bered the necessity for one in his place keeping up appearances.

In May, 1829, Jeffrey was chosen Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, and, feeling it not quite fitting that the official head of a great law corporation should continue to be the conductor of what might be fairly enough represented as a party journal,' he resigned the conduct of the Edinburgh Review. In 1830 he was appointed Lord Advocate; and in 1834 was raised to the Bench, the duties connected with which he fulfilled until the period of his death, which occurred on 26th January, 1850, in his seventy-seventh year."

Lord Cockburn casts a retrospective glance on Jeffrey's twenty-seven years' editorship of the ‘Edinburgh Review;' and what he says on the subject is so admirable, at once in thought and expression, that we must give it. However, as Francis Jeffrey is not only the greatest of British critics, but the undoubted founder of modern periodical literature, we, humble followers in its train, may be excused for dwelling on its origin and progress, and feeling pride in the feats which it hath done. Religious intolerance, the slave-trade, penal barbarities, and other public evils, prevailed in 1802, with, above all, a horror of change in the higher, and profound ignorance in the lower classes. In 1829, all this was mitigated or altered; and

6

Whoever exults in the dropping away of so many fetters, and in the improvement of so many parts of our economy, and in the general elevation of the public mind, must connect all these with the energy and intelligence of this journal. There is scarcely one abuse that has been overthrown which, supported as every one was, might not have still survived, nor a right principle that has been adopted which might not have been dangerously delayed, had it not been for the well-timed vigour and ability of this Review.' It was the established champion of the measures, and principles, and feelings, that have prevailed; and the glory of the victory cannot be withheld from the power that prepared the warriors who fought the battle. It was not merely that the journal expounded and defended right principles and objects; its prerogative was higher. It taught the public to think; it opened the people's eyes; it gave them, periodically, the most animated and profound discussions on every interesting subject that the greatest intellects in the kingdom could supply. The mere mention of the names of a few of those who addressed the public through this organ, during Jeffrey's editorship, is of itself sufficient to attest the high character of the instruction given, and to guarantee its safety. How could a periodical work be but magnificent, of which it could be said that it was carried on by such men as the following, all in the full force of their powers, and each zealous on his favourite subject, viz.:-Jeffrey, Smith, Horner, Brougham, Thomas Brown, Walter Scott, John Playfair, Hallam, Malcolm Laing, George Ellis, Wilberforce, Lord Melbourne, John Allen, Coleridge, Malthus, Payne Knight, Professor Lesley, D. Mackintosh, Daniel Ellis, Moore, Dr John Gordon, Palgrave, Leigh Hunt, Romily, Foscolo, Dr Chalmers, Professor Wilson, J. R. Macculloch, Empson, Dr Arnold, Sir William Hamilton, Macaulay, Carlyle, Robert Grant, Hazlitt, Alexr. (Sanserit) Hamilton, Thomas Campbell, Peter Elmsley, Phillimore, James Mill, Macvey Napier, Chenevix, Bloomfield, Sir H. Parnell, General William Napier. Many other bright stars might be added; but the sky that blazes with these constellations is bright enough. Their influence in illuminating the age may be ascertained by every man for himself. Let any regular reader of this 'Review' recollect, and say how many of his opinions, and of the reasons for them, were formed from its successive articles; and how largely the feelings and principles that he now owns were breathed into him by its general spirit.'

The Edinburgh Review' did even more than is here stated. It not only originated modern journalism, but the collective work continues to be a chief support of all

*For a critical estimate of the writings of Lord Jeffrey, we refer

our readers to Vol. vi., first series of the INSTRUCTOR, pp. 129, 153.

branches thereof to this day. It is still an authority-a treasury of knowledge-on the multitudinous subjects which it has from time to time handled. We acknowledge candidly, and with pleasure, our own frequent and deep obligations to the Review,' on occasions where extent and accuracy of information, rather than originality of views, form the main points desired in essays.

THE CULTIVATION OF THE POPPY.

In the wide plains of the Ganges, stretching for a distance of about six hundred miles, almost from the borders of Oude, in a south-easterly direction, there are carried on a cultivation and a manufacture of singular interest: the cultivation is that of the poppy, the manufacture is that of opium. By a most amplicated mechanism, yet in beautiful order and regularity, this cultivation and this manufacture are conducted; there are agents, deputies, overseers, agencies, divisions, factories, and, in one way or other, we find employed at least two or three hundred thousand persons. We purpose, in the present paper, to lay before our readers a succinct view of the complex yet ordered arrangements by which the East India Company secures the cultivation of the poppy, together with the methods and seasons of that cultivation.

The vast extent of country in which the poppy is grown, is divided into two great agencies, distinguished by the names of Behar and Benares. Of these, the former is the larger and more important, sending to market about thrice as much opium as the latter. It is to the latter, however, that we direct our attention at present; the scale upon which the arrangements are placed in it, will convey an idea of their magnitude in the Behar agency.

The Benares agency comprises eight divisions; and, in these, the extent of land under poppy cultivation, in the season 1849-50, was 107,823 beegahs, each beegah containing 27,225 square feet. The central authority by which the whole machinery is set in motion, and primarily managed, is the Board of Customs, Salt, and Opium, located in Calcutta. The principal agent who, under this board, superintends the Benares agency, has his residence in Ghazeepore, where also is the great or sudder factory, to which, from all the divisions, the opium is brought. Över each of the eight divisions is placed a sub-deputy opium agent, who resides at a departmental factory, central for his division. Between these sub-deputy agents, however, and the agent residing at Ghazeepore, are placed the collectors, one of whom is stationed in each division, and who are, ex officio, deputy opium agents. These middle-men see all correspondence between the agent and the subdeputy agents, ascertain that the former has given his sanction to all deliverance of moneys into the hands of the latter, attend to all lawsuits which may arise in conducting the business of the divisions, and exercise a general superintendence over the cultivators. One important part of their duty is to exert an influence in favour of the cultivators, if any appearance of oppression or compulsion should display itself.

These three ranks, then, of functionaries-the agent, the deputy agents, and the sub-deputy agents-are at the head of the agency, and manage the affairs of the divisions. With the check above mentioned, the administration of each division is in the hands of the sub-deputy agent. Under him there is a class of native executive officers, styled gomashtas. The mention of this official leads us to another part of the territorial arrangements-namely, the subdivision of each of the eight great compartments into a certain number of parts, each of which is called a kotes illaqua, and is of such extent, that one man can exercise supervision over it; over each kotee illaqua is appointed a gomashta. The gomashta has his head-quarters at the kotee-a building in a central situation; and there, under the superintendence of a tehvildar, or treasurer, is located the treasury; the gomashta has such an establishment as enables him duly to keep and render the accounts of his illaqua to the sub-deputy agent. Besides the gomashtas, and as their general supervisor, there is in cach division

(not in each illaqua) a responsible native officer, designated mohotomim. His business is of a general character; he sees that all is in train, that no part of the machinery is out of order. Under the gomashta is a number of individuals, who personally superintend the whole of the operations of the cultivators.

The cultivation is carried on by a class of persons named lumberdars, who grow the poppy under certain conditions. It is perfectly at the option of the lumberdar to become cultivator or not; and the conduct of all officers is controlled by fixed laws emanating from the agent or the opium board. When the negotiations preliminary to the occupation of what we shall call an opium farm are brought to a termination-in other words, when any native has determined to devote so much land to the cultivation of the poppy, he receives from the sub-deputy agent a printed form, written in Hindee, called a hath-chittee, in which the stipulations of his contract, and the penalties attached to the infringement of its conditions, are clearly set forth. In this bath-chittee, everything of importance is definitely set down, so that subsequent misunderstanding or mistake is effectually obviated.

The land is measured by the gomashta, and the correctness of his measurements is tested by the sub-deputy agent in person; its measurement is entered in the hath-chittee. On the completion of the agreement, another part of the system comes into operation-a part singularly judicious and beneficial-namely, the payment, at various periods, of certain sums of money to the lumberdar, to enable him to carry on the cultivation. The amount thus paid is about half the estimated value of the yearly produce. The first advance is made in September or October; the second is made on the completion of the sowings in November, and the final, or chooktee payment, is made immediately after the delivery and weighment of the produce.

'Nothing, therefore, can be fairer to the cultivator than this system of advances; he is subjected to no sort of exaction, in the shape of interest or commission, on the money which he receives, and it puts within his power the certain means of making a fair profit by the exercise of common care and honesty. It is an established rule in the agency, that the cultivator's accounts of one season shall be definitively settled before the commencement of the next, and that no outstanding balances shall remain over. When a cultivator has from fraud neglected to bring produce to cover his advances, the balances due by him are at once recovered, if necessary, by legal means; whereas, if he can satisfactorily show that he has become a defaulter from calamity and uncontrollable circumstances, and that the liquidation of his debt is placed entirely beyond his power, his case is then made the subject of report to the government by the agent, with the request that the debt may be written off to profit and loss. These provisions are most wise, for outstanding balances may be made a powerful means of oppression, and to their operation may be traced a considerable amount of litigation and agrarian crime in the indigo districts of Bengal. It is clear, that when such balances become so large, that the cultivator cannot discharge them, he is no longer a free agent, but is perfectly subservient to the will of his creditor, for whom he must cultivate whether he desire it or not. Such burdens may even be handed down from father to son. The fairness of the agency system, and the justice with which the cultivators are treated, are best evidenced by the readiness with which they come forward to cultivate, and also by the comparative rarity of agrarian crime, arising out of matters connected with the poppy cultivation. . . . The number of persons actually employed in cultivating the poppy in the agency is very great. The number of lumberdars who signed agreements to cultivate in 1849-50, amounted to 21,549, and the total number of under cultivators was 106,147. When it is further taken into consideration, that the families of these individuals take no inconsiderable share in the labours of the cultivation, and in the preparation of the drug, some idea may be formed of the vast number of human beings whose interests and welfare are bound up therewith in the Benares agency alone.'

To all this, let our readers add the consideration, that the agency of Benares is very decidedly inferior, in importance and in the magnitude of its operations, to that of Behar, and form their estimate accordingly.

What an object of interest this whole vast establishment is! Over a country six hundred miles in length and two hundred in breadth, this poppy cultivation extends; and over all there is brought into play an ordered, judicious, and effective system: it seems as if a whole nation of opium producers were located there, on the banks of the revered Ganges. In every particular, and in every department, the administrative mechanism seems admirable. The most vigilant supervision is so skilfully combined with the fullest freedom from restraint or domination; encouragement is so judiciously dealt out, while indolence and fraud are rendered well-nigh impossible; the whole complicated mechanism is adapted to work so harmoniously and effectively, that it compels admiration and even wonder at the sagacity and clear practical insight displayed.. Might we not say, as historians when speaking of the valour of rebels or bandits, that all this soldierly apparatus, this complex and admirable system of checks and counter-checks, this wise blending of kindly encouragement with iron rigour, is worthy of a better cause than the production of opium?

We turn now to the brief relation of the methods of poppy agriculture.

Lands situated in the vicinity of villages, and therefore favourably located in respect of manure and irrigation, are chosen for the cultivation of the poppy. In the case of rich soils, a crop of Indian corn, maize, or vegetables, is obtained previously to the sowing of the poppy; but this is by no means always the case. The white variety of poppy alone is grown in the two agencies we have mentioned. In situations favourable to its growth, it vegetates luxuriantly, attaining usually a height of about four feet. The stem is branched, and is terminated by from two to five ovateglobose capsules, averaging in size a duck's egg. The plant takes about three months and a half in reaching maturity, and the time for its cultivation is exclusively the cold season, extending from November to March. After much preliminary ploughing and dressing, the seed is sown broadcast between the 1st and 15th of November. Some days after, the plough, or, as we should incline to imagine, the harrow, is again used to bury the seed, and the ground is levelled. The whole is then divided into small compartments about ten feet in length, the sides of which are raised, and converted into little channels for the purpose of irrigation. Having been duly weeded and irrigated, the poppy plants are in full flower in February; and, just as the petals are about to fall off, they are secured, and formed into circular cakes from ten to fourteen inches in diameter, and about 1-16th of an inch in thickness. The manner in which these leaf cakes are formed is the following:-A circular shallow earthen vessel is heated to the requisite degree, by being placed inverted over a slow fire; a few petals are then spread upon its heated convex surface, and, as soon as the glutinous juice which they contain is scen to exude, others are added to the moist surface, and are pressed down by means of a cloth. As soon as these latter become moist in turn, they receive a similar addition of petals, and in this manner the cake is extended circularly by successive and continuous additions, until it has reached the required dimensions. Instead of the earthen vessel, a shallow or nearly flat iron cooking utensil is sometimes used.

The capsules having attained a sufficient state of ripeness, which takes place in a few days after the removal of the petals, the operation of collection commences. The method of this is as follows: At about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, individuals repair to the fields, and scarify the poppy capsules with sharp iron instruments called nushturs. These instruments are adapted to inflict three or four parallel scarifications upon the capsule, cutting only the epidermis; the object is attained by tying together three or four iron blades, six inches in length, and increasing in width, towards the cutting end, from a quarter of an

backwards and forwards, until at length, with the startling of a thunder-clap to the affrighted mountaineers, the bubble burst. Officers of justice appeared; the stranger was easily intercepted from flight; and, upen a capital charge, was borne away to Carlisle. At the ensuing assizes he was tried for forgery, on the prosecution of the post-office; found guilty, left for execution, and executed accordingly. On the day of his condemnation, Wordsworth and Coleridge passed through Carlisle, and endeavoured to obtain an interview with him. Wordsworth succeeded; but, for some unknown reason, the prisoner steadily refused to see Coleridge; a caprice which could not be penetrated. It is true that he had, during his whole residence at Keswick, avoided Coleridge with a solicitude which had revived the original suspicions against him in some quarters, after they had generally subsided. But for this, his motives had then been sufficient. He was of a Devonshire family, and naturally feared the eye or the inquisitive examination of one who bore a name immemorially associated with the southern part of that county. Coleridge, however, had been transplanted so immaturely from his native region, that few people in England knew less of its family connections. That, perhaps, was unknown to this malefactor; but, at any rate, he knew that all motive was now at an end for disguise of any sort; so that his reserve, in this particular, was unintelligible. However, if not him, Coleridge saw and examined his very interesting papers. These were chiefly letters from women whom he had injured, pretty much in the same way and by the same impostures as he had so recently practised in Cumberland; and, as Coleridge assured me, were in part the most agonising appeals that he had ever read to human justice and pity. The man's real name was, I think, Hatfield; and, amongst the papers, were two separate correspondences, of some length, from two young women, apparently of superior condition in life (one the daughter of an English clergyman), whom this villain had deluded by marriage, and, after some cohabitation, abandoned, one of them with a family of young children. Great was the emotion of Coleridge when he recurred to his remembrance of these letters, and bitter-almost vindictive-was the indignation with which he spoke of Hatfield. One set of letters appeared to have been written under too certain a knowledge of his villany to whom they were addressed; though still relying on some possible remains of humanity, or, perhaps (the poor writer might think), on some lingering relics of affection for herself. The other set was even more distressing; they were written under the first conflicts of suspicions, alternately repelling with warmth the gloomy doubts which were fast arising, and then yielding to their afflicting evidence; raving in one page under the misery of alarm, in another courting the delusions of hope, and luring back the perfidious deserter; here resigning herself to despair, and there again labouring to show that all might yet be well. Coleridge often said, in look ing back upon that frightful exposure of human guilt and misery, and I also echoed his feelings, that the man who, when pursued by these heartrending apostrophies, and with this litany of anguish sounding in his ears from despairing women and from famishing children, could yet find it possible to enjoy the calm pleasures of a Lake tourist, and deliberately to hunt for the picturesque, must have been a fiend of that order which fortunately does not often emerge among men.' She, meantime, under the name of the Beauty of Buttermere, became an object of interest to all England; dramas and melodramas were produced in the Loudon theatres upon her story; and for many a year afterwards, shoals of tourists crowded to the secluded lake, and the little lonely cabaret which had been the scene of her brief romance. It was fortunate for a person in her distressing situation that her home was not in a town: the few and simple neighbours who had witnessed her imaginary elevation, having little knowledge of worldly feelings, never for an instant connected with her disappointment any sense of the ludicrous, or spoke of it as a calamity to which her vanity might have co-operated. They treated it as unmixed injury, reflect

ing shame upon nobody but the wicked perpetrator. Hence, without much trial to her womanly sensibilities, she found herself able to resume her situation in the little inn; and this she continued to hold for many years.

A VISIT TO KEW GARDENS.
SECOND ARTICLE.

A FEW paces from the Tropical Aquarium brings the vi-
siter to a small stove containing a very miscellaneous, but
choice collection of plants, mostly from the tropics, among
which are some of the greatest curiosities of the vegetable
world. Here, for example, are the different kinds of
pitcher-Plants, so named from the pitcher-like appendage
they have at the extremity of their leaves. Several kinds
of these plants are known to botanists, although the pre-
cise function and purpose of their curious organs appears
to be by no means clearly ascertained. Most of the spe-
cies secrete a fluid which partially fills the pitcher, and
attracts various insects, which fall into the liquor, and,
from the difficulty of escape, get drowned, sometimes fill-
ing the entire cavity. In the Sarracenia, a Canadian
kind, the pitcher forms a perfect trap, its interior being
lined with long bristly hairs, which, pointing downwards,
afford ready access to the fluid below, but render escape
impossible. Another plant to be found here, equally de-
structive to insects, and which, with the Pitcher-plant, is
probably designed by the Creator to check the super-
abundance of that class of beings, is the famous Dionaa
muscipula, or American Fly-trap. This little plant has,
as its name implies, a veritable living trap at the end of
the leaves, consisting of two broad fleshy lobes, jointed in
the middle, fringed with long spines, and with two or
three hairs on the disk of the lobes. The moment an in-
sect (or any extraneous body) touches the hairs on the
disk, the two lobes close firmly, and press the luckless
intruder to death: the struggles of the victim, indeed,
only occasioning the lobes to shut the more firmly, by
which its destruction is hastened. As soon as the insect
ceases to struggle, and dies, the trap opens, ready to con-
tinue the work of destruction.' There appears to be a dif-
ference of opinion amongst learned doctors with respect to
the effect of this fly-catching upon the plant itself. Dr
Hooker (whose words we have quoted above) assures us,
there is no reason whatever to suppose that the dead
insects in any way nourish the plant;' while Dr Car-
penter, on the other hand, is equally explicit in stating,
that the decay of the insects appears to furnish the plant
with nutriment;' and that plants of this kind which
have been kept in hothouses from which insects were care-
fully excluded have been observed to languish, but were
restored by placing little bits of meat upon the traps, the
decay of these seeming to answer the same purpose.'
Without presuming to decide between the disputants, we
will merely state that, at Kew, the plant is invariably
kept under a bell glass, and yet every summer puts out
its leaves and traps, to all appearance, with undiminished
health and vigour. Upon a shelf in this stove, will also be
seen the singular moving plant, Desmodium gyrans, which
night and day, without intermission, its whole life long,
twitches and jerks its leaves about in the strangest fashion,
puzzling grave philosophers scarcely less than the rudest
rustic. Here, too, is the pretty humble plant, Mimosa
pudica, commonly misnamed the Sensitive-plant, which
shrinks at the slightest touch, folds up its delicate leaflets,
a pair at a time, and droops the whole leaf for several mo-
ments, as if resenting the rudeness; and then again slowly
expands the closed leaflets, and resumes its ordinary po-
sition. Close by is the Caricature-plant, whose leaves are
marked along the centre with a continuous row of yellow
blotches, in which people of an imaginative turn of mind
can discover a very accurate resemblance to the human
countenance more or less divine.' Here also is the fra-
grant Lemon Grass, much used by the Asiatics both for
medicinal and culinary purposes, and affording a very
agreeable drink for invalids.

We now pass on to a greenhouse at a short distance on