It is refreshing to turn from such unsatisfying systems -however interspersed with sublime sentiments and lofty morality-to the living, energizing Christianity of European nations, however fallen from its true standard, however disgraced by the inconsistencies of its nominal adherents.

One more observation before I conclude.

Brahmanism is not a missionary religion, and from its very nature never has been nor can be. Trades may be associated in castes, and such associations are even now admitted into the modern caste-system of Hinduism; but trade combinations are no part of its true creed. Brahmanism cannot make a Brahman, even if it would; and so far from distributing in other countries the texts or translations of its own sacred Vedas on which its creed rests, prohibits the general reading and repeating of them by its own people, indiscriminately. As to printing and editing these books, even for philological purposes, orthodox Brahmans regard them as too sacred to be defiled by printers' ink. Had it not been for the labours of Christian scholars, their contents would have remained for ever a 'terra incognita' to the majority of the Hindus themselves. Brāhmanism, therefore, must die out. In point of fact, false ideas on the most ordinary scientific subjects are so mixed up with its doctrines that the commonest education-the simplest lessons in geography-without the aid of Christianity, must inevitably in the end sap its foundations.

Buddhism, on the contrary, when it first arose in India, was pre-eminently a proselyting system. Hence its rapid progress. Hence it spread as no other false system has ever spread before or since. But its missionary zeal has now departed, its philosophy has lapsed into superstition, and of real religion it has none, nor ever claimed to have. Hence its fate in India, and hence the fate that awaits it everywhere. Buddhism does not seem to have been driven forcibly out of India; it simply pined away and died out. It could not maintain its hold upon the Hindus, who are essentially a religious people, and must have a religion of

some kind. Take away Brahmanism, and they cannot again become Buddhists. They must become Christians, Muslims, or Theists.

Young Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, educated and Europeanized without being Christianized, may glory in Positivism; but these are not the real population of India. The masses will never be satisfied with mere European knowledge, or with systems of philosophy and oppositions of science falsely so called. Christianity has many more points of contact with their ancient faith than Islām has, and when the walls of the mighty fortress of Brāhmanism are encircled, undermined, and finally stormed by the soldiers of the Cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete.

Here we

And how does the case stand with Islām? have a system which is still actively proselyting, and therefore still spreading. Indeed, if Christians do not collect and concentrate their energies so as to stem the tide of its progress in Africa, the advancing wave of the Muslim faith-a faith attractive to uncultured minds from its simplicity-will rapidly flood that whole continent.

But of no other religion can it be affirmed so emphatically as of Christianity that the missionary spirit is of its innermost essence; for Christ, Who is the Life and Soul of Christianity, was Himself a missionary-the first and greatest of all missionaries. And if He had not ordained the Apostles to be His missionary successors, and if they had not ordained other missionaries, there would be no Christianity among us here, no Christianity anywhere in the world.

PROGRESS OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE.1

PART I.

MACAULAY, in his essay on Lord Clive, asserts that every English schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa,' but doubts whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindu or a Musalman.' Macaulay's review was written nearly forty

years ago.

6

Whether the Tom Browns and Julian Holmes of the present day are equally well posted up' in Mexican history, and whether, when turned out into the world as educated men, they are equally ignorant of Indian history, admits of question. Probably the main facts of the material development of British India are better known than they were when Macaulay wrote his essays in the Edinburgh. Yet at a time when great statesmen speak of our Eastern Empire as founded on criminal ambition,' and when other politicians accuse Russia of a desire to extend her territorial possessions in a manner equally unscrupulous, it may not be unprofitable to recall attention to the irresistible current of circumstances which has landed us in our present position

This and the following Essay appeared first in the Contemporary Review.

in India, and made British Indian interests and British Indian duties important elements of the momentous Eastern problem which the recent war has not yet finally solved.

The history of European enterprise in the East begins with the maritime supremacy of the Portuguese. The journeys of the Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, in Central and Eastern Asia, between 1291 and the close of the thirteenth century, and the narrative of his visit to the coast of India, excited much interest in Europe, and stimulated travellers and navigators to feel their way eastward.

Our fellow-countryman, Sir John Mandeville, left England in 1327, and, after wandering for thirty-three years through Europe and Asia, returned home and wrote his well-known narrative, which was printed in 1499. The marvels of Inde' which he described probably contributed to stimulate the prosecution of maritime discovery, though it is doubtful whether he was ever in India at all. Nicolo Conti, a noble Venetian, is said to have travelled in India between 1419 and 1444; Athanasius Nikitin, a Russian, between 1468 and 1474; Hieronimo di Santo Stefano, a Genoese, between 1494 and 1499; Ludovico di Varthema between 1503 and 15081. The Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew Diaz, succeeded in rounding the southern promontory of Africa, called by him the Cape of Storms, and was the first real pioneer of the ocean route to India, about the year 1487. Ten years later his countyman, Vasco da Gama-whose tomb or cenotaph I saw in a large Protestant church at Cochin-sailed round the Cape and reached Calicut on the 11th May, 1498. The Portuguese found India torn asunder by internal dissensions, and were the first to take advantage of its condition of chronic disunion and so gain a footing on the western coast. But the Portuguese were not mere traders as we originally were-mere commercial speculators

1 Dr. George Birdwood is my authority here. I had not had the advantage of reading his valuable Report on the Miscellaneous Old Records of the India Office when I wrote this and the succeeding paper for the Contemporary Review.

who went to India to make money, and to return home with it when made. They aimed from the first at settling in the country, at establishing themselves there. as a conquering nation, and achieving political dominion.

Their first Indian viceroy was Almeyda. The second, Albuquerque, landed in 1508, took Goa from the kingdom of Bījāpur, and made it the capital of the Portuguese possessions. The Portuguese, however, never possessed any considerable territory in India beyond the limits of their factories. Their progress was too rapid and their career too adventuresome to be lasting. In less than a century their power began to decline, and by 1640 nearly all their ports and forts were wrested from them. Bassein was taken from them by the Marathas in 1765, and only Goa, Diū, and Daman, on the western coast, now remain. the Portuguese have left their mark on India-a more abiding mark, in the opinion of some persons, than the impression we should leave if our rule were to cease to

morrow.

Yet

The Dutch succeeded the Portuguese in the maritime supremacy of the Eastern seas. Their chief settlement was in Bengal, at Chinsurah, near Hugli, which remained in their hands till 1824, when it was ceded to the English in exchange for our possessions in Sumatra. All their other settlements have gradually been made over to us.

The Danes never possessed more than two settlements in India-to wit, Tranquebar and Serampur (Sri-ramapur), on the Hūgli, which our Government bought in 1845.

The English soon became rivals of the Dutch. The first Englishman known to have reached India via the Cape of Good Hope was a man named Thomas Stevens, or Stephens (also called Stephen de Buston, or Bubston, in Dodd's Church History, ii. 133). He belonged to the diocese of Salisbury, and, having given proof of ability, was sent as a student to Rome, where he became a Jesuit. It is stated that he was once a member of New College, Oxford, but no