suppose they broke away from you now, and got into the rich meadow yonder, I should have more trespass money to pay than my year's wages come to. Just look at the Court Gardener there, him with the black head and wings; he is a regular deserter, a false knave; he is for all the world one of the court trash, and they, we all know, are good for nothing. He would lead you a fine dance! Nay, nay, it would never do." The king felt ready to burst with suppressed laughter; but mastering himself, asked, with tolerable composure: "Why, can I not keep geese in order as easily as men? I have plenty of them to control." "You," again said the boy, sneeringly, as he measured the monarch from head to foot; "they must be silly ones, then; but perhaps you're a schoolmaster? Yet, even if ye be, it is much easier to manage boys than geese; that I can tell ye." "It may be so," said the king; "but come, make short work of it: will you bring the book or will you not?" "I would gladly do it," stammered the boy, "but وو I'll be answerable for the geese," cried the king, "and pay all damages, if such there be." This decided the question; and so, after exacting a promise that his substitute would pay special attention to the doings of the stately gander, whom he designated as the "Court Gardener," and pronounced an incorrigible breaker of bounds, and prime seducer of the flock, he placed the whip in the king's hands, and set off on his errand. But scarcely had he run a few yards when he turned back again. "What is the matter now?" called out the king. ran off at full speed in the direction the king had indicated. The monarch, who could now indulge in a hearty laugh, sat himself down on a tree-stump which the goose-herd had previously occupied, to await the return of his messenger. But it really seemed as if his feathered charge had discovered that the whip was no longer wielded by their accustomed prompt and vigilant com mander, for the treacherous "Court Gardener" suddenly stretched out his long neck, and, after reconnoitring on all sides, uttered two or three shrill screams; upon which, as if a tempest had all at once rushed under the multitude of wings, the whole flock rose simultaneously into the air, and before the king could recover from his surprise, they were careering, with loud screams, toward the rich meadows bordering the lake, over which they quickly spread themselves in all possible directions. At the first outburst, the royal herdsman called "halt," with all his might; he brandished and tried hard to crack the whip, but extracted no sound which could intimidate the Court Gardener. He then ran to and fro, until, teeming with perspiration, and yielding to adverse fate, he reseated himself on the tree-stump, and, leaving the geese to their own devices, quietly awaited the return of his messenger. "The boy was right, after all," said he to himself: "it is easier to govern a couple of millions of men than a flock of plaguy geese,' and a court gardener can do a deal of mischief." Meanwhile the boy had reached the bench, found the book, and sped back in triumph, little dreaming of the discomfiture his substitute had experienced. But when, on coming close up to the king, he looked round in vain for his charge, and still worse, when their vociferous cackling led his eyes in the direction of the forbid"Aden meadow, he was so overwhelmed that, letting fall the book, he exclaimed, halfcrying with grief and vexation: "There we have it! I knew how it would be! Did I not say from the first you understood nothing? And what is to be done now? I can never get them together by myself. You must help, that's a fact." "Crack the whip," resounded in return. The monarch swung it with his best effort, but procured no sounding whack. "I thought so!" exclaimed the rustic. schoolmaster, forsooth, and can not crack a whip!" So saying, he snatched the whip from the king's hand, and began, with more zeal than success, to instruct him in the science of whip-cracking. The king, though scarcely able to contain himself, tried in right earnest, and at length succeeded in extracting a tolerably sharp report from the leathern instrument of authority; and the boy, after once more trying to impress the duties of his responsible office on his temporary substitute, VOL. XLIX.-NO. 4 The king consented; the herdboy placed him at one corner, showed him how to move his outstretched arms up and down, whilst he must shout with all his might; and then the boy himself set 36 out, whip in hand, to gather in the farthest scattered of the flock. The king did his best, and after terrible exertions, the cackling runaways were once more congregated on their allotted territory. But now the boy gave free vent to his indignation, rated the king soundly for neglect, and wound up all by declaring: "Never shall any one get my whip from me again, or tempt me, with two zwanzi gers, to give up my geese. No; not to the king himself!" "You are quite right there, my fine fellow," said the good-natured Maximilian, bursting into a laugh; "he understands goose-herding quite as little as I do." "And you laugh at it, to the bargain!" said the boy, in high dudgeon. "Well, look ye now," said the monarch' "I am the king!" "You!" once more reïterated the indignant goose-herd; "I am not such a flat as to believe that-not I. So lift up your book and get along with you." The king quickly took up his book, saying, as he handed four additional zwanzigers to the astonished lad: "Don't be angry with me, my boy; I give you my word, I'll never undertake to herd geese again." The boy fixed a doubting gaze on the mysterious donor of such unexampled treasure, then added, with a wise shake of the head: "You're a kind gentleman, whoever you may be; but you'll never make a good goose-herd!" From the Edinburgh Review. CEYLON-ITS ASPECTS, ANTIQUITIES, AND PRODUCTIONS.* AMIDST the labors of a life devoted to the assiduous discharge of public duties, both abroad and at home, Sir Emerson Tennent has found means to produce the most copious, interesting, and complete monograph which exists in our language on any of the possessions of the British Crown. The island of Ceylon can not, with any strictness or propriety, be termed a colony. It is one of the oldest kingdoms of the earth, inhabited by races whose origin is lost in primitive antiquity; traces of the demon worship of fattened serpents still linger among the superstitions of the people; and the lofty pinnacle called "Adam's Peak," which has served for ages as a landmark to the navigators of the Eastern seas, is still said to bear the footprint of the first created man. The chronicles of the island extend, if we may place implicit reliance on the profound researches of Mr. Turnour, the translator of the Mahawanso, in an unbroken series through twenty-three centuries, from 543 B.C. to the year of Christ 1758. The arts of agriculture were imported into Ceylon by the Bengal conquerors, who founded the dynasty of Wijayo, five centuries before Christ; in the first centuries of the Christian era civilization was established, and the population is supposed to have been ten times what it now is.* Irrigation by artificial lakes and enormous tanks, one of which was forty miles in circumference, gave life and fertility to the soil; and as the modern traveler penetrates by forgotten tracts into the recesses of the forest, he is every where struck by the vast and countless excavations and embankments which attest the industry and ingenuity of a great people. Two thousand years ago the Buddhist faith was introduced into Ceylon, and the island soon became one of the chief seats of that creed, which holds three hundred and fifty millions of human beings in its fetters; the mystical Bo-tree, which still flourishes in the holy precincts of Anarajapoora, de *Ceylon: An Account of the Island, Physical, Historical, and Topographical: with Notices of its Natural History, Antiquities, and Productions. Illustrated by Maps, Plans, and Drawings. By Sired J. EMERSON TENNENT. Two vols. 8vo. London. 1859. in 1857 to 1,697,975, besides soldiers and aliens The population of all races in Ceylon amount estimated at about 30,000: yet the island is only about one sixth smaller than Ireland. tached from the identical tree under which | Buddha reclined when he received his initiation in Uruwela, has already completed its second millennium. By the extinction of the ancient dynasties, by the decline of the population, and by the progress of European enterprise, Ceylon has been successively occupied and ruled by the Portuguese and by the Dutch, until it passed at length entirely into the possession of the British Crown. Few countries have a history of equal antiquity, connected by so many links with the great political and religious revolutions of the world; uniting, as in an emporium, the commerce and the industry of the East and of the West, and deriving a peculiar and romantic interest from its incomparable natural beauty, and its varied natural productions. These curious and copious materials had remained scattered in an infinite variety of repositories, until Sir Emerson Tennent, moved by the interest he felt in the island, in which he then filled a high official station, applied himself to the production of the work now before us. We congratulate him on the success which has attended his persevering and conscientious labors, for the result is one of the most satisfactory books we have ever had the good fortune to examine. He has ransacked the historical and geographical records of every age and country having reference to his subject, many of them entirely unknown; thus, in addition to the notices of Ceylon, which are to be found in Pliny, Ptolemy, and the Arabian geographers, he has succeeded in obtaining, through the Chinese missions, a singular collection of documents on the relations of the Singhalese with the court of Pekin; he has consulted the little-known works of Valentyn, De Barros, and De Couto, in Dutch and Portuguese; he has searched the Indian correspondence of Marquis Pombal (now in the British Museum) for the Portuguese reports and dispatches; and he has succeeded in completing, from Mr. North's letters in the Wellesley Papers, the particulars of the revolution which overthrew the house of Kandy. The chapters of this work relating to the natural history of the island, to which we shall devote the greater part of the following pages, have a still more general interest. In no part of the tropics is the climate more brilliant, the vegetation more luxuriant, the resources of the soil more abundant, the forests more animated by a thousand varieties of life. And Sir Emerson Tennent displays a very vivid power of transporting his readers into the midst of these scenes, which are so delightful to the imagination, and sometimes so much less delightful to actual experience. We are extremely well satisfied to visit Ceylon in Sir Emerson's company, without being bitten by land-leeches, snapped at by crocodiles, terrified by cobras, or pursued by an irritated proboscidian; and we are all the more grateful to our author for the sunshine he has contrived to throw upon the dark autumnal days of England by the publication of these volumes. Nothing better illustrates the very extended connection of Ceylon with the different civilizations and powers which have succeeded one another for the last two thousand years in the East, than the great variety of appellations by which this celebrated island figures in the annals of dif ferent countries. In the mythical language of the Brahmins, it bore the name of "Lanka," "the resplendent ;" they made it the first meridian of their astronomical system; and extolled it as a region of mystery and preternatural beauty. Sir Emerson is of opinion that Galle, which became the mart of Portugal and of Hol land, and is now one of the principal rendezvous of British steamers, was the Tarshish to which the Phoenician mariners and the fleets of Solomon resorted to bring back the gold of Ophir-Ophir being now supposed to be Malacca, the Aurea Chersonesus of the later Greek geographers. "The ships intended for the voyage were built by Solomon at 'Ezion-geber on the shores shores of Arabia and the Persian Gulf, headed of the Red Sea,' the rowers coasted along the by an east wind. Tarshish, the port for which they were bound, was in an island, governed by kings, and carrying on an extensive foreign trade. The voyage occupied three years in going and returning from the Red Sea, and the cargoes brought home to Ezion-geber consisted Gold could have been shipped at Galle from the of gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. vessels which brought it from Ophir, 'silver spread into plates,' which is particularized by Jeremiah as an export of Tarshish, is one of the substances on which the sacred books of the Singhalese are even now inscribed; ivory is found in Ceylon, and must have been both abundant and full grown there before the distion of elephants; apes are indigenous to the covery of gunpowder led to the wanton destrucisland, and peafowl are found there in numbers. It is very remarkable, too, that the terms by Most if not all our readers have heard this proverb applied, when some one has attempted what was out of his province. But assuredly none of them ever saw it so royally exemplified as it was in the true history I am about to relate, the principal actor in which was no less a personage than Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, the grandfather of the present king of that country, and one of the most loving, as well as one of the most beloved monarchs, that ever wielded a scepter. On one hot summer day, King Maximilian, clad in very plain habiliments, had gone out alone, (as was his wont,) to walk in the fine park which surrounds his castle of Tegernue, and after a time, drew a volume from his pocket, and seated himself on a bench to read. The sultriness of the air, and the perfect stillness of the place, made his eyes heavy, and laying down his book on the bench beside him, the monarch fell into a doze. His slumber did not last long, however, and on awaking, he rose to continue his walk, but forgot his book, and left it lying on the bench. Wandering onwards, from one division of the extensive park to another, he at length passed beyond its limits, and entered on those grassy downs which stretch down to the margin of the lake. All at once, the king remembered his book, and the possibility that it might be seen and appropriated by some stranger passing by. Unwilling to lose a book he valued, and equally unwilling to retrace the way he had come, while the lake path to the castle lay temptingly before him, the king looked round in every direction, for some one whom he could send for the volume; but the only human being within view was a boy, tending a large flock of geese. The monarch, therefore, went up to him, and said: "Hearken, *The same romantic residence to which the still suffering King of Prussia resorted last summer. GOOSE HERD. my lad: dost think thou could'st find for me a book I left lying in such and such a part of the park? thou'lt get two‘zwanzigers'* for bringing it to me." The boy, who had never before seen the king, cast a most incredulous look on the corpulent gentleman who made him so astounding a proffer, and then turned away, saying, with an air of comical re sentment: I am not so stupid as you take me for." "Why do you think I consider you stupid ?" asked the monarch. "Because you offer me two zwanzigers for so trifling a service; so much money can not be earned so easily," was the sturdy reply. "Now, indeed," said the king, smiling good-humoredly, "I must think thee a simpleton! why do you thus doubt my word ?" "Those up yonder," replied the boy, pointing in the direction of the distant castle, "are ready enough to make sport of the like of us, and ye're one of them, I'm thinking." "And suppose I were" said the king; "but see, here are the two zwanzigers; take them, and fetch me the book." The herd-boy's eyes sparkled as he held actually in his hand a sum of money nearly equal to the hard coin of his summer's herding, and yet he hesitated. "How now," cried the king; "why don't you set off at once?" "I would fain to do it—but I dare not," said the poor fellow; "for if the villagers hear I have left the plaguy geese, they will turn me off, and how shall I earn my bread then ?" "Simpleton!" exclaimed the king, "I will herd the geese till you return." "You!" said the rustic, with a most contemptuous elongation of the pronoun; "you would make a pretty goose-herd; you are much too fat, and much too stiff: * An Austrian coin, value 7d. or 8d. sterling. 1860.] suppose they broke away from you now, and got into the rich meadow yonder, I should have more trespass money to pay than my year's wages come to. Just look at the Court Gardener there, him with the black head and wings; he is a regular deserter, a false knave; he is for all the world one of the court trash, and they, we all know, are good for nothing. He would lead you a fine dance! Nay, nay, it would never do." The king felt ready to burst with suppressed laughter; but mastering himself, asked, with tolerable composure: "Why, can I not keep geese in order as easily as men? I have plenty of them to control." "You," again said the boy, sneeringly, as he measured the monarch from head to foot; "they must be silly ones, then; but Yet, perhaps you're a schoolmaster? even if ye be, it is much easier to manage boys than geese; that I can tell ye." "but "It may be so," said the king; come, make short work of it: will you you not ?" bring the book or will I would gladly do it," stammered the boy, "but "I'll be answerable for the geese," cried the king, "and pay all damages, if such there be." This decided the question; and so, after exacting a promise that his substitute would pay special attention to the doings of the stately gander, whom he designated as the "Court Gardener," and pronounced an incorrigible breaker of bounds, and prime seducer of the flock, he placed the whip in the king's hands, and set off on his errand. But scarcely had he run a few yards when he turned back again. "What is the matter now?" called out the king. "Crack the whip," resounded in return. The monarch swung it with his best effort, "I but procured no sounding whack. thought so!" exclaimed the rustic. "A schoolmaster, forsooth, and can not crack a whip!" So saying, he snatched the whip from the king's hand, and began, with more zeal than success, to instruct him in the science of whip-cracking. The king, though scarcely able to contain himself, tried in right earnest, and at length succeeded in extracting a tolerably sharp report from the leathern instrument of authority; and the boy, after once more trying to impress the duties of his responsible office on his temporary substitute, VOL. XLIX.-NO. 4 551 ran off at full speed in the direction the The monarch, who could now indulge At the first outburst, the royal herdsman called "halt," with all his might; he brandished and tried hard to crack the whip, but extracted no sound which could intimidate the Court Gardener. He then ran to and fro, until, teeming with perspiration, and yielding to adverse fate, he reseated himself on the tree-stump, and, leaving the geese to their own devices, quietly awaited the return of his messenger. "The boy was right, after all," said he to himself: "it is easier to govern a couple of millions of men than a flock of plaguy geese,' and a court gardener can do a deal of mischief." Meanwhile the boy had reached the bench, found the book, and sped back in triumph, little dreaming of the discomfiture his substitute had experienced. But when, on coming close up to the king, he looked round in vain for his charge, and still worse, when their vociferous cackling led his eyes in the direction of the forbidden meadow, he was so overwhelmed that, letting fall the book, he exclaimed, halfcrying with grief and vexation: "There we have it! I knew how it would be! Did I not say from the first stood nothing? And what is to be done now? I can never get them together by myself. You must help, that's a fact." you under The king consented; the herdboy placed him at one corner, showed him how to move his outstretched arms up and down, whilst he must shout with all his might; and then the boy himself set 36 |
