same roof as the new Sanskrit college, at which thirty pupils were hired at 8 rupees each, and seventy at 5 rupees, or 590 rupees a month in all.

The Hindu college was founded by the voluntary contributions of the natives themselves as early as 1816. In 1831 the committee reported, that “a taste for English had been widely disseminated, and independent schools conducted by young men reared in the Vidyalaya (the Hindu college) are springing up in every direction."* This spirit, gathering strength from time and from many favourable circumstances, had gained a great height in 1835; several rich natives had established English schools at their own expense; associations had been formed for the same purpose at different places in the interior, similar to the one to which the Hindu college owed its origin. The young men who had finished their education propagated a taste for our literature, ana, partly as teachers of benevolent or proprietary schools, partly as tutors in private families, aided all classes in its acquirement. The tide had set in strongly in favour of English education, and when the committee declared itself on the same side, the public support they

The entire extract will be found at page 8.

received rather went beyond, than fell short of what was required. More applications were received for the establishment of schools than could be complied with; there were more candidates for admission to many of those which were established than could be accommodated. On the opening of the Hoogly college, in August 1836, students of English flocked to it in such numbers as to render the organization and classification of them a matter of difficulty. Twelve hundred names were entered on the books of this department of the college within three days, and at the end of the year there were upwards of one thousand in regular attendance. The Arabic and Persian classes of the institution at the same time mustered less than two hundred. There appears to be no limit to the number of scholars, except that of the number of teachers whom the committee is able to provide. Notwithstanding the extraordinary concourse of English students at Hoogly, the demand was so little exhausted, that when an auxiliary school was lately opened within two miles of the college, the English department of it was instantly filled, and numerous applicants were sent away unsatisfied. In the same way, when additional means of instruction were provided at Dacca, the number of pupils rose at once from

150 to upwards of 300, and more teachers were still called for. The same thing also took place at Agra. These are not symptoms of a forced and premature effort, which, as the committee of 1824 justly observed, would have recoiled upon ourselves, and have retarded our ultimate

success.

To sum up what has been said: the Hindu system of learning contains so much truth as to have raised the nation to its present point of civilization, and to have kept it there for ages without retrogading, and so much error as to have prevented it from making any sensible advance during the same long period. Under this system, history is made up of fables, in which the learned in vain endeavour to trace the thread of authentic narrative; its medicine is quackery; its geography and astronomy are monstrous absurdity; its law is composed of loose contradictory maxims, and barbarous and ridiculous penal provisions; its religion is idolatry; its morality is such as might be expected from the example of the gods and the precepts of the religion. Suttee, Thuggee, human sacrifices, Ghaut murder, religious suicides, and other such excrescences of Hinduism, are either expressly enjoined by it, or are directly deduced from the principles inculcated by

it. This whole system of sacred and profane learning is knitted and bound together by the sanction of religion; every part of it is an article of faith, and its science is as unchangeable as its divinity. Learning is confined by it to the Brahmins, the high priests of the system, by whom and for whom it was devised. All the other classes are condemned to perpetual ignorance and dependence; their appropriate occupations are assigned by the laws of caste, and limits are fixed, beyond which no personal merit or personal good fortune can raise them. The peculiar wonder of the Hindu system is, not that it contains so much or so little true knowledge, but that it has been so skilfully contrived for arresting the progress of the human mind, as to exhibit it at the end of two thousand years fixed at nearly the precise point at which it was first moulded. The Mohammedan system of learning is many degrees better, and "resembles that which existed among the nations of Europe before the invention of printing;" so far does even this fall short of the

*These are the words in which Mr. Adam sums up his description of Mohammedan learning in India; and the real state of the case could not be more accurately described. Gibbon's sketch of Moslem learning will be found in the 52d chapter of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, under the heads, "Their real progress in the sciences," and "Want of erudition, taste, and freedom." But

knowledge with which Europe is now blessed. These are the systems under the influence of which the people of India have become what they are. They have been weighed in the balance, and have been found wanting. To perpetuate them, is to perpetuate the degradation and misery of the people. Our duty is not to teach, but to unteach them, not to rivet the shackles which have for ages bound down the minds of our subjects, but to allow them to drop off by the lapse of time and the progress of events.

If we turn from Sanskrit and Arabic learning, and the state of society which has been formed by it, to western learning, and the improved and still rapidly improving condition of the western nations, what a different spectacle presents itself! Through the medium of England, India has been brought into the most intimate connection with this fa

however defective Arabian learning may appear when viewed by the light of modern science, it would be doing great injustice to the Augustan age of the caliphs at Bagdad to compare it with the present æra of Mohammedan literature in India. The Indian Mohammedans are only bad imitators of an erroneous system. Arabic is studied at Calcutta as a difficult foreign language; original genius and research have long since died out, if they ever had any existence, among this class of literary people in India; and the astronomy of Ptolemy and the medicine of Galen are languidly transmitted by the dogmatic teachers of one generation to the patient disciples of the next.