possession of the isle of Heligoland affords her the means of destroying the commerce of North Germany. The Channel, Jersey, and Guernsey, are stations from which she can attack France: no vessel can navigate the Mediterranean without her permission, and without passing under the cannon of Gibraltar, of Malta, or of Corfu : it is probable that if Russia threatened to take possession of Constantinople, an English garrison would make seizure of the forts in the Dardanelles, which inexpugnable position would secure to England the most certain means of excluding Russian vessels from the Mediterranean, and of paralyzing, on that side, the Muscovite power. St. Helena and the Cape have become important military stations: by the latter, the English command the channel of Mozambique; they possess the islands of Tristan d'Acunha, and of the Ascension, as also the isle of France: they exercise a considerable influence at Madagascar, and thus surround the whole of Africa. In India, England rules over about 80,000,000 of inhabitants. Singapore is the centre of a maritime power in the parts adjacent to the islands of La Sonde: English colonies people New Holland, New Zealand, and Van Diemen's Land; the commerce of England is already considerable in the Pacific, and the period is perhaps not very remote when, from this point, she will command the entire north-west coast of America. By the station of Halifax in Nova Scotia, the English rule over the northern portion of the Atlantic: by that of Jamaica they are masters of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bermudas form the point of union for these two stations. The principal part of the Antilles belong to England, thus enabling her at any time to lay the island of Cuba under blockade; and her influence in all South America and in Mexico is decided. Thus, then, England surrounds the two hemispheres with a formidable power, which she can direct at will; a power, which secures to her not only the means of immediately attacking the colonies of such people as should declare against her, but also of attacking the coasts of these people themselves, and of penetrating to the centre of their possessions. Those who, in our own times, have dreamed of the advantages of a commerce over land with India, have not reflected that the merchandise brought to Europe by ships belonging to the English company, and to individuals, is for the greater part entirely foreign to Hindostan, and this is the only part of the Asiatic possessions of Great Britain, to which Russian arms or caravans could ever reach; for to arrive at the others, a marine would be necessary, and neither frigates nor merchant vessels can be transported by Persia into the Indian sea. Cotton and indigo would be the only productions sent to Europe by caravans; since, by the land carriage, rice, saltpetre, sugar, and other articles of great weight, would become too dear. Bengal opium would not find so profitable a sale in Europe as in Southern China, where it is in great request among the smokers; whereas with us it is used only in medicine. The other productions of Hindostan, Hindostan, which are received in Europe, are ginger, carraway seeds, borax, gum lac, dye, nux vomica, saffron stuffs, and other articles, which yield a profit when they reach Europe by sea; but would be insufficient to nourish a commerce through Persia, the establishment of which must be highly expensive. A great part of the merchandise brought from India by English vessels, is not derived from the Peninsula on this side the Ganges. Ceylon furnishes cinnamon; pepper is procured from Sumatra, .Borneo, Malacca, and the coasts of the Gulf of Siam. The various kinds of camphor are brought from Sumatra, Borneo, and China, which latter country furnishes tea, musk, cassia, dragon's blood, porcelain, lacker-work, cottons, and silks. The Molucca isles produce cloves, nutmeg, and mace. Essential oils are there extracted from all kinds of drugs, as also from cajeput, and sago grows there in equal abundance; gamboge comes from Cambodia and China; benzoin is a product of the kingdom of Siam and of the island of Sumatra. The curama of Bengal is less valued than that of Java and China. Aloes come from East Africa, and chiefly from the isle of Socotra, situated by the channel which leads to the entrance of the Red Sea another species of this gum is found in the mountainous country near the Cape of Good Hope, which is nearly covered with the plant which produces aloes. The coffee of Asia does not grow in Hindostan, but comes from Moca in Arabia, from Sumatra, Java, and the island of Bourbon. The eastern coasts of Africa, Egypt, and Arabia, offer to the merchant, shells, colombo root, frankincense, various kinds of resinous gums used in medicine; gum arabic, gall nuts, sal ammoniac, and a thousand other articles useful and rare. But the East India Company does not only import the productions of the eastern hemisphere; those of America, in like manner, arrive by their ships, and they have a considerable traffic in cochineal, which is sought for in South America. This merchandise is in great request throughout Asia; and hence an attempt was made to transplant the insect to India, but with indifferent success; for the little cochineal which is there obtained, contains no great quantity of dye, is very inferior to that of New Spain, and is only fit for dyeing the coarsest goods.' The trade of Hither-India consisted principally of very fine cottons, of which the manufacture was a secret to Europe. But the case is now altered-a quantity being, indeed, sent towards the Red Sea, the Malaccas, and Philippines, while England is enabled to buy the raw material in the native market, convey it for home-fabrication, and afterwards, by retransportation, to compete with the manufacturer in his own market. The large ships of the East India Company are of 1200 tons, and by a calculation of M. Klaproth, a cargo equal to that of a vessel of the above capacity, would require, for land conveyance, 2,400 chariots, and 120 men, besides an army in the shape of escort, or a train and caravan of 4,000 camels and 400 conductors, be sides the necessary and armed safeguard. It may be imagined, then, that Russia could gain little good, even though India were lost to us. But, strange to say, a party has been of late years organized in this country, for the avowed purpose of destroying our Oriental Settlements and Colonies. This they are endeavouring to accomplish, by undermining the power of the East India Company. The present is not precisely the opportunity, nor is our journal precisely the place for the discussion of this matter; yet we feel satisfied, and are ready to prove, that the non-renewal of the Company's Charter will in all probability be the death-doom of our Eastern possessions. But to return to Russia: Rumours are abroad that she is again leading her armies into the field-but she does so for her own destruction. She has lately made some most extravagant proposals to Turkey, for the settlement of differences and disputes-an acknowledgmeut of Russian superiority in the Black Sea-a full indemnity for the war, and the free surrender to herself of Servia, Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia, until the indemnity shall be paid; when the two latter being delivered back to their rightful owner, the two former shall remain under the protection of Russia. This last will be equivalent to complete possession-as she would, doubtlessly, play towards them the same part as she formerly did towards the Cossacks of the Ukraine, in the time of Uladislaus VII. King of Poland. But ripening age brings ripening wisdom, and the Turks now know well how to estimate all treaties with the Russian. The Autocrat is not now either a savage or a boor-nor does he sleep with a Minister for his pillow*-but, nursed in the lap of luxury, he begins to feel the emasculating, effeminizing influences of civilization; and while he is retrograding in moral vigour, the Osmanli is increasing his strength by an altered course of life. He has arrived at his grand climacteric.With a full exchequer, and a well-equipped army of 300,000 men, he is prepared for the worst which the Emperor of all the Russias may undertake or attempt, in the bursting plenitude of pride, passing that of Xerxes. "Hors de ses résidences, le pont d'un vaisseau, le plancher d'une cabane, la terre nue, lui servent de lit; parfois de la paille, quand il s'en trouve; sinon, il appuie sa tête sur son officier d'ordonnance, qu'il a fait concher au travers de lui, et dont le devoir est de rester immobile et impassible dans cette position, comme le meuble qu'il remplace." -Segur's Histoire de Russie, p. 501. ART. ART. II.-Fr. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie. Darmstadt, 1819-21. SINCE INCE Heyne wrote his notes to Apollodorus, a number of works on the subject of Mythology have appeared in Germany. The scholars and philosophers who have followed that eminent individual, have proved such worthy labourers in the same field of erudite investigation, that we deem it incumbent upon us to give some account of their acts and discoveries.* If Mythology were only a chaos of mental aberrations-a rude 'limbo' of strange fancies, and inane dreams of gods and goddesses, as it was once considered, we might then, indeed, wonder how the Germans could waste their days in such inept bedlamite inquiries, which, like the Gothic passages of romantic fable, in most cases, lead to nothing-how they could make themselves ridiculous, like the philosopher of old, who sat down to consider in what manner sawdust might be rendered into a composition of deal boards, and the spider's filmy web into the substance of stout broad cloth. But mythic tales and classical fable have been discovered to contain matters of the gravest import and meaning. Mythology is, indeed, the rerum divinarum atque humanarum scientia of the most remote antiquity, (so Hermann has happily called it,) and ceasing therefore to he an object of frivolous curiosity only, it has become an important branch of the science of antiquity, and now fully deserves the deepest attention of the divine, the philosopher, and the historian. . Two important considerations ought to induce us to pay attention to Mythology; the first is, that every ancient nationthe Indian, Persian, Egyptian, as well as the Greek, has its distinct system of religious fable: the second point worthy of remark is, that such systems have been the work of ages, the sacred legacy of generations unmentioned in the pages of history. It is only by the thread of Mythology, that we can retrace the knowledge of the earliest periods of the human race; it gives us a clue to times and transactions of which no monument has been left. Mythology, in a word, is the venerable porch by which we enter the sanctuary of history. Man, destitute of revelation, without traditional knowledge, previously to the formation of civilized society, must have viewed with awe and wonder the objects which surrounded him. He was overpowered by the number of phenomena, which acted *For a full account of the Life and Writings of the celebrated Heyne, see the Fourth number of this Journal. upon upon his senses; the sun and moon moving alternately through the heavens by day and by night, the boundless ocean, and the towering mountains, must have struck this weak and helpless being with silent and soul-subduing terror. He was ready to worship whatever surpassed him in power, whatever could thwart his views-whatever, according to his high-wrought fancy, smiled with benignance on his secret purpose. He heard the breath of Divinity in every part of nature, but could not distinguish a divine being from nature itself. Such a distinction presupposes already a considerable progress of the human inind. When divine beings were conceived separately from nature" and its powers, it is probable that mountains were first considered as the seats of divinities. Behind the mountain rises the sun in the morning; the lightning dashes from the mountain through the trembling air; upon its cloudy summits, then, Divinity must be enthroned in inaccessible majesty. The Indians had their holy mountain Meru; Jupiter sat upon Olympus,* and the Phoenician Cosmogonies point to the Lebanon. The most ancient temples were built upon the tops of mountains, and there the first sacrifices were offered to the gods. When the dark and indefinite feeling of the omnipotence of divine nature had given way to the acknowledgment of distinct divinities, visible signs of these hidden powers became necessary. The serpent, the bull, the fire, became symbols of Divinity; means of appeasing the anger of gods, or of conciliating their favour, were contrived, and these means again were of a typical character. Those who were supposed to possess an intimate acquaintance with the powers and laws of nature, and a knowledge of the symbols of divinity, and of the symbolical rites with which the divinity was worshipped, were the first philosophers and priests: the dignity of a philosopher was united with the sacerdotal functions, because the knowledge of nature, and of divinity, was as yet undivided. The priests were supposed to comprehend what was incomprehensible to the people; their holy words (ispoì λoyo) were unintelligible to the vulgar mind. Their opinions on the origin of the world, and on the powers of nature, were uttered necessarily in a language which the generality could not understand. From these philosophical speculations originated that body of traditions, which we comprehend under the general name of Mythology. The impossibility of expressing adequately the notions, which men in those ages entertained, of divinity or nature, would also Hermann derives gaves from öv (to raise) öges (mountain). Thus, in English, heaven is derived from heave, i. e. to raise. naturally J |