at they tend to the cultivation of
human sympathies, it has seemed to me that I might draw a moral lesson
even from the recollection of my "Ride to Magnesia."

JAVA.[18]

The wealthy owner of a vast estate takes little heed of the peasant
gardens fringing its circumference. Absorbed in the consideration of his
forest glades and fertile corn-fields, his rich pastures and countless
kine, he forgets the existence of the paddocks and cabbage-plots that
nestle in the patronising shadow of his park paling. Occasionally he may
vouchsafe a friendly glance to the trim borders of the one, or the
solitary milch cow grazing in the other: he must be a very Ahab to view
them with a covetous eye; for the most part he thinks not of them. In
the broad domains that call him master, he finds ample employment for
his energies, abundant subject of contemplation. Thus it is with
Englishmen and colonies. Holding, in right and virtue of their
adventurous spirit and peculiar genius for colonisation, immense
territories in every quarter of the globe--territories linked by a chain
of smaller possessions and fortified posts encircling the world--they
slightly concern themselves about the scanty nooks of Asia, America, and
Africa, over which wave the banners of their European rivals and allies.
They visit them little--write about them less. In some cases this
indifference has been compulsory. When the second title of the Sovereign
of Spain and the Indies was something more than an empty sound, and half
America crouched beneath the Spanish yoke, every discouragement was
shown to travellers in those distant regions; lest some French democrat
or English Protestant should disseminate the tenets of Jacobinism and
heresy, and awaken the oppressed multitude to a sense of their wrongs.
Thus was it with Mexico, of whose condition, until she rebelled against
the mother country, scarce any thing was known save what could be
gathered from the lying writings of Spanish monks. Again, remote
position and pestilential climate have daunted curiosity and repelled
research. To the Dutch possessions in the island of Java this especially
applies. Seized by the English in 1811--to prevent their falling into
the hands of the French--upon their restoration to Holland at the peace,
their ex-governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, wrote his voluminous and
erudite "History of Java." Three years later, further accounts were
given of the island in Crawford's "History of the I