1834.] Miscellaneous. 99 



VTI. — Miscellaneous. 

 Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Saturday, Wth May, 1833. 



The Report of the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of this prosperous 

 Institution has just reached us, and we hasten to put our readers in possession of 

 such parts of it as must he interesting to those engaged in kindred researches and 

 pursuits in the country whence the literary food of all Asiatic Societies is alike pro- 

 vided. The proceedings themselves are as usual on such occasions but a string of 

 unanimous thanks for services, great or small, rendered during the past year. We 

 are sorry to see that Mr. Graves C. Haughton had been obliged to resign the 

 office of Secretary, from ill health ; he has been succeeded by Captain Henry Hark- 

 ness. The Right Honorable C. W. W. Wynn continues to be President, and 

 Lieut. -Col. J. Tod, Librarian. 



Economy has been the standing order in the financial department, not without 

 good effect, since a debt of ,£160 has been cleared, and a balance accumulated of 

 nearly ,£400 from the contributions of the year, after a payment of £300 for print- 

 ing, and £900 for house rent, taxes, and establishment. 



The Society has 232 paying members, at 2 and 3 guineas per annum ; it admitted 

 23 new members in 1833, paying five-guinea admission fees. We observe among 

 the sources of income a yearly donation of one hundred guineas from the Court of 

 Directors, besides many valuable presents, and a hundred pounds from the Orien- 

 tal Translation Fund : — a lamentable contrast all this to the state of things in the 

 parent Society of Bengal, which has received, at least in these latter days, but lit- 

 tle indeed of the fostering aid and patronage either of the local Government or of 

 the Honorable Court ; and has itself subscribed (from the contributions of only 

 about fifty paying members) a hundred pounds yearly to the Translation Fund ; 

 and yet cannot even attempt to print a volume in promotion of the professed objects 

 of that useful institution on the responsibility of a resident committee of the fund ! 

 We remark that the composition for the subscription of an elected resident member 

 of the Royal Asiatic Society is thirty guineas, and for a non-resident, twenty : the 

 same scale might, we think, be advantageously adopted into our own rules. 



There is another new rule equally worthy of imitation ; namely, " that the re- 

 signation of no member shall be received until he has sent in a written declaration, 

 and has paid up all his arrears of subscription." 



We remark with pleasure the acknowledgment of several literary contributions 

 from native corresponding members in the Madras presidency, the result we would 

 hope of the extension of English education in the peninsula : the same good effect 

 is already visible in our own pages, and it is a part of our ambition, as it is of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society, " to become an active and useful instrument in calling forth 

 the great but almost dormant talents of the natives of India. It is by urging the sin- 

 gularly intellectual races of that country to make known through themselves the 

 result of their ancient and steady civilization, that it hopes to make manifest to 

 the philosophic inquirer into human nature the character of the remarkable and 

 interesting people who have not merely been the authors of their own improve- 

 ment, but who have steadily preserved, by the force of primeval institutions, their 

 sacred language, their literature, and their laws, in spite of the anarchy and mis- 

 rule consequent on the invasions of many barbarous nations by which they have 

 been either subjugated, or their country laid desolate." 



The obituary list of 1832 is of melancholy extent, it comprises many of the elite 

 of the Orientalists of Europe : their memory and their achievements belong to 

 India, and we cannot render a pleasanter service than in extracting at length from 



