conquered Persia, observing the advantages which this trade brought with it, they founded Bosrah with the same views as had dictated the building of Alexandria ; and the new city rose into note with a rapidity little less remarkable than that of its Egyptian predecessor. At this point we first observe a religious reaction upon the East from those whom its produce had led to its shores. The Mohammedans, urging their way to the eastward of India, where neither the Tyrians, the Egyptians, nor the Romans had penetrated, founded settlements on the shores of the great Archipelago, whence arose the extensive diffusion of their doctrines, now observable in those regions. A day was to come when the same material channel should convey to those shores a spiritual power both milder and more potent.

The wars of Islam for a time closed Alexandria to the nations of Europe; but so unconquerable was the desire for the commodities they had hitherto received through that port, that, notwithstanding the difficulties of overland carriage, such was found. The merchandise of India was now borne across the rugged countries lying between the Indus and the Oxus, and forwarded from the latter river to the Black Sea. Constantinople thus became the emporium of the Indian trade; and thence acquired an affluence by which it was enabled to maintain its political existence much longer than it could otherwise have done. The tendency of this trade to aggrandize whatever people happened to possess it, was forcibly illustrated when the inconsiderable republic of Venice, gaining the traffic between Constantinople and the rest of Europe, rapidly attained to splendid opulence and formidable power. Genoa also, for a time supplanting Venice at Constantinople, gained an eminence very surprising for its limited extent and unsettled government. The Crusades carried to the Levant some of the inhabitants of every considerable country in Europe. There they became acquainted with the productions of India: many now saw sugar, cotton, silk, and various kinds of spice for the first time. The warriors returning home carried back a relish for these commodities, and inflamed the desire for them in the minds of their countrymen. Hence the Indian trade increased beyond all precedent, and raised Venice to a height of power and magnificence that moved the envy of all Europe. Every eye turned covetously toward the region whence flowed these streams of wealth. Attempts to share the advantages were made, but rendered abortive either by the power of Venice, or by the unfriendliness of the Mussulmauns who held every path of access to India. At the same time the descriptions of that region given by Marco Paulo inflamed to feverish excitement the desire to reach its shores.

Amid the general devising of projects to arrive at India, Columbus, arguing from the earth's sphericity, concluded that country might be found by sailing to the west. He made the attempt; and, in failing, discovered a new world. At the same time the Portuguese were led to coast along the African continent, in hope of discovering a passage to the land of so many real treasures, and so many fabled wonders. They found it. With these two discoveries a new era opened on Europe, affecting with the most important changes her politics, her commerce, her manufactures, and even her social manners; while revolutions not less signal hastened in every other region of the world. As we look at those revolutions in their past developments and future promise, and ask, What was their cause? the answer is, Under Providence, the productions of India.

Portugal possessed for nearly a century a monopoly of the commerce with India, reaping the wealth that had ever been its fruit. In the meantime England, searching in the north-west for a passage to the same region

which the Portuguese had reached by the south-east, formed relations with North America, from which important effects have flowed both in our own history and that of the new continent. As if destined, by elevating inconsiderable states, to demonstrate the real magnitude of its influence, the eastern commerce passed from the Portuguese to the Dutch, then a people in feeble infancy. It raised them to the head of the maritime powers; but the stream, turning from them to our own shore, has steadily flowed thither during the last century, swelling our affluence to a height never before seen in the tide of human affairs.* During that period has arisen the most wonderful of all the phenomena resulting from the influence of India's produce. Attracted to her shores, and contending for her treasures, the nations of Europe gradually became mixed up with Indian politics. Hence it has followed that an European empire is established over two hundred millions of Asiatics, that they have been trained in the European art of war, that their institutions have been ameliorated by the spirit of British law, that scriptural Christianity has commenced her action upon their mind, and that a boundless prospect is opened of grand regenerative changes.

A moment's reflection on this hasty summary of facts will show how deeply universal history has been affected by the productions of India. They gave Tyre its fame, and made its merchants Princes. They raised Solomon's "Tadmor in the wilderness" to the Palmyra of stately palaces and potent armaments. They created Alexandria, and filled its port for ages with the merchants of Greece and Rome. They sustained the sinking empire of the East, enriching and adorning its capital long after her western sister had fallen. They, during the middle ages, enabled petty Italian republics to outshine even great kingdoms. They stirred the genius of European enterprise to fret against the restrictions that had caged her so long, until at last, breaking forth, she made the circuit of the world, and brought back to her children wealth gathered from every land. No people on earth have been wholly free from the effects of this influence. The few hapless Carribbs that linger in the West Indies, when they think of the wrongs their fathers sank under, and see the invader rejoicing over all their isles, may ask, “What first brought our destroyers here?" The reply must be, "India.” The Red Man, as he sees the forests of his tribe turned into a garden for the stranger, may ask, "What brought them first across the great waters?" "India." The Esquimaux, seeing our sailors shiver in their snows, or the Indian of Labrador selling us his furs, may ask, “What first led them to lands so chilly ?" and he must be told, "The search for India." The Negro seized for slavery, the Hottentot staring at civilized industry, the Kafir ravaging the white man's homestead, the New-Zealander fighting for his field, or hearkening to the Gospel, all may put the same question, "What first led white men to our shores?" And to all the reply must be," India." That country has been the means of most powerfully affecting the state of all this world. Her productions have been the most influential physical cause in modern history.

To make more palpable the part India has taken in the history of modern nations, let us consider for a moment her influence on England. Take our SHIPPING. The vessel that first brought the produce of the East direct to England, that in which Drake had circumnavigated the world, was of one hundred tons' burden! The length of the voyages which the new

* The best account of this interesting branch of history is in Robertson on India.

discoveries made necessary, the magnitude of the demand for the foreign productions, the necessity in times of war to join defence to carriage, all led the conductors of the Indian trade to a style of ship-building hitherto unknown; and from the example of their magnificent fleets the whole marine of the country enlarged its proportions. In our COLONIES, again, we have a system by which our own condition has been materially affected, and new states created on other shores. This system wholly issued from the discoveries made in seeking various paths to India. To reach India we went westward, and found the West Indies and America. To reach India we went northward, and found Labrador. To reach India we rounded the termination of South America, and found the South Seas, where lie Australia and New-Zealand.* To reach India, the coast of Africa was explored. To enable them to command the trade with India, the Dutch colonized the Cape of Good Hope; and for the very same reason we drove them from that possession.

Our TRADE, not less than our shipping or colonies, testifies to the power of India. Those articles which strike all as the most lucrative are either such as originally came from India, or to which that country first introduced us. Tea, for instance, though the production of China, became known to us only through our Indian trade; and perhaps those who are ready to imagine that without that beverage daily comfort would be impossible, will be surprised to learn that no mention of it occurs in the records of the East India Company till sixty-seven years after it had been chartered. Only then was their factor at Bantam instructed to procure "100lb. weight of the best tay he could gett." The sugar-cane, again, had been transplanted from India to western Asia, where it was unknown in earlier times; there it was seen by Europeans during the Crusades, thence brought to different parts of the Mediterranean, thence introduced to Madeira and the Canaries, finally to the West Indies and Brazil. Hence there arose the extensive use of that tempting luxury, hence the slave-trade, hence our Missions to the West, hence the noblest strife of philanthropy, hence the sublimest record of colonial legislation. Cotton also originally came to us from India. By the trade which the Romans maintained with that region through Alexandria, this light and agreeable fabric was first made known to Europeans, and became valued among the luxuries of the imperial city. During the middle ages the Venetians supplied enough to create a desire for more. The Moors introduced the plant itself into Europe, and thus the way was prepared for its general reception. When a direct commerce was opened with India, cotton was imported from Calicut; and hence the name "calico." Silk was first introduced to India from China; (as cotton was introduced to China from India ;) but for many ages it was supplied to Europe wholly through India. With these facts before us, it is altogether unnecessary to remark that our manufactures have not less felt the influence of India, than the other branches of our national activity.

To estimate the influence which, through all these channels, India has exerted on our national character and domestic habits, is a sheer impossi

*These various routes were sought, because the Portuguese claimed an exclusive right to that which they had discovered; and had their claim fortified by the Pope's authority.

Some think that the sugar-cane was indigenous to South America; but I believe all are agreed that for the manufacture of sugar from the cane we are wholly indebted to India.

bility. The changes that have passed upon our homes by the introduction of silk, cotton, tea, sugar, and spices, are now too distant and too many to permit accurate enumeration. Strike these articles from our imports for a single year, and you will produce a revolution that would help to illustrate the magnitude of their influence; but yet even that would not conduct us back to the same manners, the same modes of thought, and the same physical condition which began to depart when these new comforts entered, and have since been gradually yielding to softer and more luxurious habitudes. These articles have metamorphosed both our persons and our tables: we neither dress nor eat as did our ancestors. They have entered not only the highways, but every by-path of society, which marches not a step but in their companionship. Take our remotest homestead ; and though the inhabitants have no knowledge of foreign parts, and never considered themselves debtors to India, yet on every male and female you will find articles of clothing, and at almost every meal either food, beverage, or condiment, which were unknown in their hamlet before the way to India was opened. The debt to India is universal; no man in the community is free from it; it contributes to the comforts of all. Everything we look upon testifies to the grateful influence of its productions, the luxuries of the most refined, the comforts of the most economical, the garments of all. We do not survey a room, we do not enter a shop, we do not take a meal, we do not look upon the dress of a child, without encountering some memento of the universal debt to India. In the saloons of our nobles, the mansions of our gentry, the houses of our tradesmen, the cottages of our workmen, and the chambers of our sick, we find India contributing helps to comfort or ameliorations of pain.

Who then can look with a well-instructed eye on the present state of the British nation, without being amazed at the influence that has been exerted upon us by a country so far away; and a country the people of which never meddled with our concerns? India never sent an expedition to our shores, and yet it has diffused its influence through every department of our national life. We see it in our refined clothing and our sumptuous boards, in the stir of our ship-yards, in the magnitude of our marine, in the splendid heritage of our colonial possessions, in the manifold issue of our factories, and in the ubiquitous commerce with which we are pervading the world. Nor have we been alone: changes have passed over the condition of man from Italy to Scandinavia, while newly-discovered tribes have shared in the universal impulse. Let no one, then, regard the productions which form the chief articles of commerce as created to gratify foibles, or make fortunes. They are the ties by which the All-wise has held together the most distant races of men, provided for the general diffusion of local blessings, and finally called forth the nations on whom his truth shone, to enlighten their brethren who sat in darkness.

The influence of India has scarcely presided less over man's intellectual than over his material history. To take a very obvious proof: every one feels the prodigious benefit of being able to express the endlessly-diversified records of arithmetic by only ten ciphers. Into what consternation would all the counting-houses and all the observatories of Europe be thrown, were a decree to reach them that their accounts must be kept, and their calculations made, according to the Roman model, in the letters of the alphabet! Yet, only a few centuries ago, this was their method; for no language of Europe, or of Western Asia, furnished a more compendious arithmetical notation. The Hindus had invented, in very early times, the

system now in universal use; from them it had been adopted by the Persians and Arabs; and it is matter of dispute whether it reached Europe before Leonardo of Pisa,* in the thirteenth century; but it seems more probable that it was brought to Spain by the Moors. Its progress among men of business was very slow. Had it not been for this invention, the rapidity with which the largest commercial transactions are now executed would have been impossible; and if the calculations of astronomy could have been conducted at all, it would have been with immense difficulty.t

It must be felt that the nation who took the lead in astronomical science would gain immense influence over the mind of other ancient people. Though the controversy on this subject cannot be fairly said to have yet led to a conclusive decision, yet it has established the fact that Chaldea, Egypt, and China are to be set aside, and that the whole of what deserves the name of science lies between Greece and India. With them only has been discovered knowledge that could serve as a basis to the stupendous fabric of modern times. In comparing the system of these two nations, the Hindu astronomy has been found to be more correct, as regards the precession of the equinoxes, the length of the tropical year, and the synodic periods of the moon. Add to this their unquestionable antecedency to the Greeks in civilization; their great superiority in arithmetic; their sole possession, at first, of algebra; with their habitual indisposition to receive instruction from foreign nations; and it can scarcely fail to appear that probability leans rather toward the precedence of the Hindu, than the Greek, astronomy. Perhaps when we have become as familiar with the history of science in the East, as we are with its history in the West, this probability will ripen to demonstration. The early progress of the Hindus in logic, ethics, poetry, and metaphysics, is universally acknowledged; and enabled them largely to influence the literature of other civilized nations.

But the most gigantic effects produced on the world by India, have been in the field of religion. The extent to which the Greeks and Romans, and through them all Europe, borrowed religious usages and tenets from the Egyptians, is matter of universal notoriety. Even some of the superstitions now prevalent in Christendom can be traced, through medieval and Roman modifications, to an Egyptian original. When India and ancient Egypt began to be known, a remarkable similarity was observed in their rites and

* He made known the system of algebra, also a Hindu invention. For full information see the article "Arithmetic," Encyclopædia Metropolitana, or "Penny Cyclopædia."

Take the quantity 333, and by the Roman notation you have just treble the number of figures, and those more complex, cccxxxiii. The principle of the Hindu invention is to increase tenfold the value of a cipher for every time it is removed from the final digit of the series. There cannot be a doubt that the possession of this unequalled vehicle for numbers tempted the Brahmans into those extravagances by which they play, in their sacred books, with billions of years. Archimedes is said to have written a book for the purpose of proving that it was possible to express such numbers as were familiar to every Brahman in India.

This is further confirmed by the fact, that while the Greeks sent their sages to study in India, we have no account of Hindu sages seeking light in Greece; and though it may be true that the Greeks did not commence this practice till after the solid foundation of the science had been laid by Hipparchus, yet it could only have begun after Hindu learning had been long and highly prized by their philosophers. This whole subject is well treated in the "Penny Cyclopædia," article Viga Garuta.