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the sentiments of independence upon all beings but God, and the harsh admonitions even to kings, are truly noble; and the many panegyrics on the Gayatri, the mother, as it is called, of the vedá, prove the author to have adored, not the visible material sun, but that divine and incomparably greater light, to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, which illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which can alone irradiate, not our visual organs, but our souls and our intellects.

This appreciation of a work, which had occupied so large a portion of his time and attention, affords a proof of the judgment and candour of Sir William Jones. The ordinances of Menu are by no means calculated for general reading; but they exhibit the manners of a remarkable people, in a remote age, and unfold the principles of the moral and religious systems, to which the Hindus have invariably adhered, notwithstanding their long subjection to a foreign dominion.

I now present to the reader, the last letter which I received from Sir William Jones, written two months before the departure of Lady Jones from India.

MY DEAR SIR,

A few days after I troubled you about the yacht, I felt a severe pang on hearing of your domestic misfortune; and I felt more for you than I should for most men, on so melancholy an occasion, because I well know the sensibility of your heart. The only topic of consolation happily presented itself to you: reason perhaps might convince us, that the death of a created being never happens without the will of the Creator, who governs this world by a special interposition of his providential care; but, as this is

a truth

a truth which Revelation expressly teaches us, our only true comfort in affliction must be derived from Christian philosophy, which is so far from encouraging us to stifle our natural feelings, that even the divine Author of it wept on the death of a friend. This doctrine, though superfluous to you, is always present to my mind; and I shall have occasion in a few years, by the course of nature, to press it on the mind of Lady Jones, the great age of whose mother is one of my reasons for hoping most anxiously, that nothing may prevent her returning to England this season.

*

I will follow her as soon as I can, possibly at the beginning of 1795, but probably not till the season after that; for although I shall have more than enough to supply all the wants of a man, who would rather have been Cincinnatus with his plough, than Lucullus with all his wealth, yet I wish to complete the system of Indian laws while I remain in India, because I wish to perform whatever I promise, with the least possible imperfection; and in so difficult a work doubts might arise, which the pundits alone could remove. You continue, I hope, to find the gardens healthy; nothing can be more pleasant than the house in which we live; but it might justly be called the temple of the winds, especially as it has an octagonal form, like that erected at Athens to those boisterous divinities. I cannot get rid of the rheumatism which their keen breath has given me, and submit with reluctance to the necessity of wrapping myself in shawls and flannel. We continue to be charmed with the perspicuity, moderation, and eloquence of Filangieri.

Of European politics I think as little as possible; not because they do not interest my heart, but because they give me too much pain. I have "good will towards men, and wish peace on earth;" but I see chiefly under the sun, the two classes of men whom Solomon describes, the oppressor and the oppressed. I have no

fear

fear in England of open despotism, nor of anarchy. I shall cultivate my fields and gardens, and think as little as possible of monarchs or oligarchs.

*

I am, &c.

It would not be easy to give expression to the feelings excited by the perusal of this letter, nine years after the date of it. In recalling the memory of domestic misfortunes, which time had nearly obliterated, it revives with new force the recollection of that friend, whose sympathy endeavoured to soothe the sorrows of a father for the loss of his children. The transition by Sir William Jones to the circumstances of his own situation is natural, and the conjugal bosom may perhaps sympathize with a fond husband, anticipating the affliction of the wife of his affection, and his own efforts to console her; that wife however still survives to lament her irreparable loss in the death of Sir William Jones himself, and has had for some years, the happiness to console, by the tenderest assiduities, the increasing infirmities of an aged mother*.

The friends of Religion, who know the value of the "sure and "certain hopes" which it inspires, will remark with satisfaction, the pious sentiments expressed by Sir William Jones a few months only before his own death. They will recollect the determination which he formed in youth, to examine with attention the evidence of our holy Religion, and will rejoice to find unprejudiced enquiry terminating, as might be expected, in a rational conviction of its truth and divine authority.

Of this conviction, his publications, though none of them were professedly religious, afford ample and indubitable testimony; and

* Mrs. Shipley died on the 9th of March, 1803, in her 87th year. She retained all her faculties to that prolonged period.

I cannot

I cannot deem it a superfluous task (to me, indeed it will be most grateful) to select from them, and from such other materials as I possess, his opinions on a subject of undeniable importance.

Amongst the papers written by Sir William Jones, I find the following prayer, composed by him on the first day of the year 1782, about fifteen months before his embarkation for India, and more than twelve years before his death:

A PRAYER.

Eternal and incomprehensible Mind, who, by thy boundless power, before time began, createdst innumerable worlds for thy glory, and innumerable orders of beings for their happiness, which thy infinite goodness prompted thee to desire, and thy infinite wisdom enabled thee to know! we, thy creatures, vanish into nothing before thy supreme Majesty; we hourly feel our weakness; we daily bewail our vices; we continually acknowledge our folly; thee only we adore with awful veneration; thee we thank with the most fervent zeal; thee we praise with astonishment and rapture; to thy power we humbly submit; of thy goodness we devoutly implore protection; on thy wisdom we firmly and cheerfully rely. We do but open our eyes, and instantly we perceive thy divine existence; we do but exert our reason, and in a moment we discover thy divine attributes: but our eyes could not behold thy splendour, nor could our minds comprehend thy divine essence; we see thee only through thy stupendous and all-perfect works; we know thee only by that ray of sacred light, which it has pleased thee to reveal. Nevertheless, if creatures too ignorant to conceive, and too depraved to pursue, the means of their own happiness, may without presumption express their wants to their CREATOR, let us humbly supplicate thee to remove from us that evil, which thou hast permitted for a time to exist, that the ultimate good of all may be complete, and to secure us

from

from that vice, which thou sufferest to spread snares around us, that the triumph of virtue may be more conspicuous. Irradiate our minds with all useful truth; instil into our hearts a spirit of general benevolence; give understanding to the foolish; meekness to the proud; temperance to the dissolute; fortitude to the feeble-hearted; hope to the desponding; faith to the unbelieving; diligence to the slothful; patience to those who are in pain; and thy celestial aid to those who are in danger: Comfort the afflicted; relieve the distressed; supply the hungry with salutary food, and the thirsty with a plentiful stream. Impute not our doubts to indifference, nor our slowness of belief to hardness of heart; but be indulgent to our imperfect nature, and supply our imperfections by thy heavenly favour. "Suffer not, "we anxiously pray, suffer not oppression to prevail over innocence, "nor the might of the avenger over the weakness of the just." Whenever we address thee in our retirement from the vanities of the world, if our prayers are foolish, pity us; if presumptuous, pardon us; if acceptable to thee, grant them, all-powerful GOD, grant them : Aud, as with our living voice, and with our dying lips, we will express our submission to thy decrees, adore thy providence, and bless thy dispensations; so in all future states, to which we reverently hope thy goodness will raise us, grant that we may continue praising, admiring, venerating, worshipping thee more and more, through worlds without number, and ages without end!

Jan. 1, 1782.

1

I do not adduce this prayer as evidence of the belief of Sir William Jones in the doctrines of Jesus Christ; although I think that such a composition could hardly have been framed by an unbeliever in the Gospel, or, if this be deemed possible, that a mind capable of feeling the sentiments which it expresses, could long have withholden its assent to the truths of Revelation. It is evidently the effusion of a pious mind, deeply impressed with an awful sense of

the

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