1J8 
MR FREIDRICH Y RESEARCH SS IN B ALI. 
authority on the subject. At a much later period, many 
details respecting the actual condition of the Balinese were 
communicated by Dutch and English visitors. These are 
chiefly to he found in a “Short Account of the Island of Bali” 
published in the Singapore Chronicle in June 1830, and in 
Lieut. Melvill van Carnbee’s papers in the Tijdschrift voor 
Neeriands Indie. But no visitor had yet possessed that 
knowledge ot Sanskrit, without, which access could not he 
obtained to the sacred literature of the island, and the learn¬ 
ing of the sacerdotal families. Fortunately when the Ne¬ 
therlands Indian government sent an expedition against 
Billing in 1846, a scholar endowed with this knowledge, and 
who had already applied it to the study of tise ancient lan¬ 
guages of Java, was found in the person of Mr Freidrich, 
and, at the solicitation of the Batavian Society of Arts and 
Sciences, he was allowed to accompany the expedition. Mr 
Freidrich remained for some time in Bali, laboriously and 
successfully prosecuting his researches, collecting manuscripts, 
investigating the actual religion, and availing himself of the 
assistance of the priests in his philological studies. In our 
number tor March last, we noticed the progress which Mr 
Freidrich was making, and inserted the important remarks of 
the learned President of the Batavian Society on the subject 
ot Balinese literature. As he justly observed “the eyes of all 
the philologists in Europe are fixed upon Bali. From that 
island they anticipate a new light on the history of the Ar¬ 
chipelago.” In England the indifference to such investiga¬ 
tions which continued to prevail, after the splendid and 
astonishing discoveries of the German philologists had ar¬ 
rested universal attention on the continent, is fast giving place 
to a juster estimate of the rank of the science of languages. 
The necessity of assuming it as the basis of ethnic enquiries, 
and the extreme interest of its results, are now widely appre¬ 
ciated. Even since this Journal was commenced, the progress 
of ideas on this subject has been striking. Ethnology, but 
newly recognized by the British Association as an inde¬ 
pendent science, occupies a considerable space in the Reports 
of the 17th meeting published last year, and the Edinburgh 
Jieuiew for October devotes a long and able article to 
the subject. In that paper our readers will find the same 
view taken of the importance of the languages of even the 
rudest tribes, and the same conclusions drawn from the nature 
of these languages, as we expressed in an early number of 
this Journal. 4 Believing therefore that the day is now past 
* Introductojy remarks to a series of contributions to the Ethnology of the 
Indian Archipelago. Jmr t Ind, Arch, vol, 1 p. 171, 
