Long practice had given great fluency to the author’s pen when employed in what we may call anti-laudatory writing, but this sometimes led him into that most pardonable of plagiarisms, the borrowing from himself, as in the following sentence, at page 118: “He,” meaning the Governor-General, “and his politicals, like many other men, mistook _rigour_, with cruelty, for _vigour_.” If our memory is to be relied on, this very antithetical jingle may be found in a pamphlet, published some twenty-five years ago, about the alleged “misgovernment of the Ionian Islands.” The author’s political speculations, when unwarped by prejudice, were generally correct, and we fully concur with him, and, we may add, with his predecessor, the late Sir Henry Fane, in the opinion expressed at page 66, that the Sutledge “ought to bound our Indian possessions;” and we now fear that, having crossed that river, we must also throw the Indus behind us, and fulfil the prediction hazarded at page 374, that, “with all our moderation, we shall conquer Afghanistan, and occupy Candahar.” Sometimes, however, his disposition to paint everything _en noir_ has misled our author even upon a military point, as in the following instance: “The close frontier of Burmah enables that power to press suddenly and dangerously upon the capital of our Indian Empire; and such events are no castles in the air, but threatening real perils. The Eastern frontier, therefore, is not safe,”—(p. 364). In former days, when the Burmese territories were dovetailed into our district of Chittagong, there might have been some ground for this opinion, supposing the Burmese to have been, what they are not, as energetic a people as the Sikhs. But a glance at the map might satisfy any one that with our occupation of Arracan, a country so intersected by arms of the sea as to be impassable for any power not having that absolute superiority on the water which a single steamer would give us, all danger of invasion from that side has for the last twenty-five years been at an end. The mention of Burmah naturally leads to the next work in our list, that of Mr J. C. Marshman, the well-known editor of the ablest of the Calcutta journals, the _Friend of India_. His pamphlet is a reply to another, by Mr Cobden, entitled “The origin of the Burmese war.” Mr Cobden could not, of course, write about a war excepting to blame it, consequently Mr Marshman appears in defence of what the other assails. We cannot devote much time to the consideration of this controversy, but at one passage we must indulge in a momentary glance.