shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be most useful to our native subjects.

The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier-astronomy, which would move laughter in the girls at an English boarding-school-history, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long-and geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.

We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes several analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson. There are in modern times, to go no further, two memorable instances of a great impulse given to the mind of a whole society-of prejudice overthrown-of knowledge diffused-of taste purified of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous.

The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of letters among the Western nations at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost every thing, that was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted; had they neglected the language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island; had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon and romances in NormanFrench, would England have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors. In some departments-in history, for example-I am certain that it is much less so.

Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades, has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class, abounding with persons fit to serve the state in the highest functions, and in no wise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire, which in the time of our grandfathers was probably behind the Punjab, may, in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old woman's stories which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or was not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him a 'learned native' when he has mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of Western Europe civilized Russia. I can not doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar.

On the 7th of March, 1835, Lord William Bentinck decided that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India;' two of the Orientalists retired from the Committee of Public Instruction; several new members, both English and native were appointed; and Macaulay entered upon the functions of president

with an energy and assiduity which in his case were an infallible proof that his work was to his mind.

Throughout his innumerable minutes, on all subjects, from the broadest principles to the narrowest detail, he is every where free from crotchets and susceptibilities; and every where ready to humor any person who will make himself useful, and to adopt any appliance which can be turned to account.

I think it highly probable that Mr. Nicholls may be to blame, because I have seldom known a quarrel in which both parties were not to blame. But I see no evidence that he is so. Nor do I see any evidence which tends to prove that Mr. Nicholls leads the Local Committee by the nose. The Local Commit

tee appear to have acted with perfect propriety, and I can not consent to treat them in the manner recommended by Mr. Sutherland. If we appoint the colonel to be a member of their body, we shall, in effect, pass a most severe censure on their proceedings. I dislike the suggestion of putting military men on the committee as a check on the civilians. Hitherto we have never, to the best of my belief, been troubled with any such idle jealousies. I would appoint the fittest men, without caring to what branch of the service they belonged, or whether they belonged to the service at all.

Exception has been taken to an applicant for a mastership, on the ground that he had been a preacher with a strong turn for proselytizing.

Mr. seems to be so little concerned about proselytizing, that he does not even know how to spell the word; a circumstance which, if I did not suppose it to be a slip of the pen, I should think a more serious objection than the Reverend which formerly stood before his name. I am quite content with his

assurances.

In default of better, Macaulay was always for employing the tools which came to hand. A warm and consistent advocate of appointment by competitive examination, wherever a field for competition existed, he was no pedantic slave to a theory. In the dearth of schoolmasters, which is a feature in every infant educational system, be refused to reject a candidate who mistook Argos for Corinth,' and backed the claims of any aspirant of respectable character who could read, write, and work a sum.'

By all means accept the King of Oude's present, though to be sure, more detestable maps were never seen. One would think that the revenues of Oude and the treasures of Saadut Ali might have borne the expense of producing something better than a map in which Sicily is joined on to the toe of Italy, and in which so important an eastern island as Java does not appear at all.

As to the corrupting influence of the zenana, of which Mr. Trevelyan speaks, I may regret it; but I own that I can not help thinking that the dissolution of the tie between parent and child is as great a moral evil as can be found in any zenana. In whatever degree infant schools relax that tie, they do mischief. For my own part, I would rather hear a boy of three years old lisp all the bad words in the language, than that he should have no feelings of family affection --that his character should be that which must be expected in one who has had the misfortune of having a schoolmaster in place of a mother.

I do not see the reason for establishing any limit as to the age of scholars. The phenomena are exactly the same which have always been found to exist when a new mode of education has been rising into fashion. No man of fifty now learns Greek with boys; but in the sixteenth century it was not at all unusual to see old doctors of divinity attending lectures with young students.

With respect to making our college libraries circulating libraries, there is much to be said on both sides. If a proper subscription is demanded from those who have access to them, and if all that is raised by this subscription is laid out in adding to the libraries, the students will be no losers by the plan. Our libraries, the best of them at least, would be better than any which would be readily accessible at an up-country station; and I do not know why we should grudge a young officer the pleasure of reading our copy of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' or 'Marmontel's Memoirs,' if he is willing to pay a few rupees for the privilege.

These utterances of cultured wisdom, or homely mother wit, are sometimes expressed in phrases almost as amusing, though not so characteristic, as those which Frederic the Great used to scrawl on the margin of reports and dispatches for the information of his secretaries.

We are a little too indulgent to the whims of the people in our employ. We pay a large sum to send a master to a distant station. He dislikes the place. The collector is uncivil; the surgeon quarrels with him; and he must be moved. The expenses of the journey have to be defrayed. Another man is to be transferred from a place where he is comfortable and useful. Our masters run from station to station at our cost, as vaporized ladies at home run about from spa to spa. All situations have their discomforts; and there are times when we all wish that our lot had been cast in some other line of life, or in some other place. With regard to a coat of arms for Hooghly college, he says:

I do not see why the mummeries of European heraldry should be introduced into any part of our Indian system. Heraldry is not a science which has any eternal rules. It is a system of arbitrary canons, originating in pure caprice. Nothing can be more absurd and grotesque than armorial bearings, considered in themselves. Certain recollections, certain associations, make them interesting in many cases to an Englishman; but in those recollections and associations the natives of India do not participate. A lion rampant, with a folio in his paw, with a man standing on each side of him, with a telescope over his head, and with a Persian motto under his feet, must seem to them either very mysterious or very absurd.

In a discussion on the propriety of printing some books of Oriental science, Macaulay writes:

I should be sorry to say any thing disrespectful of that liberal and generous enthusiasm for Oriental literature which appears in Mr. Sutherland's minute; but I own that I can not think that we ought to be guided in the distribution of the small sum which the government has allotted for the purpose of education by considerations which seem a little romantic. That the Saracens a thousand years ago cultivated mathematical science is hardly, I think, a reason for our spending any money in translating English treatises on mathematics into Arabic. Mr. Sutherland would probably think it very strange if we were to urge the destruction of the Alexandrian Library as a reason against patronizing Arabic literature in the nineteenth century. The undertaking may be, as Mr. Sutherland conceives, a great national work. So is the breakwater at Madras. But under the orders which we have received from the government, we have just as little to do with one as with the other.

Now and then a stroke aimed at Hooghly college hits nearer home. That men of thirty should be bribed to continue their education into mature life 'seems very absurd. Moghal Jan has been paid to learn something during twelve years. We are told that he is lazy and stupid; but there are hopes that in four years more he will have completed his course of study. We have had quite enough of these lazy, stupid school-boys of thirty.'

I must frankly own that I do not like the list of books. Grammars of rhetoric and grammars of logic are among the most useless furniture of a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe.' That is worth all the grammars of rhetoric and logic in the world. We ought to procure such books as are likely to give the children a taste for the literature of the West; not books filled with idle distinctions and definitions which every man who has learned them makes haste to forget. Who ever reasoned better for having been taught the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme? Who ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis? I am not joking, but writing quite seriously, when I say that I would much rather order a hundred copies of Jack the Giant-killer' for our schools than a hundred copies of any grammar of rhetoric or logic that ever was written.

Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome are miserable performances, and I do not at all like to lay out £50 on them, even after they have received all Mr. Pinnock's improvements. I must own, too, that I think the order for globes and other instruments unnecessarily large. To lay out £324 at once on globes alone, useful as I acknowledge those articles to be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about £3,000 a year for all purposes of English education. One twelve-inch or eighteen-inch globe for each school is quite enough; and we ought not, I think, to order sixteen such globes when we are about to establish only seven schools. Useful as the telescopes, the theodolites, and the other scientific instruments mentioned in the indent undoubtedly are, we must consider that four or five such instruments run away with a year's salary of a schoolmaster, and that if we purchase them it will be necessary to defer the establishment of schools.

At one of the colleges at Calcutta the distribution of prizes was accompanied by some histrionic performances by the pupils.

I have no partiality [writes Macaulay] for such ceremonies. I think it a very questionable thing whether, even at home, public spouting and acting ought to form part of the system of a place of education. But in this country such exhibitions are peculiarly out of place. I can conceive nothing more grotesque than the scene from the Merchant of Venice,' with Portia represented by a little black boy. Then, too, the subjects of recitation were ill chosen. We are attempting to introduce a great nation to a knowledge of the richest and noblest literature in the world. The society of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are making; and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard doggerel of George Colman's, about a fat gentleman who was put to bed over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of his bed by a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccough, and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has seen at the punch-houses. Really, if we can find nothing better worth reciting than this trash, we had better give up English instruction altogether. As to the list of prize books, I am not much better satisfied.

The list [of prize books] ought in all its parts to be thoroughly recast. If Sir Benjamin Malkin will furnish the names of ten or twelve works of a scientific kind which he thinks suited for prizes, the task will not be difficult; and, with his help, I will gladly undertake it. There is a marked distinction between a prize book and a school book. A prize book ought to be a book which a boy receives with pleasure, and turns over and over, not as a task, but spontaneously. I have not forgotten my own school-boy feelings on this subject. My pleasure at obtaining a prize was greatly enhanced by the knowledge that my little library would receive a very agreeable addition. I never was better pleased than when at fourteen I was master of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' which I had long been wishing to read. If my master had given me, instead of Boswell, a critical pronouncing dictionary, or a geographical class-book, I should have been much less gratified by my success.

The idea had been started of paying authors to write books in the languages of the country. On this Macaulay remarks:

To hire four or five people to make a literature is a course which never an

swered and never will answer, in any part of the world. Languages grow. They can not be built. We are now following the slow but sure course on which alone we can depend for a supply of good books in the vernacular languages of India. We are attempting to raise up a large class of enlightened natives. I hope that, twenty years hence, there will be hundreds, nay thousands, of natives familiar with the best models of composition, and well acquainted with Western science. Among them some persons will be found who will have the inclination, and the ability, to exhibit European knowledge in the vernacular dialects. This I believe to be the only way in which we can raise up a good vernacular literature in this country.

These hopeful anticipations have been more than fulfilled. Twice twenty years have brought into existence, not hundreds or thousands, but hundreds of thousands, of natives who can appreciate European knowledge when laid before them in the English language, and can reproduce it in their own. Taking one year with another, upward of a thousand works of literature and science are published annually in Bengal alone, and at least four times that number throughout the entire continent. Our colleges have more than six thousand students on their books, and two hundred thousand boys are receiving a liberal education in schools of the higher order. For the improvement of the mass of the people, nearly seven thousand young men are in training as certificated masters. The amount allotted in the budget to the item of Public Instruction has increased more than seventy-fold since 1835; and is largely supplemented by the fees which parents of all classes willingly contribute, when once they have been taught the value of a commodity the demand for which is created by the supply. During many years past the generosity of wealthy natives has to a great extent been diverted from the idle extravagance of pageants and festivals, to promote the intellectual advancement of their fellow-countrymen. On several different occasions, at a single stroke of the pen, our Indian universities have been endowed with twice, three times, four times the amount of the slender sum which Macaulay had at his command. But none the less was he the master-engineer, whose skill and foresight determined the direction of the channels along which this stream of public and private munificence was to flow for the regeneration of our Eastern empire.

It may add something to the merit of Macaulay's labors in the cause of education that those labors were voluntary and unpaid; and voluntary and unpaid likewise was another service which he rendered to India, not less durable than the first, and hardly less importanta penal code framed on two great principles-the principle of suppressing crime with the smallest possible amount of suffering, and the principle of ascertaining truth at the smallest possible cost of time and money.