some labor, is, as already stated, the birthright of the Brahmins. The Hindu of another caste, must, therefore, reverence the Brahmin as a divinity; fall down before him, and say to him: "Thou art God." And this elevation cannot have anything to do with moral conduct, but-inasmuch as all internal morality is absent-is rather dependent on a farrago of observances relating to the merest externalities and trivialities of existence. Human life, it is said, ought to be a perpetual worship of God. It is evident how hollow such general aphorisms are, when we consider the concrete forms which they may assume. They require another, a farther qualification, if they are to have a meaning. The Brahmins are a present deity, but their spirituality has not yet been reflected inwards in contrast with nature; and thus that which is purely indifferent is treated as of absolute importance. The employment of the Brahmins consists principally in the reading of the Vedas: they only have a right to read them. Were a Sudra to read the Vedas, or to hear them read, he would be severely punished, and burning oil must be poured into his ears. The external observances binding on the Brahmins are prodigiously numerous, and the Laws of Manu treat of them as the most essential part of duty. The Brahmin must rest on one particular foot in rising, then wash in a river; his hair and nails must be cut in neat curves, his whole body purified, his garments white; in his hand must be a staff of a specified kind; in his ears a golden ear-ring. If the Brahmin meets a man of an inferior caste, he must turn back and purify himself. He has also to read in the Vedas, in various ways: each word separately, doubling them alternately, or backward. He may not look to the sun when rising or setting, or when overcast by clouds, or reflected in the water. He is forbidden to step over a rope to which a calf is fastened, or to go out when it rains. He may not look at his wife when she eats, sneezes, gapes, or is quietly seated. At the mid-day meal he may have only one garment on, in bathing never be quite naked. While, on the one hand, the Brahmins are subject to these strict limitations and rules, on the other hand their life is sacred; it cannot answer for crimes of any kind; and their

or

property is equally secure from being attacked. The severest penalty which the ruler can inflict on them amounts to nothing more than banishment.

The Brahmin possesses such a sanctity that Heaven's lightning would strike the king who ventured to lay hands on him or his property. For the meanest Brahmin is so far exalted above the king, that he would be polluted by conversing with him, and would be dishonored by his daughter's choosing a prince in marriage. In Manu's Code it is said: "If any one presumes to teach a Brahmin his duty, the king must order that hot oil be poured into the ears and mouth of such an instructor. If one who is only once-born, loads one who is twice-born with reproaches, a red-hot iron bar ten inches long shall be thrust into his mouth." On the other hand a Sudra is condemned to have a red-hot iron thrust into him from behind if he rest himself in the chair of a Brahmin, and to have his foot or his hand hewed off if he pushes against a Brahmin with hands or feet. It is even permitted to give false testimony, and to lie before a court of justice, if a Brahmin can be thereby freed from condemnation.

As the Brahmins enjoy advantages over the other castes, the latter in their turn have privileges, according to precedence, over their inferiors. If a Sudra is defiled by contact with a Pariah, he has a right to knock him down on the spot. Humanity on the part of a higher caste toward an inferior one is entirely forbidden, and a Brahmin would never think of assisting a member of another caste, even when in danger.

The other castes deem it a great honor when a Brahmin takes their daughter as his wife-a thing, however, which is permitted him only when he has already taken one from his own caste. Thence arises the freedom Brahmins enjoy of getting wives. At the great religious festivals they go among the people and choose those who please them best; they also repudiate them at pleasure. If a Brahmin or a member of any other caste transgresses the above-cited laws and precepts, he is himself excluded from his caste, and in order to be received back again, he must have a hook bored through the hips, and be swung repeatedly backward and forward in the air. There are also other forms of restora

tion. A Rajah who thought himself injured by an English governor, sent two Brahmins to England to detail his grievances. But the Hindus are forbidden to cross the sea, and these envoys on their return were declared excommunicated from their caste, and in order to be restored to it they had to be born again from a golden cow. The imposition was so far lightened, that only those parts of the cow out of which they had to creep were obliged to be golden; the rest might consist of wood.-Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Translation of J. SIBREE.

THE MORALITY OF THE HINDUS.

If we proceed to ask how far their religion exhibits the morality of the Hindus, the answer must be that the former is as distinct from the latter, as Brahm from the concrete existence of which he is the essence. To us religion is the knowledge of that Being who is emphatically our Being, and therefore the substance of our knowledge and volition; the proper office of which latter is to be the willer of this fundamental substance. But that requires this [Highest] Being to be in se a personality, pursuing divine aims, such as can become the purport of human action. Such an idea of a relation of the Being of God as constituting the universal basis or substance of human action—such a morality cannot be found among the Hindus; for they have not the spiritual as the import of their consciousness. On the one hand their virtue consists in the abstraction from all activity-the condition they call "Brahm." On the other hand every action with them is a prescribed external usage; not free activity, the result of inward personality. Thus the moral condition of the Hindus (as already observed) shows itself most abandoned. In this all Englishmen agree. Our judgment of the morality of the Hindus is apt to be warped by representations of their mildness, tenderness, beautiful and sentimental fancy. But we must reflect that in nations utterly corrupt, there are sides of character which may be called tender and noble. We have Chinese poems in which the tenderest relations of love are depicted; in which delineations of deep emotion, humility, modesty, propriety are to be found; and which may be compared with the best that European

literature contains. The same characteristics meet us in many Hindu poems; but rectitude, morality, freedom of soul, consciousness of individual right, are quite another thing. The annihilating of spiritual and physical existence has nothing concrete in it; and absorption in the abstractly Universal has no connection with the real. Deceit and cunning are the fundamental characteristics of the Hindus. Cheating, stealing, robbing, murdering, are with him habitual. Humbly crouching and abject before a victor and lord, he is recklessly barbarous to the vanquished and subject.

Characteristic of the Hindu's humanity is the fact that he kills no brute animal, founds and supports rich hospitals for brutes, especially for old cows and monkeys; but that through the whole land, no single institution can be found for human beings who are diseased or infirm from age. The Hindus will not tread upon ants, but they are perfectly indifferent when poor wanderers pine away with hunger. The Brahmins are especially immoral. According to English reports they do nothing but eat and sleep. In what is not forbidden them by the rules of their order they follow natural impulses entirely. When they take any part in public life they show themselves avaricious, deceitful, voluptuous. With those

whom they have reason to fear they are humble enough; for which they avenge themselves on their dependents. Children have no respect for their parents: sons maltreat their mothers.-Philosophy of History. Translation of J. SIBREE.

HEINE, HEINRICH, a German poet, born at Düsseldorf, Prussia, December 13, 1797; died in Paris, February 17, 1856. He was of Jewish birth, the nephew of a wealthy banker of Hamburg. He received his early education in the Franciscan convent and in the Lyceum of Düsseldorf, and was then sent to Hamburg to be fitted for mercantile pursuits. After three years he was removed, in 1819, to the University of Bonn, and six months afterward to Göttingen, where he was soon rusticated. He then went to Berlin, studied philosophy under the direction of Hegel, made acquaintance with the works of Spinoza, and relinquished the thought of mercantile life. His first volume of poetry, entitled Gedichte, now forming, under the name of Youthful Sorrows, part of his Book of Songs, was published in 1822. It was coldly received, and Heine left Berlin for Göttingen, studied law, and received the degree of Doctor in 1825. In the same year he was baptized into the Lutheran Church. In 1823 he had published two successful plays, Almanzor and Ratcliff, with a collection of short poems, Lyrical Interludes. In 1827 he republished these poems, together with the first volume, giving the collection the name of The Book of Songs. They were enthusiastically received, especially in the universities. His Reisebilder (" Pictures of Travel "), of mingled prose and poetry (1826-31), was equally success