44 Life of 'Sir Suimford Raffles. 



The address of which we have thus endeavoured to give an 

 outline, occupies thirty-three pages in the Seventh volume of the 

 Society's Transactions, which was printed at the government-press 

 of IJatavia, and published in 1814. The style in which it is 

 composed is in some respects loose and inaccurate. It has also a 

 character of verbose dilfuseness, that tends to weary the reader, 

 and— to hazard a conjecture on what may be termed the progress 

 of the author's mind — it would seem that at this time he felt 

 himself restrained, in the expression of his ideas, by a defi- 

 ciency of suital)le forms in general science and literature, adapted 

 to receive and to transmit to the minds of others, the grand views 

 and mighty projects which occupied his own mind, and thence 

 panted (o break forth in all their splendour. But these formal 

 defects detract little from the substantial excellence of the dis- 

 course. It displays the germs of that comprehensive perception 

 which marks the subsequent productions of its author: it evinces 

 his skill in selecting for inquiry that part of any subject which 

 was most essential to its correct examination : and it exhibits the 

 wise method he always pursued of confining the attention of any 

 agent he employed, — whether an individual or an association of 

 individuals — to one grand object ; without however actually ex- 

 cluding the consideration of minor objects, but concentrating the 

 main energies of the agent on one desirable point, until that point 

 had been secured. 



The contents of the Seventh volume of the Batavian Trans- 

 actions, thus produced under the auspices of the Governor, are 

 uniformly of a higldy respectable character. Some of them ap- 

 pear to be extremely important in a local point of view, others 

 afford interesting contributions to general science, and when com- 

 pared with the Memoirs published by the Learned Societies of 

 Europe, they present only the imperfections which resulted, in- 

 evitably, from the distance at which the authors were situated 

 from the central seats of knowledge. The perusal of the 

 Eighth volume, published in 181G, leaves similar impressions on 

 the mind ; and it is perhaps the most valuable of the two. The 

 papers it contains are preceded by the Preaident's discourse On 

 the Snnda Isles and on Japan, delivered before the Society at 4. 



