compiled from original and half-forgotten sources, it is obvious that a good deal of it is already before the world in one form or another. Perhaps the most interesting extracts are those from the records of Bengal of the period following the battle of Plassey; the Company's negotiations with the Raja of " Meckley" (Manipur); their refusal and subsequent acquisition of the Divâni, and their disputes with the second Nawâb of their own creation, Mir Kâsim, and the massacre at Patna. Upon this last subject Mr. Wheeler quotes" the journal of a gentleman at Pâṭnâ" and "the journal of an English prisoner at Pâtnâ," but very provokingly denies us the name of either diarist, and leaves us to guess even whether they are identical (the entries extracted are for different days). He also gives extracts from the diary of
in Prof. Dowson's version, he withdraws his condemnation (p. 110, note, and conf. Ind. Ant. vol. VI. p. 331). If we compare his quotation p. 110 ad inf. with the version he abridges from in Elliot and Dowson's History, vol. VII. p. 353, we may form a fair idea of the freedom with which he treats his originals.
