are given to the natives. This change in the political state of the country, and the consequent proceedings of the governing power they feel very much, both in its humiliating influence upon their character and its impoverishing effect upon their circumstances; and many of them endeavor to acquire a knowledge of the English language in the hope that it will in some way be a qualification for business, or a recommendation for employment.

The educational institutions in which the English language is taught in India are of three kinds.

1. Private schools, or those which are supported by tuition. There have been several such in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. They have been supported chiefly by the higher classes of the native population, and many persons have been educated in them.

2. Schools connected with missionary and other benevolent societies. At most of the large missionary stations are schools of this character. Some of these have a large number of scholars, and good means of instruction. The primary object of such schools is moral and Scriptural education, with a view to prepare such persons, when educated, to become Christian teachers, catechists, and preachers among their countrymen. But these schools are generally open for all classes of people on such terms as induce Hindus and Mohammedans, as well as professed Christians, to become connected with them. Many who were Hindus and Mohammedans when they first entered these schools, became convinced, in the course of their education, of the truth of the Christian religion, publicly professed their faith in it, and are now in the employment of Missionary Societies, preaching the Gospel to their own people. Some of these are well educated, every way respectable in talents and character, and very useful in the work of promoting Christianity in India.

3. Schools supported by the government. The government, in its various departments, has occasion to employ a great number of people, and it is necessary, in order to fill particular situations and for the performance of some peculiar kinds of service, that a part of those to be employed should understand the English language. For this purpose the government appropriates very considerable sums from the revenues of the country to education, and the high schools contain means and facilities for learning English. The course of study in the English department of these schools is sufficient for acquiring a good knowledge of the language, and obtaining a very considerable acquaintance with its science and literature. Many who commence the study of English, finding it more difficult of acquisition than they expected, or not seeing so much prospect of employment as they had hoped for at first, become discouraged and abandon it. Many also acquire just knowledge enough of the language to converse in slow, familiar, and set phraseology, but not enough to use it easily and fluently, nor to understand it when so used by others, nor to read newspapers and common books with ease and intelligence. Such persons use the language no more than is necessary. They seldom attempt to read an English book, or to improve their knowledge of the language after leaving school. Indeed, many of them, when they succeed in obtaining employment, regard their object in acquiring the language as accomplished, and so retain only what they have occasion to

use as copyists, accountants, etc. But in these schools, some, though but a small part of those who commence the study of the language, acquire a correct use of it, become able to converse in it with ease and propriety, and obtain considerable knowledge of English science and literature. Yet even this class never, so far as I have known, use the English language in their families, and very seldom in any social intercourse or transactions of business, unless with Europeans. The vernacular languages of India contain but little science or literature of any value, and something more than these languages contain is required for mental discipline and practical knowledge, in the course of education. The Sanscrit is closely connected with the languages now used in the country and has much ancient literature. But however useful the study of it may be for discipline of mind, and with reference to philology, ethnography, and other objects of antiquarian research, it contains but little practical science, or authentic history, or correct religious doctrine, and is nowhere now a vernacular language. In these circumstances, when education is to be extended beyond any vernacular language, the English—the language of the governing power of the country, with all its science and literature, and especially its numerous and excellent works on moral and religious subjects—has the first claims to attention. In America and Europe the professions of theology, law, and medicine, furnish the great field of employment for the educated classes. These professions are equally open to all, and they require a large part-generally a majorityof those who obtain a collegiate or liberal education, to fill them. But these professions scarcely yet exist among the native population of India. There, educated men, who must engage in some business for support (and there are very few who are not in this state), generally look to the government for service, or to teaching, as their employment. In the altered political state and relations of the country-all the more honorable and lucrative situations being filled by Europeans the higher classes of the native population find it exceedingly difficult to obtain any suitable occupation and means of respectable support, and so they naturally turn their thoughts to the study of the English language, in the hope that it will prove a qualification for business, or a recommendation for employment. This desire to learn English has been increasing for some years past, and probably the number now engaged in acquiring it, is three times as large as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. But, even at the present time, many who become thus educated, find it very difficult, and some find it impossible, to obtain such employment as they expected. The supply of such educated talent is increasing faster than the demand, and it will not be many years before the principal motives in which this strong desire for English education had its origin, will cease, or at least will exert less influence than they have had for some years past.

From the view which has been taken of the state of the English language in India, or southern Asia, it appears: That England has not founded, and is not likely to found, any colonies in any of those countries, and that there is no native community, nor any class of people, except the Indo-Britons, who use English as their vernacular language. That the English people who go to India, expect to reside there only for a limited time, and then to go to some more con

genial climate. That while in India they generally learn enough of the native languages for social and official intercourse with the native population, and that the business of the government is chiefly transacted in the languages of the country. It also appears: That the English language is used in the Supreme Courts of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay; and that in some of the government offices and mercantile houses, in the same cities, many natives more or less educated in the English language find employment. That many among the native population have a strong desire to learn English, and are now engaged in the study of it, in private, missionary, and government schools and colleges.— That, of those who begin this study, many do not acquire sufficient knowledge for any practical purpose, and only a small part of them learn it thoroughly.— That when English education among the native population shall exceed the demand for it as a qualification for employment, then one of the principal motives for acquiring it will cease, and the desire now so strong will exert much less influence. - That the education of the great body of the people will always be in their respective vernacular languages, and that those languages will be improved and enriched by works of science and literature original and translated, in which encouraging progress has been made. That the English language, including its science and literature, will generally be a branch of education in the high schools and colleges; and all who aspire to a liberal education, will be expected to have some knowledge of it. But that the English is not likely in any part of India or southern Asia to supersede the native languages, nor to become vernacular in any large community.

APPENDIX B. p. 433.

The following extract from an able article on Sanscrit literature in the Calcutta Review, confirms what has been said of its character, and may be interesting to some who are not acquainted with the language.

"1. The Sanscrit language contains nothing of genuine history, no national annals, no biography of eminent patriots, statesmen, warriors, philosophers, poets, or others, who have figured on the theatre of Indian life, public or private. Not a single page of pure historical matter unmixed with monstrous and absurd fable is extant, or probably was ever written in it. It supplies us with no assistance whatever in rescuing from eternal oblivion the worthies or the curses of past ages. It affords no certain clue to the discovery of even the origin of the races who first spoke or adopted it. Fabulous and extravagant legends are all, that in this class, it furnishes. European ingenuity, penetration, and perseverance may indeed by dint of hard and continued labor elicit a few isolated facts here and there, and comparison of dates and circumstances, rejecting the crudities and absurdities that have gathered round them, bring them to bear upon some point of ancient story, yet in the depths of obscurity. But nothing is certain; all is only a happy guess or probable inference at best. The very principle of historic narration appears either never to have entered into the minds of

the early writers in this language, or else a base and selfish policy led them to falsify and obscure and mysticize all events in order to conceal their own usurpations, violence, and injustice.

2. Sanscrit literature presents us with nothing of geographical or statistical science. The true theory of the earth is not to be traced in it. Seas of milk, and curds, and spirit, and butter, and sugar-cane juice, with mountains 256,000 miles high bearing trees 8,000, or 9,000 miles tall; seas and continents ranged in succession round a central nucleus or navel, like the peels of an onion and other similar extravagancies and fooleries, form the staple of Sanscrit lore on those heads.

3. Cosmogony and geological science are precisely in the same condition of drivelling and hopeless allegory, out of which nothing can be drawn useful to any purpose under heaven.

4. Of natural history, the philosophy of nature and mechanical science (astronomy and geometry partially excepted), the Sanscrit exhibits nothing whatever; all is either impossible fable, or when natural and true, trivial, unscientific, and unarranged.

5. Hindu medical science is at zero. Empiricism rules the day. Anatomy is unknown. Pharmacy is little more than a knowledge of simples, united with absurd quackery.

6. The music of the Hindus is in an extremely backward state. A fantastic association with an ideal superstition has served with other causes to hinder its advancement as a science. As an art too, Hindu music is singularly rude; it knows nothing of harmony or counterpart. The Sanscrit musical shastras are numerous but of small value.

7. The same is the case with the other fine arts, as painting, architecture, and statuary. Books upon them are few and unimportant in character.

8. On the mechanical arts or handicrafts there are no express treatises; on some of them a few precepts of ordinary practice occur, as also on agriculture, etc., in general writings. Nothing in short can well be conceived poorer than Sanscrit literature in all the most important scientific or practical departments of knowledge. There is positively nothing to serve any other purpose of the European student but a not unnatural curiosity.

9. In every branch of experimental science or natural philosophy, Sanscrit is wholly wanting. The Hindu philosophers were rather poets than strict investigators of the system of things. They thought much and deeply but were ever fonder of chasing the phantoms of a speculative fancy, than of following the indications of nature. They loved more to indulge in abstraction and ingenious theories than to pursue experimental inquiries by a course of rigid induction. Their philosophy is therefore the philosophy of fancy, not of reality. It may be brilliant, captivating, and acute, ingenious and imposing; but it is after all, empty, impracticable, and useless; nay more, it is bewildering and injurious; it misleads and effeminates; it lowers the tone of the mind; it destroys the moral sense; it lays open to a thousand deceptions and aberrations, and it creates a taste which is incapable of relishing reality or moral truth.

10. In regard to mental and physical science, Sanscrit is nearly in the same

predicament. Plenty of mental theory indeed there is, but nothing of sound and vigorous reasoning; nothing of rigid analysis or accurate classification of mental phenomena. All is dreamy and visionary, fanciful and empirical assertion. The relation between cause and effect is utterly overlooked. The impossible and the absurd are treated with the gravity of serious philosophy and a positiveness only becoming those who deal in matters of fact.

11. The same may also be said of pneumatology, or the science of God. The psychology of man was never investigated by those who wrote in Sanscrit. The true principle of reasoning a posteriori, or from ascertained facts and observed phenomena alone, was never understood or adopted by them. They are ever, afloat on a wide expanse of theory without chart, compass, or rudder; nay, without even a polestar to aid their navigation. Of matter and spirit, of mind and body, substance and form, nature and accident, indeed much, very much has been written, but to vastly little purpose notwithstanding. Six philosophical schools have put forth as many systems of things more or less symbolizing with the ancient systems of Greece and Rome, only with far less of either accuracy of investigation or vigor of conception. The Hindu mind has ever delighted in day-dreams and reveries; non-realities have had far more attractions for it than actualities; it has pleased and lost itself in a luxurious indulgence of an all-excursive fancy, that has soared far above all the coarse materialities of the actual world. In the history of no people has the scriptural allegation been more exactly verified than in that of the Hindus, that "man by wisdom knew not God." Not only are they in truth ignorant of God as to any really useful and practical purpose of philosophy, religion, or morals, but their so-called wisdom and beautiful science has itself been the cause of the density and perpetuation of that ignorance. They have reasoned or rather theorized, dreamt and disputed, talked and written of God and nature, matter and spirit, fate and will, action and passion, good and evil, till in the multitude of words they have wholly lost sight of the objects of inquiry. A blind fatality, a visionary system of unrealities, a thoughtless, objectless, passionless, soulless Deity, without qualification, without active intelligence or creative energy; an atheistical theology that identifies matter and spirit, God and nature, the human soul and the divine; a suicidal philosophy that destroys itself, a denial of the essential differences of things, an assertion of the intrinsic indifference of all acts and feelings which makes the character of an action depend upon motive of the performance, and the absolute dependence of every agent on a superior powerthese and similar have been the conclusions arrived at by Hindu speculation. The Vedas themselves which are asserted to have proceeded immediately from the mouth of God, are a strange and heterogeneous assemblage of absurd physics and dreamy metaphysics, of fanciful philosophy and dreary superstition, of high-sounding invocations and petty prayers, of incantations for the injury or destruction of enemies, or the averting of personal evils, of recipes for sacrifices and the like. In them the elements are deified at the same time that the doctrine of the universal soul is asserted. These boasted Shastras are stuffed in fact with all manner of puerilities and inconsistencies, and are evidently a very crude digest as it were, of the odds and ends of mutually opposing theories, of airy visions and gross idol