forcibly reminded of free and jovial, if rude, manners of the lower rural classes, of the West. Freed from the repellant prejudices and artificial trappings of Hindu and Mahomedan civilization we see in the man of the Archipelago more that is akin than the reverse to unpolished man of Europe.
When we turn to the present political condition of the Archipelago, we are struck by the contrast which it presents to that which characterised it, three or four centuries ago. The mass of the people, it is true, in all their private relations, remain in nearly the same state in which they were found by the earliest European voyagers, and which they had existed for many centuries previously. But; as nations, they have withered in the presence of the uncongenial, greedy and relentless spirit of European policy, They have been subdued by the hard and determined will of Europeans, who, in general, have pursued the purposes for which they have come into the Archipelago without giving any sympathy to the inhabitants. The nomadic spirit, never extinguished during all the changes which they underwent, had made them adventurous and warlike when they rose into nations, But now, long overawed and restrained by the power of Europeans, the national habits of action have, in most parts of the Archipelago, been lost, or are only faintly maintained in the piratical expeditions of some. Their pride has fallen. Their living literature is gone with the power, the wars, and the glory, which inspired it The day has departed when Singapore could be invaded by Javanese,—when Johore could extend its dominion to Borneo on the one side, and Sumatra on the other,—when the fleets of Acheen and Malacca could encounter each other in the Straits to dispute the dominion of the Eastern Seas,—when the warrants of the Sultan of Menangkabaú were as potent over the Malayan nations as the bulls of Rome ever were over those of Christendom,—when a champion of Malacca could make his name be known all over the Archipelago,—and when the kings of the Peninsula sent their sons, escorted by celebrated warriors, to demand the daughter of the emperors of Majapahit in marriage. The Malayan princes of the present day, retaining all the feudal attachment and homage of their subjects, and finding no more honorable vent for the assertion of their freedom from restraint and the gratification of their self-will, have almost every where sunk into indolent debauchees and
