of the explanation, but in the smallness of the print, the thin strokes, the pate ink, the letters crowded too much together, and no red ink at the name of God, &c.; but in exactness they allow them to be superior to their own writings."

The civil dissentions in Abyssinia have weakened the Christian government, producing a great dereliction of principles and morals among the people. The continual wars have given the Muhamedans great power among them; and at present Christians frequently turn Muhamedans, and nothing is thought of it; there being no king, no head, no laws to punish the most abominable crimes. Pearce receives a supply of money, forwarded to him by that society which reflects unsullied honour on Great Britain, and of which his Majesty George the Fourth is the munificent patron and support. After which, again alluding to the distribution of Ethiopic Bibles, he says, "I am sorry to say that the population find many faults in them, and many refuse them as a present; however, I give them to the lower sort of churches and to the monks; they are more expense to get them from Marsaw than they get me credit. I declare that I distributed forty-nine books of the Psalms to the different churches near here, without any individual giving me a grain of corn for my support in return; indeed the arrival of those books created great jealousy in the mind of the Egyptian patriarch, who tells the population the Feringas are working cunningness among them!"

The preceding account is extracted from what is a kind of introduction to Pearce's small but true Account of the Ways and Manners of the Abyssinians, read before the Literary Society at Bombay, 30 April, 1816, and dated Abyssinia, Oct. 1814. We shall now proceed to the body of the work, giving the intelligent reader an account, as far as our limits will admit, of a paper which we can safely recommend to the perusal of our numerous readers, as containing a fund of authentic information respecting an African country much talked of but little known.

"The inhabitants of Abyssinia are of many tribes and religions; they are also of all colours of people excepting white, though there are some few very near white in the Ammerrer and Tegri and other Chris

of the original; for example, some verses of the 13th chapter of the First Book of Samuel, in the Arabic version in Africa, are materially different from all the English versions; and the Muhamedans in Abyssinia would avail themselves of such circumstances as this, to abuse the authenticity of the original, and to give a preference to the Koran. The translation of the Decalogue also, as in the Arabic version now in Abyssinia, differs from our English translation, and has more resemblance to the translation lately made directly from the Hebrew by Mr. John Bellamy. Moreover, it is well known or generally believed in Africa, that Ben Hakim, the son of Solomon, took the proverbs of his father to Abyssinia, and it is to be presumed that he also took the Pentateuch, the Books of the Prophets, and the Psalms, which were translated into the Ethiopic tongue. This being premised, we may presume that the Scriptures when read by the eunuch of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, (vide Acts, chap. 8. verse 27th) were in the Ethiopic tongue, translated, if not in the days of Ben Hakim, at least long before the Christian æra!

*The Literary Society, for the relief of men of talent in advérsity, &c.

tian countries; there are some very black, some fair, and some of a copper colour; they differ very little in their manner, which is presumptuous. Their Christian names are in general as undermentioned; Walder Serlassy, Walder Isgare, Walder Munfuskudus, Walder Cristos, Walder Mariun, i. e. the Son of the Trinity, the Son of God, the Son of the Holy Ghost, the Son of Christ, the Son of the Virgin Mary. Some are Gabru instead of Walder, as Gabru Serlassy, Slave to the Trinity, &c. Although they are Christians they resemble the Jews, in that they keep holy the sabbaoth or seventh day as well as the Sunday. They resemble savages, in that they eat the flesh of an animal before it is dead. Although they do not drink the blood, like the Garler, they eat the flesh while the blood is still warm in the veins. They have a holiday yearly for Abraham and Sarah."

By this view of the Abyssinians it appears, that they resemble the various inhabitants of the different states of Barbary in the variety of their complexions. All white nations, indeed, that intermarry with negroes, will necessarily exhibit in the countenances of their descendants all shades and gradations from black to white. Their names also resemble those of the Musselmen nations of North Africa, who are named Wold Abdallah, Wold Muhamed, &c. i. e. the Son of the Servant of God, the Son of Muhamed, &c.

"They keep their fasts very strictly. The fast of Nineveh, or Jonah the prophet, is the four days preceding Lent, or the fast of our Saviour, which is fifty-six days, beginning in March and ending in May; the fast of Apostles, which is in one year fifteen days and in others thirty, beginning in June and ending in July; the fast for the death of the Virgin Mary, fifteen days in August; also all Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year, excepting Christmas-day, when they fast the day before. The priests and deacons fast only on the undermentioned days the fast called Consquan, which is for the Virgin Mary, when she fled with Joseph and her son to Egypt; this lasts thirty days, (begins in September, ends in October); the fast for the birth of Christ, which they call the fast of Ledet", by order of the prophets, is forty days. It begins in November, and ends the day before Christmasday."

Hence it appears that if the service of God consists in fasting, the Abyssinians are the most religious people in the universe; for the people fast by this account 209 days in the year, exclusive of Saturdays and Sundays, and the priests fast seventy days.

"The priests of their separate parishes have a great feast at the end of every fast; they all meet in the forenoon after taking and administering the body and blood of Christ to those who come to the church for that purpose; they afterwards go to the house of the head priest, where they sit down according to their rank in the church; they then kill one or two cows according to their number, close to the door, and before the animal has done kicking and the blood still running from his throat, the skin is nearly off on one side, and the prime flesh cut off

* From the Arabic Eled Aisah; Eled the birth, Aisah, of Esuah, or Jesus. VOL. II. NO. IX.

T

and with all haste held before the elders, or heads of the church, who cut a large portion each, and eat it with such greediness, that those who did not know them would think they were starved. They at all times prefer the raw meat to cooked victuals. After they have finished their brindo, as they call it, they take a little of the fattest parts of the cow, just warmed on the fire, to settle their stomachs, and then one or two large horns full of sevoir or beer, which is very strong and made of several sorts of corn. They then have the table brought in and covered with bread and cooked victuals, where those that are not satisfied with the raw meat, eat until they are of the cooked."

Afterwards the lower class of priests and deacons are called in, and the raw meat or brindo is laid upon the bread, of which they cut and eat with as much eagerness (though quite cold) as their superiors did when hot. After they are satisfied, the third class are called in, and so on in turns until they devour all the bread and victuals, more like a pack of hounds than intellectual beings. When all is cleared away, the greater and middling ranks drink maize, until they begin to sing psalms or hymns, and at last get so intoxicated, that they at times quarrel and entirely lose their senses.-Having proceeded thus far, we shall conclude our observations in a future Number.

ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

PROFESSORS Of Political Economy maintain that its first principles are as sure as those of the exactest sciences, and this perhaps is true in the abstract; but even the first principle of hydrostatics, into which all maxims of Political Economy may be resolved, is only true with reference to a certain state of things. Water will find its own level; yes, provided there are neither dams nor dykes to obstruct it. The admission of this law, then, must surely be as provisional in Political Economy as it is in hydrostatics. We consider the first of these sciences as an entirely new study-as the growth of the age; and so it is, and so it may well be; for its maxims are only practicable in such an age as the present: yet we commonly consider ourselves to have made some wonderful discovery, which our ancestors had missed. Under this impression, we consider the law which restrained the traffic of grain within the different counties of England, not suffering either export or import between them, as a perverse and barbarous prohibition. Yet it may be doubted whether our ancestors were as improvident in this, as we, their civilized successors, who have fish by land-carriage, are, in the plenitude of our wisdom, disposed to believe. Let us try this by something of a parallel text. I was some years ago in Sicily, a country whose state at that time perhaps agreed, with respect to its laws of domestic traffic, in some degree, with that of England at the period to which I have referred. I remember hearing the policy of the Government most bitterly arraigned at a

mess of travelled English, in that it did not suffer the export of grain from one province to another, without an especial licence. Yet a considerate man might have found reasons for suspecting such a censure, in weighing the inconveniences of a free domestic trade in grain.

For, first having premised that the sea was infested by the Algerines, and the roads often and long impassable from wintertorrents, we might suppose the case of one province having poured her plenty into the lap of another, with more regard to immediate profit than to her own future necessities. Now, without questioning a single principle of Political Economy, and believing that produce follows the demand as certainly (though not as regularly) as the waters obey the moon, he might ask how a reflux could have place, and how this wealth was to be remitted to the province that had drained itself, when the channels were all dammed through which it could only find its way. If it is, however, clear that the truths of Political Economy could only be verified in a very refined age, it is curious that they should never have been established in æras of civilization, nearly equal to our own. It is peculiarly curious that no light of this description should have broken in upon ancient Rome; since, though her high notions of honour and domineering policy might have led her to despise what at first sight may appear mere mercantile, and in her eyes, perhaps, degrading, considerations; yet her utter neglect of the science we are treating of was at variance with her own maxims of military policy, and may be considered as one main and immediate occasion of the ruin of Italy. I, of course, allude to the Annona lawsa code enforcing a supply of food at fixed prices; and, above all, the provisionment of the capital from distant and tributary provinces. We have a sad picture of the decay of Italian agriculture in many later authors, who, however, do not seem to have hit upon the cause. Now, it may be said, that in what I will call the heroic ages, the absence of husbandmen brought with it absence of soldiers. Lord Bacon well observes, in speaking of the protection of tillage by Henry the Seventh: "This did wonderfully concern the might and manhood of the kingdom: for it hath been held by the general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars, (howsoever some few have varied, and that it may receive some distinction of case) that the principal strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot; and to make good infantry, it requireth men bred not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in same free and plentiful manner;" and afterwards-" Thus did the king secretly sow hydras' teeth, wherefrom (according to the poet's fiction) should rise up armed men, for the service of this kingdom."

It is, however, less surprising that the Romans should have been blind to the immediate or consequential effects of their sys

tem, than that historians in an age like the present, which has indeed been styled the age of economists, should have so neglected a theme, which modern discoveries might peculiarly enable them to winnow and illustrate. Yet, strange to say, no modern historian of Rome seems to have watched the operations of this code, or sought to reconcile the seemingly contradictory effects which it produced; and though this is an unbeaten part of history, no one is disposed to make good that small and single portion of the field which remains to be explored. 0.

NOISE.

"Now learn, my sons, the wondrous power of noise."

DUNCIAD, Book 2.

MAN is naturally a noisy animal. To make a noise is the only lesson in which Nature herself has instructed him and he is master of the art before he is even conscious of existence. High and low, good and bad, attain nearly the same proficiency in it. She recognizes no other patrimony in behalf of the most superior of all her works-she cuts off man with a shilling (the art or mystery of noise-making being apparently but of equally insignificant value), whilst she fortunes off the most profligate of her offspring-the wild-beasts themselves— with a rich and plentiful wardrobe, and, in a great number of instances, the fee of very considerable estates in land and water. Short-sighted sages mistake this gift of parental economy to man, as a piece of wrong-dealing on the part of Nature, accusing her of the partialities of a step-mother in the general administration of her family affairs. "Hominem tantum," says Pliny,* "nudum et in nuda humo natali die (Natura) abjicit, ad vagitus statim et ploratum." Man's inclination to make noise assumes the authority of a passion at his birth, and it prevails in every modification of humanity. It is equipollent in a state of nature, and in the capricious communities of artificial life. It is the appetite which fashion has not at any time repealed; and hitherto it has been safe even from the freaks of a fine lady. Philosophers seeing the force of the passion, have been beating about for an explanation :-one of them says that our love of noise proceeds from an instinctive aversion to our own thoughts, and that, if every wish we form could be analyzed, they would be traced, without exception, to that source. There may be reason in this; melancholy is the natural ally of meditation-joy, on the contrary, is made up of noise; it thunders forth in a cannonade of laughter, and exorcises the neighbour

* Prefat. Hist. lib. 7.

+ Paschal-Miseries of Man.