speaking, at this moment, as ignorant of their masters as on their first landing on these shores. I speak not of interfering with their religious prejudices, or endeavouring to convert the natives by an extraordinary effort on the part of the British government. Conversion, in my opinion, must be the consequence which would naturally flow from our attention to their moral instruction, and their more intimate acquaintance with the English character. into our territories, to occupy the ground | ims: whereas, they appear to me, generally we have neglected to cultivate, and to bring an odium on our pure and honourable name as Christians. The evil would be less, were it not well known that many of the Romish priests, and their people, who have thus been allowed to grow numerous under our authority, are supposed to be far from well-affected to the government under which they reside: indeed, in many instances, the Roman clergy are the natural subjects of nations at enmity with ourselves, at the same time that they are eminently qualified by their influence in their profession, to do us the greatest mischief, by spreading disaffection throughout every part of the extended country. The Roman Catholic religion, my Lord, I believe I may say, without offence to truth or charity, has almost always been made a political engine in the hands of its governments; and we must be blinded indeed by our own confidence, if we do not calculate on its being so used in this great and rich country, where it has established a footing amongst an ignorant people: especially, when it is so well understood that our eastern possessions have been a subject of the greatest jealousy to all the rival nations of Europe. In my humble opinion, my Lord, the error has been in not having long ago, established free-schools throughout every part of this country, by which children of the natives might have learned cur language and got acquainted with our morality. Such an establishment would, ere this, have made the people at large full acquainted with the divine spring, from whence alone British virtue must be acknowledged to flow. This would have made them better acquainted with the principles by which we are governed: they would have learned to respect our laws, to honour our feelings, and to follow our max To give English morals to the natives in their purity, we must, I imagine, make them read English books. Translations have hitherto been very defective in the different country languages; besides, they must be extreme1 circumscribed in number. I do not think the natives will come to us freely but to learn English. This they consider as the key to fortune; and, on the coast, the most strict of the Bramins will have little hesitation, as far as I can learn, in permitting their children to attend a free-school for the purpose of learning it; for they despise us too much to suppose there is any danger of overturning the principles of braminism. But their ill-founded, ridiculous principles must be shaken to the very foundation, by the communication of such liberal knowledge as a Christian can instil into the minds of youth, and fix there by means of English books; and all this, without making any alarming attack directly on the religion of the Hindoos. I do not mention this as an experiment, the result of which might be considered as problematical: the experiment has been already made, and the consequences have proved commensurate with the highest expectation which reasonable men could entertain. The Danish Mission, united with the Society for propagating the Gospel, has sent some good men into this country, with the laudable view of spreading true Christianity throughout our eastern possessions; and the names of Swartz, Gerricke, and others, will ever be remembered by numbers of our Asiatic subjects, of every cast and description, with veneration and affection; and there are happily still living some amongst us of the same character. It is true, that the object they had more particularly in view has, in some measure, failed: and few good converts, it is generally imagined, have been made; but let it be remembered also, that they have laboured under every possible disadvantage; they have scarcely enjoyed a mere toleration under our government, and received no kind of assistance whatsoever; that they were few in number, and perhaps I may say, without injustice, that they erred (as the best might err) in the means which they adopted: but that they have done much good by the purities of their lives, and by their zeal in spreading instruction. This will admit of no denial; and I doubt not that I may say, without danger of contradiction, that few and poor as these men have been, without authority or power to support them, a greater and more extended portion of heartfelt respect for the European character has been diffused by their means throughout this country, than by all the other Europeans put together. We have, in my humble opinion, my Lord, kept ourselves too far from the natives: we have despised their ignorance, without attempting to remove it, and we have considered their timidity (the natural result of their being trampled upon by one race of conquerors after another) also as an object for our contempt; at the same time, that we have viewed the cunning of their character (which is ever the natural resource of ignorance and weakness) as the completion of all that is vile and deceitful.Thus have we continued a system of neglect towards the interests of our native subjects, in points the most essential to their every happiness, throughout the whole of our governments in this country. Fain, my Lord, would I see a change in this particular; and I seize the opportunity which the present moment affords, to press the justice and policy of the measure on the attention of your Lordship's government.-Having the honour to remain, with the highest respect, my Lord, your Lordship's faithful and obedient humble Servant, (Signed) R. H. KERR, Senior Chaplain of Fort St. George.-Madras, Nov. 3, 1806. COLLECTANEA OF BRITISH ANTIQUITIES. No. VII. [Vide Panorama, Vol. III. p. 165.] It might bear a question, whether prose or verse (rhythm) were the earlier mode of recording events for the information of those who did not behold them ;-contemporaries or posterity. That prose is the current language of mankind in all nations, admits of no doubt: but, that some languages do, with great facility, fall into modulation and cadence, is known to all who have considered their structure. Nevertheless, there seems to be something of superiority, of elevation, in a combined arrangement of syllables, and, though founded on nature, it is obviously the result of principle and contrivance. Poetry is a pleasing art, perfectly well calculated for obtaining attention and popularity; equally calculated for improvement by refinement and study, and for appropriating a distinct class of professors, whose researches may advance it to perfection. With the profession of poet that of musician has usually been associated, because music and poetry are sister arts and intimately united; and in this state they have ever been appendages to the establishments of the great, and the patronage of the loyal and the noble have been their protection and support. By the princes who governed in Britain, the reciters of songs were treated with honour; and under the appellation of BARDS they formed a very conspicuous distinction, or order of men, in the population. At the period when we first become acquainted with them, they had long ceased to be satisfied with the rude modulation of accident, or of caprice, and had not only cultivated their art with assiduity, but had reduced it to a system, of which some of the peculiarities were noticed in our last paper. The present sketch will exhibit a slight figure of the Bards themselves. A finished portrait will not be attempted; nothing beyond a few lines which mark the Bardic character. The Bards were not only known, but they VOL. III. [Lit Pan, Nov. 1807.] were highly esteemed in Germany, as well as in Britain. This we learn from Tacitus, who describes them as being the depositaries of the records of the nation. Their songs were not merely poetical compositions or inventions, they were founded on real events, were composed, usually, by such as had been partakers in those events, or witnesses of the exploits they commemorated. They were designed to instruct and amuse such guests as were admitted to the table of the chief, or to be transmitted to succeeding generations of men of song, who might honour the company they exhilirated by rehearsing the heroic deeds of their ancestors; thus indirectly reflecting a lustre of glory on those whom they addressed. The Bards roused the souls of their auditors to deeds of martial renown, they preceded the troops which marched to battle, they beheld the struggles of heroes in fight, and they shouted the song of triumph, or accompanied the funeral dirge with plaints and lamenta tions. There were three ranks: the Bard; the Ovydd; and the Derwydd. The Bard; the Vates, or scientific Bard; and the Druid, or Priest Bard. Each of these orders wore an appropriate dress. That of the primary order, the Bard, was sky-blue, symbolizing light, truth, peace: the Ovates wore green, the livery of the earth, which he was supposed to cultivate: the Druid wore white, denoting purity and holiness. The Bardic was the general order into which all disciples were initiated in the first instance. It may be considered as the national establishment of the Britons, endowed with peculiar privileges in the character of a profession and mode of life. The perpetuation of the system, its customs, and privileges, were among the duties of this order; with the superintendance and examination of the institutes of learning, whether civil or religious and, in general, whatever / concerned the interests, or might promote the welfare of the institution. But in connection with the character of Bard, was that of Ovydd, Ovate, or Vates. These we may describe as a kind of secular Bards: who practised particular arts or scien ces. This class included artists and mechanics of every description. Under this character and this alone, the Bards were permitted to hold private meetings: and if craftsmen of each profession assembled together at such meetings, they might easily adopt their own technical terms, and retain the secrets of their craft exclusively among themselves. In times of danger these meetings afforded opportunities to the Bards for mutual intercourse; and Mr. Owen, (to whom the public, with ourselves, is obliged, by means of Sir R. C. Hoare, for the most correct view of the Bardic orders) conjectures that the origin of Free Masonry may be referred to these secret assemN ism. The Bards never bore arms: they engaged in no party disputes, they had therefore no enemies they were sacred, as heralds, even amid contending armies; they assuaged the fury of battle: they restrained the arm of slaughter: they were the representatives of the Deity, and were bound to exhibit his beneficent perfections. blies of the laborious division of Bards. He ical. But, in fact, though every Druid was a says, many of the ternis, arrangements, and Bard, yet every Bard was not a Druid. It is principles of Masonry are to be found in Bard-probable, that there were ranks of different So that Masonry is Bardism in disguise; dignity among the Druids; at least, among being so involved in technical terms, that it the Gauls we find an Arch Druid, with so requires great application, in those who are much power attached to his office, as enabled initiated, to see through the mysterious cover- him to oppose the Romans not unsuccessfully ings. The Bards too have a secret like the during five hundred years. Masons, by which they can know one another. The three letters, O. I. W. are with them the unutterable name of the Deity: they therefore make use of another term known only to themselves, just as the Jews, who always make use of Adonai [Lord] when the name of Jehovah occurs in Scripture. Each of the letters in the Bardic name is also a name of [by] itself. The first is the word when uttered, that [at the pronunciation of which] the world burst into existence; the second is the word the sound of which contiDues, by which all things remain in existence; the third is that by which the consummation of all things will be in happiness, or the state of renovated intellect, for ever appeared, but of the lowest and least perfect speproaching to the immediate presence of the deity." So far Mr. Owen. ap It is impossible to peruse this account without recollecting that the ancient Egyptians had their 1. 1. 8. A. U. N. (the O'N of our public version) as appears from several passages in Genesis; that the ancient inhabitants of Canaan had the same name of the deity, which is preserved in innumerable instances in the pellations of places, towns, and temples, mentioned in the historical books of Holy Scripture: and that the triple divinity of India, Vishnu, Siva, Brahma, is expressed in this order in the mystical word A. U. M. which coalesces into the sound o'm: a word which never escapes the lips of the pious Hindoo, who meditates on it in silence. These are, in fact, personifications of the three offices of the Deity, creation, preservation, and destruction, or rather renovation, as an advance towards perfection. As to the apparent difference between the letters o. 1. w. and A. U. N.-it is certain, that the great Huon, was the name of the Supreme Being," as Mr. Owen informs us : and HUON, is sufficiently near to either A. U. N. or A. U. M. or O'N. The third order of Bards was that of the Druids. If a Bard assumed the character of a Druid, he had to perform the functions of the priesthood; and as there was to every community a Druid, i. e. a priest, who possessed great influence, this class could not be otherwise than favourite among the Bards. We may, then, consider the Druids as the clergy of the antient Britons. That this class being called to perform public rites, and the most conspicuous offices, should be most noticed by strangers, is not wonderful and hence the whole order has been called Druid The Bards held, that God created this world, as well as innumerable others, for the progression of intelligences through all modes of being, approximating eternally towards himself. They held, concerning this earth, that it was originally covered with water, which gradually subsiding, land animals ap cies; and thus corresponding in organization with the then capacity of the soul. New orders in the scales of being were successsively produced after these-and at last man, the most perfect receptacle of the soul upon earth. For in this state the soul had so augmented its faculties as to be capable of judging be tween good and evil; consequently, it was in a state of liberty and choice." Now, this is precisely the order of events in the Mosaic system of creation. The progress is from interior to superior, as a late writer has demons strated, till, at length, man crowns the whole, and appears "in the image of God." The Bards held further, that the soul, by, choosing evil, became degraded to brutal life, or inferiority: by choosing good, it was at death promoted to a superior state of life, which it might still further improve, rising higher and higher in the scale of intelligence, and happiness to all eternity. Thus it appears, that hope and fear were those great principles of the human mind to which the Bards addressed their system. They hoped; that mankind would gradually improve, as time advanced, till having arrived at that perfection of which human nature is capable, the design of this terrestrial world should be answered, and fire should be commissioned to prepare it for the reception of a superior order. and state of existence. This is little other than the Indian system. of worlds of different degrees of excellence, Whether the Bards, as the Bramins, restricted, the number of probationary worlds to four teen does not appear, but we may see a suffi cient number of points of similitude, to induce us at least to state it as a query, whether the Bards of Britain were not in many things close resemblances to the Bramins of India, The Bards believed the existence of one Supreme Being, ineffable, immaterial: that the human soul was a lapsed intelligence: that enjoyment of knowledge was happiness, and privation of knowledge was misery. We have seen that the Bards transmitted the principles of their profession by means of triads and aphorisms; but they had no mythological fables, those fruitful sources of abominable idolatries, and monstrous malpractices! Neither had they, originally, any hieroglyphics, or emblems of the attributes of the Supreme Being: although such eventually became occasions of error and wandering to the multitude. Misapprehensions concerning the nature of God, led to an infinity of other superstitions. At length state policy became interwoven with the dicta of religion; the Bards assumed authority; their sentence of excommunication, pronounced in the circle of their solemn assembly, was clothed with all the terrors of modern outlawry. Nor did their barbarity stop here: their doctrine of sacrifices led them to immolate, in their great yearly assemblies, those victims of the human kind, which included captives among the guil ty; and shewed to what awful degrees of Insensibility the human heart can abase itself, when misled by superstition, and depraved by the violence of its malignant pas ions. : The Bards held solemn meetings at the new and full moon at the solstices and equinoxes, i. e. every three months, were the principal meetings of the year for the promulgation of their maxims, and general business of the order. But every three years great national assemblies were held, in which the sanction of the whole community was given to what was then submitted to general opinion, and thought worthy of adoption. These conventions were held within those cathedrals of which we still have specimens; such as Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury, &c., the remains of which structures excite our wonder. There was also a general assembly of the Bards held occasionally, called an Eisteddfod. Mr. Pennant informs us, that in 15. Henry VIII., an Eisteddfod was held at Caerwys in Flintshire, in which the ancient laws respecting the Bards were confirmed. la 1568, Queen Elizabeth issued her royal commission for holding an Eisteddfod, at the same place; on which occasion several Bards received their degrees. This is the last royal commission that has been granted, and it is still in possession of the Mostyn family, together with the silver harp, which is the prize for which many a contention has called out the abilities of genius and skill. During time immemesial, it has been in the gift of this family, to bestow on the most meritorious of the musical faculty. This badge of honour is about five or six inches long, and has nine strings. Mr. Penuant has published a representation of it.-Travels, Vol. I. P. 1163. It is likely that Christianity would greatly vary the principles of Bardism; certainly it would expel its most barbarous and offensive rites. The system, it is said, is still maintained as to its general principles, in Glamorganshire; while it has decayed in other parts of Wales. So much at least, may be inferred from a celebrated Eisteddfod held at Carmarthen, about 1450, against which the Synod of Glamorgan Bards protested, as totally contrary to the ancient institutions. It will easily be supposed, that the present meetings of Bards and minstrels bear but little resemblance to the splendour of the ancient solemnities. Such as it is, however, it may plead a greater antiquity in its favour than most other observances that can be compared with it, and though it preserves nothing of the power, yet it is entitled to respect, as having preserved something of the remembrance of the ancient Bardic institutions. King Edward I. in respect to the cruelty Mr. Owen entirely clears the character of alledged against him as to his extermination of the Welsh Bards: in fact, after the time of Edward to that of Elizabeth the produc tions of the Bards were uncommonly nume rous: neither does any surviving Bard lament such a massacre, or even allude to it: a circumstance decisive as to the fallacy of the report. Possibly the king might threaten the Bards, if they did not obey him: but he never put his threats in execution. CUPID'S TELEGRAPH. learn that a new system of signals has been municate reciprocal information. with Christian meekness; yet, such was his BIOGRAPHICAL PARTICULARS OF THE ABBÉ unassuming modesty, that he alone seemed EDGEWORTH. [Abstracted from the Funeral Oration, delivered by M. l'Abbé de Bouvens, July 29, in the French Chapel, King Street, Portman Square, before the French Princes.] We have repeatedly called our readers' attention to the fate of the most illustrious victims of the French revolution; nor do we think that the frequent introduction of that subject needs any apology; we live in times when the dreadful consequences of irreligion and rebellion cannot be too frequently or too forcibly pourtrayed; when triumphant crime drops her mask, her deformity may deter the inconsiderate, who might otherwise have been seduced by hypocritical blandishments. -Among these accumulated horrors, instances of virtue, now and then, refresh the and reconcile a man of humanity to mind; mankind; he feels that the "gentle dew from Heaven, still droppeth on the place beneath," and hails the chosen vessels which religiously gather and preserve the celestial Such was the religious, the loyal, the undaunted confessor, to the murdered manna. Louis XVI.* The Abbé Edgeworth was descended from a respectable family, in Middlesex, which, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, had settled in Ireland. At the Reformation, Mr. E.'s ancestors had embraced the protestant faith, of which his father was a minister; but having adopted the tenets of the Church of Rome, and brought over his wife to his opinion, they left this country for France. Mr. E. received his education in the College of the Jesuits of Thoulouse. He early manifested a strong disposition for the priesthood, in which his parents were far from thwarting him, and he was accordingly ordained when he attained the requisite age. Church preferments were not the object of Mr. E.'s ambition, and after his ordination he retired to one of those seminaries formerly numerous in Paris, where young priests were trained with great strictness in the exercise of their holy functions. He chose the Seminary of Foreign Missions; however, from unknown eircumstances, he never was employed in the arduous and meritorious dutyof carrying Christian faith into distant climes, and the French capital became the scene of his labours. Many were the victims he snatched from perdition, in that seat of immorality and rreligion, by his persevering zeal, blended Compare Panorama, Vol. I. p. 1008 unconscious of the good he effected. The Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, acquainted with his merits, offered him a titular bishoprick, which he refused, in conformity to the opinion of his director, who thought his zeal more usefully employed in Paris. The fame of his good works was thus gradually spreading, in spite of his efforts to conceal them, till at last it reached the court. The virtuous sister of the unfortunate Louis XVI., Madame Elizabeth, selected him for her spiritual director; she also recommended him to her royal brother, as a proper person to assist him in those dreadful momenta which were to close his sufferings. This determination of the King, was communicated to Abbé Edgeworth by M. de Malesherbes; and it was on that circumstance that he wrote to a friend in England, the letter we have reported in a preceeding number.† The account of his first interview with the unhappy monarch, we shall give in his own words. "Till this moment," says he, "I had succeeded pretty well in concealing the va rious emotions which agitated my soul. But at the sight of that Prince, formerly so great, retain any command over myself. My tears and now so unfortunate, I could no longer trickled down, in spite of my efforts, and I fell at his feet, unable to give utterance to any thing but my grief. This affected him much more than the decree which had just been read to him; at first, his tears flowed with mine: soon however reassuming his wonted courage ;"" Forgive," said he, "forgive, Sir, this moment of weakness, if however it can be so called. For a great while past, I have been living among my enemies; and I am by habit, in a manner, familiarized with them. But the sight of a faithful subject affects my heart, quite differently: my eyes are no longer accustomed to such a scene, and is moves me in spite of myself." Saying this he took me up kindly, and brought me into his closet, to converse more at liberty. There he made me sit by him, saying: "Now, then, Sir, is the grand affair which must engage my whole attention, for what are all others compared to that one?" We mentioned, in a former number, the circumstance of the King's desire to have mass celebrated; he also wished to receive the sacrament; and when Abbé Edgeworth repaired to the council to solicit this last privilege, the ruffians told bim, your proposition may be a snare: under pretence of giving the sacrument to the King, you might. poison him! This hellish insinuation did not deter the courageous confessor. "You t Compare Panorama, Vol. I. p. 103. |