intelligent and liberal he will prove, and the better qualified to appreciate the acts and designs of the government.

"But whilst every reasonable encouragement is given to indigenous native education, no opportunity has been omitted by the committee of improving its quality and adding to its value. In all the colleges the superintendence is European, and this circumstance is of itself an evidence and a cause of very important amelioration. In the Madressa of Calcutta and Hindu college of Benares, institutions of earlier days, European superintendence was for many years strenuously and successfully resisted. This opposition has long ceased. The consequences are a systematic course of study, diligent and regular habits, and an impartial appreciation of merits, which no institution left to native superintendence alone has ever been known to maintain.

“The plan of study adopted in the colleges is in general an improvement upon the native mode, and is intended to convey a well-founded knowledge of the languages studied, with a wider range of acquirement than is common, and to effect this in the least possible time. Agreeably to the native mode of instruction, for instance, a Hindu or Mohammedan lawyer devotes the best years of his

life to the acquirement of law alone, and is very imperfectly acquainted with the language which treats of the subject of his studies. In the Madressa and Sanskrit college the first part of the course is now calculated to form a really good Arabic and Sanskrit scholar, and a competent knowledge of law is then acquired with comparative facility and contemporaneously with other branches of Hindu or Mohammedan learning.

"Again, the improvements effected have not been limited to a reformation in the course and scope of native study, but, whenever opportunity has favoured, new and better instruction has been grafted upon the original plan. Thus in the Madressa, Euclid has been long studied and with considerable advantage: European anatomy has also been introduced. In the Sanskrit college of Calcutta, European anatomy and medicine have nearly supplanted the native systems. At Agra and at Delhi the elements of geography and astronomy and mathematics are also part of the college course. To the Madressa, the Sanskrit college of Calcutta, and the Agra college, also, English classes are attached, whilst at Delhi and Benares distinct schools have been formed for the dissemination of the English language. Without offering therefore any violence to native prejudices,

and whilst giving liberal encouragement to purely native education, the principle of connecting it with the introduction of real knowledge has never been lost sight of, and the foundation has been laid of great and beneficial change in the minds of those who by their character and profession direct and influence the intellect of Hindustan.

"In addition to the measures adopted for the diffusion of English in the provinces, and which are yet only in their infancy, the encouragement of the Vidyalaya, or Hindu college of Calcutta, has always been one of the chief objects of the committee's attention. The consequence has surpassed expectation. A command of the English language and a familiarity with its literature and science have been acquired to an extent rarely equalled by any schools in Europe. A taste for English has been widely disseminated, and independent schools, conducted by young men reared in the Vidyalaya, are springing up in every direction. The moral effect has been equally remarkable, and an impatience of the restrictions of Hinduism and a disregard of its ceremonies are openly avowed by many young men of respectable birth and talents, and entertained by many more who outwardly conform to the practices of their countrymen. Another generation will probably

witness a very material alteration in the notions and feelings of the educated classes of the Hindu community of Calcutta."

Meanwhile the progress of events was leading to the necessity of adopting a more decided course. The taste for English became more and more

widely disseminated." A loud call arose for the means of instruction in it, and the subject was pressed on the committee from various quarters. English books only were in any demand: upwards of thirty-one thousand English books were sold by the school-book society in the course of two years, while the education committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months*, to say nothing of the printing expenses. Among other signs of the times, a petition was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long and

*The committee's book depository cost 638 rupees a month, or about 765l. 12s. a year, of which 3007. a year was the salary of the European superintendent. The sum realized by the sale of the books during the three last years of the establishment was less than 1001. On the change of the committee's operations the whole of this expense was saved, some of the books being transferred to the Asiatic Society, and the rest placed under the charge of the secretary to the committee.

elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect of bettering their condition; that the indifference with which they were generally regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were, would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English, classes which had been tacked on to this and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in their object. The boys had not time to go through an English, in addition to an oriental course, and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely unacquainted with it.

Under these circumstances a difference of opinion arose in the committee. One section of it was for following out the existing system,- for continuing the Arabic translations*, the profuse

*After all that had been expended on this object, there still remained 6,500l. assigned for the completion of Arabic translations of only six books; viz. 3,2007. for five medical works, and 3,300l. for the untranslated part of Hutton's mathematics, "with something extra for diagrams." These ruinous expenses absorbed all our disposable funds, and starved the only useful branch of our operations, which was also the only one for which there was any real demand.