of the last Sikh war which have been obscured by the remoteness of the background, which was the scene of their romantic occurrence. The names of Lawrence, Abbott, Herbert, Nicholson, and Taylor, will ever be mentioned with enthusiasm by the annalist of Indian warfare. Indeed, if there be one thing more noticeable than another, in the war which preceded the fall of the Sikh empire, it is the distinguished gallantry of those junior officers of the Company's army, who, at a time when irresolution in high places had given confidence to our enemies, in detached positions, and surrounded by imminent danger, stemmed the tide of Sikh rebellion, and upheld the character of the British nation to the last. These men were the political assistants of the British Resident; they belonged, as did Herbert Edwardes, to a class which has been more calumniated than any body of public officers in the world-a class in defence of which we lifted up our voice, before the war in the Punjab came to give emphasis, by illustration, to the opinions we expressed. In truth, now that the old race of heroes, who saved England from the grasp of Napoleon, is fast dying out, it is to India that we must turn for those noble exemplars of the true military character, which, with a love of peace no less genuine than that which animates Richard Cobden and Elihu Burritt, we shall never see passing into tradition without some lingering feelings of regret. "It is a very fine field, India," said my uncle sententiously, "it is the nursery of captains." "Is it," replied good Mr. Caxton, "these plants take up a great deal of ground, then, that might be more profitably cultivated." But even the amiable bookworm, quoting this passage from Shaftesbury in support of the acknowledg ment, came to acknowledge that many of the virtues that make the ornament and vitality of peace, sprung up first in the convulsions of war;-" It is strange to imagine that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war that the knot of fellowship has been closest tied; 'tis in war that mutual succour is most given, mutual danger run, and common affection most exerted and employed; for heroism and philanthropy are almost one and the same!" The wars in central Asia have burnt this truth indelibly into the history of the country. Never, perhaps, have the highest qualities of heroism-that heroism which is common alike to the soldier in the field, and to the priest at the stakebeen called into action more nobly and more touchingly, than by the circumstances which have surrounded some of the actors in these memorable events-never has there been a finer display of intrepidity in action, of fortitude in endurance, of firmness and collectedness in danger, of generous fellowship in affliction; never were deeds done more becoming the chivalry of a Chris

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tian nation, than those which render lustrous the names of these junior officers of the Company's arms, with the stamp of the "Political" upon them. It is because they were political officers that they distinguished themselves in these great fields of enterprise. The army of the East India Company is governed strictly by the laws of seniority. No important regular command can therefore devolve upon its officers, until they have long passed the age at which Alexander, Napoleon, and Wellington, achieved their enduring triumphs. The political system, which has been so much maligned, by detaching the ablest and most energetic officers of the army from the regiments, in which they only hold subordinate rank, affords opportunities for displays of heroism, and the performance of essential services to the country, which are sure to be turned to good account by our Lawrences, our Edwardeses, and our Abbotts. Nor must it be forgotten that these men, so daring in the field, so intrepid in the face of danger, with such unfailing energy and such abundant personal resources, in the midst of difficulties and perplexities which might confound a council of state-ready to storm a fortress, or to annihilate a mutinous brigade at a moment's notice-so far from being "mere soldiers," delighting in strife and carnage, are by nature the most humane and benevolent of men, no less fitted to play a distinguished part as peaceful administrators, than as military heroes, and when summoned to play the latter part, turning aside with regret from their more congenial and more beneficent labours-for your philanthropist and your true hero are never very far apart.

It is understood that the Duke of Wellington holds, as he has long held, the "Politicals" in contempt, and that from him Lord Ellenborough and Sir Charles Napier imbibed the aversion in a state of second-hand exaggeration. Five-and-forty years ago, the honourable Major-General Wellesley complained that skippers were appointed to act as residents, and that residents were never resident at their posts. The Duke seems to have remembered the Manestys and Lovetts of his time, and to have forgotten the Malcolms and Munros-the Malcolms and Munros, who, at the same age, were associated with him in political office, without enjoying the advantage of the propulsive power of a fraternal Governor-general. Is it from his knowledge of the qualities of these officers, that he has imbibed the prejudice which he is known to entertain against the army to which they belonged -a prejudice which has long operated, and is even now operating, to the detriment of the Company's service? It is believed that the Directors of that great Company are desirous to mark the high sense they entertain of the distinguished character and conduct of their own officers in the recent wars beyond the Sut

lej and the Indus, by appointing one of their general officers to the chief command at one of the minor presidencies of India; but that he who ruleth at the Horse Guards has set his face as a flint against a measure which has the misfortune to be recommended only by justice, reason, and sound policy. Six-andthirty years have passed since Sir John Malcolm, when asked by a Parliamentary Committee if this exclusiveness were injurious to the character of the Company's army, emphatically replied—

"I believe such exclusion has, beyond all other causes, tended to damp that ardour and high military feeling, which are always essential to the character of an officer, but, above all others, of officers so situated as those of the Company's service are in India-I believe that it has diminished the ambition, and almost extinguished the hope, with regard to military fame and rank, in all classes of that service; that they have in consequence sunk in their own estimation, as well as in that of the troops under their command, and of the inhabitants of the country in which they serve."

And again, on the same occasion, with equal emphasis, he said—

"All the officers in his Majesty's service, who have since 1796 held stations of principal command in India, are persons for whom I have the highest respect, and with all of whom I am personally acquainted. I feel bound to many of these officers by ties of gratitude and friendship; and I believe there never was a series of officers selected, which did more honour to those by whom they were nominated; but it is a much easier task to show their high merits, than to calculate the evil effects upon a whole service, by an exclusion which banishes all hope from their breasts of ever attaining the highest ranks in the service of their country."

And yet, the exclusiveness of 1813 is still the exclusiveness of 1849. In such a case as this, we hope that the East India Company will be true to itself and to its army-that army, whose exploits all the "fabulous" rivers of the East have witnessed, from the Nile to the Hydaspes, and from the Hydaspes to the Yang-tse-Kiang, and whose officers have afforded some of the noblest examples of Christian heroism in the annals of chivalry, as they are written in the great book of the world.

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ART. IX.-Aspects of Nature, in Different Lands and Different Climates, with Scientific Elucidations. By ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Translated by MRS. SABINE. In 2 vols. 12mo. Pp. 650.

WHEN We contemplate the natural world in our own fatherland, as seen from different stations on its surface, and at different seasons of the revolving year, it presents to us but a single aspect, however diversified be its forms, and however varied its phenomena. Like the race which occupies it, the scenery within each horizon has its family likeness, and the landscape from each spot its individual features, while the general picture of hill and dale, and heath and forest, have their similitude in the character and costume of the people. During the daily and annual revolutions of our globe, the sun sheds his varying lights and hues over the more permanent and solid forms of nature, and carries in his train those disturbing elements which give an interest to each passing hour, and invest the seasons with all the variety which characterizes them. The external world may thus lose for a while its normal aspect-what is fixed may for an instant be displaced, and what is stable subverted; but amid all the new and returning conditions of the year, whether the god of day gives or withdraws his light-whether the firmament smiles in azure or frowns in gloom-whether the lightning plays in its summer gleams, or rages in its fiery course-whether vegetation dazzles with its youthful green, or charms with its tint of age, or droops under the hoary covering of winter-under all these expressive phases of its life, nature presents to us but one aspect characteristic of the latitude under which we live, and the climate to which we belong.

The inhabitant of so limited a domain, even if he has surveyed it in all its relations, has no adequate idea of the new and striking aspects in which nature shows herself in other lands, and under other climates. Even in the regions of civilisation, where her forms have, to a certain extent, been modified by art, and her creations placed in contrast with those of man, she still wears a new aspect, often startling by its novelty, and overpowering by its grandeur. To the fur-clad dweller among ice and snow, the aspects of nature in the temperate and torrid zones must be signally pleasing. The rich and luxurious productions of a genial and fervid climate, and the gay colouring of its spring and its autumn, must form a striking contrast with the scanty supplies of a frozen soil, and the sober tints of a stunted vegetation; and the serf or the savage who has prostrated himself before a petty tyrant, in his hall of wood or of clay; or the wor

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shipper who has knelt on the sea-shore, or offered incense in the cavern or in the bush, must stand appalled before the magnificent temples of Christian or of Pagan opulence, and amidst the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces" of civilisation. Nor is the aspect of the arctic zone less curious and interesting to the southern eye. On her regions of eternal snow, which the summer sun is unable even to thaw, the tracks of commerce and the footprints of travel are unseen. The shadow of man and of beast alone variegates the winding-sheet of vegetable life; mountains of fire, and plains of sulphur, stand in curious juxtaposition to precipices of ice and accumulations of snow, and from the glacier margin of the ocean are detached the gigantic icebergs, which, drifting to the southern seas, and raising only their heads above the waves, often threaten the tempest driven mariner with destruction. To these singular aspects of arctic nature we may add one still more singular-the one long day of light, and the one long night of darkness, which alternately cheer and depress its short-lived and apparently miserable population.

The inhabitants, both of the old and new world, who occupy populous cultivated plains, are no less startled with nature's aspect, when they enter the lofty regions of the Himalaya and the Andes, or cast their eye over the trackless deserts of Africa, or the elevated plateaus of central Asia and America, or the Patagonian desert of shingle, or the grassy Llanos of Orinoco and Venezuela, or the endless forests of the Amazons. The phases of the material world are there altogether new. Even the European, whose horizon is a circle, and the shepherd of the Landes, who is elevated on stilts in order to watch his flocks, would stand aghast in the boundless desert of Sahara, which no foliage colours, and no moisture bedews; and the crystal or the chamois hunter of the Alps, who has paced the flanks of Mont Blanc, or the peasant who slumbers at its base, would view with mute admiration the peaks of Dwalaghiri or Pinchincha; while the naturalist, who had been amused with the eruptions of Vesuvius and of Etna, would stand unnerved beside the outbursts of Catopaxi or Hirouæa.

Nor are these striking aspects of nature confined to the structure of the inorganic world; they are displayed to us with no inferior interest in the diversified phenomena of animal and of vegetable existence. Although organic life is universally distributed throughout the earth, the ocean, and the air, yet under different latitudes it exhibits very opposite aspects. The vital functions are nearly suspended in the gelid regions of the poles, where man is almost driven into hybernation like the brutes; while in the zones of the tropics we recognise the high pulse and the florid plethora of a rank and luxuriant existence. Within