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 \ ELPHINSTONE COLLEGE IJNION 
 I LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 1891-92. 
 
 COMPILED BY OitDER OF THE OOiVUMiiEE 
 
 . , . AYMASTISR li.A. 
 
 Ho n orunj Spcrctartj , 
 
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 THE PROt'RIETOR, FORT PHrNTING PRESS. 
 
 1893, 
 
 Price 1 Rupee, 
 
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ELPHINSTONE COLLEGE UNION 
 LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 1891-92. 
 
 COMPILED BY ORDER OF THE OOMIVEITTEB 
 
 BY 
 
 rastaM b. paymaster B.A. 
 
 Honorary Secretwry^ 
 
 t^IJBtilSllElD ^Y 
 
 THE) PROPRIETOR, FORT PRINTINa PR^Sa 
 
 1893. 
 
 Prioe 1 Rupee* 
 
 All BtghU Reserved, 
 
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 m 
 
 %ICNRY MORSE STEFHEtfB 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Th e nine papers in this volume were read at meetings of the 
 Elphinstone College Union and are now printed by the kind 
 permission of the several authors. 
 
 Within the period between the dates of the first and last paper 
 three other addresses were given at meetings of the Union. One of 
 these has been published as a separate pamphlet by the author* 
 Dr. Kirtikar. Two were delivered from notes and as they were not 
 fully reported at the time cannot now be reproduced. 
 
 It was thought that Elphinstone College would be hardly 
 worthy of its name and of the great city where it has long held 
 a high and honourable place if it did not, in some way, extend its 
 useful influence as an intellectual centre and give opportunities 
 for literary culture beyond the limits of lectures directly designed 
 to prepare students for University Examinations* 
 
 With this view the Union was formed. 
 
 The list of lecturers who have been good enough to give their 
 services is evidence that the Union has not failed to secure the 
 assistance of varied and able co-operators. H. E. Lord Harris by 
 consenting to accept the office of Patron has honoured the Union by 
 a proof of his sympathy which is very highly appreciated. 
 
 The Union is but in early youth as yet but already a youth of 
 promise and capable of development. 
 
 E. G. OXENHAM, 
 
 t^oona^ June 27th 1893. President, 
 
 E. C. Union. 
 
 512400 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 .aaulOt 
 
 "Collegre Boys.— Dk. EM VIA B. RYDER, M. D. ... ... ... 1 
 
 " The Educational Syndicate of Burmah as a Substitute for a 
 
 University."— THE HON. Mr, JUSTICE JARDINE. ... 14 
 
 "Vernacular Literature."— THE LATE Mr. W,E. HART, B.A. ... 29 
 
 *' Heredity and the regeneration of India."-PROF. M. MACMILLAN. 49 
 
 " Politics, Ancient and Modern."— PRINCIPAL SBLBY 63 
 
 "MarathiPoetry."— Mr.H. A, ACWORTH 89 
 
 ••The Influence of Nature on Literature and Politics."— 
 
 Mk. W. LEE-WARNER. 105 
 
 ••Examinations and how to deal with them."— THE LORD 
 
 BISHOP OF BOMBAY ... 124 
 
 ♦•Migration and the Growth of Cities." -Mr. S. TOMLINSON. ... LSO 
 
COLLEGE BOYS.^ 
 
 LECTURER; Dr. (Miss) EMMA BRAINERD RYDER, m.d. 
 
 Late President, Bombay Sorosis Club. 
 
 Elphinstoniaus, 
 
 Ever since the day that my brother proudly entered College 
 College-boys have been my delight. The jolly, laughing, rollicking, 
 fun-loving College-boy is to me a source of pleasing study. 
 
 The 600 eager faces that looked toward the platform, at the 
 Framjee Cowasjee Institute, the night of Mr. Caine's lecture to 
 College students, the hearty cheer that burst forth exactly at the 
 right time all found a response in my own heart. If I was to ask 
 you young gentlemen What is the freest gift of man to man, 
 I think you would agree with me in saying it is advice. No matter 
 how poor or ignorant men may be, they always have a supply of 
 advice, which they deal out with a lavish hand. As you College 
 students in your turn must give out advice, it has seemed the 
 proper thing to donate a little to the stock that you will need to 
 start out in the world with and thus I have thought best to give you 
 a little advice to-night 
 
 I love an enthusiastic audience, and the enthusiastic in- 
 dividual. It is faith in something and enthusiasm for good things 
 that make life worth living. The matter-of-fact person, who is tired 
 of the world and every thing in it, and who is contented with 
 a humdrum kind of a monotonous existence, I have but little 
 patience with. Therefore I am glad to have this opportunity to 
 meet you ; for I am sure wo can be friends. 
 
 Ever since the first college was organized college-students 
 have been told they were the " hope of the land." I have heard 
 
 * Delivered on Monday the 6th April 1891, Mr. Pherozeshaw M. 
 Melita M.A., Barrister-at-Law ; Vice-President of the Union, in the chair. 
 
it repeoted to students at least twenty times since I came to make 
 my borne in your city, and it is true. The young men I see before 
 me can do more for this country than their fathers or than did 
 their grandfathers. But always remember, our duties and our respon- 
 sibilities increase with our abilities, with our advantages. To 
 whom much has been given, from them much will be required. I do 
 not know as much of College boys of India as I do of those in the 
 United States, Germany and Fiance. There is an old proverb, 
 however, which reads something like this " Boys will be boys the 
 world around." I believe that is a true proverb, just as true as if 
 it had been found in a sacred book. 
 
 I have ever found that when boys were treated fairly loellj 
 they behaved on the whole reasonably well. In olden times it was 
 the custom to have column after column of rules in the entrance 
 hall at every College. The boys were not allowed to do this nor to do 
 that. There were rules about their going to bed, about their getting 
 up, about eating, and bathing, and walking, going to prayers 
 and to Church, and talking to girls. In fact there was a rule about 
 everything. I am happy to say now, all this is done away with 
 in the United States and the college-boy is expected to be a gentle- 
 man in every respect. He is put on his honor to govern himself, 
 £0 as to be a credit to the college to which he belongs and in 999 
 cases out of a thousand he behaves well. The one bad boy is 
 dismissed from college, which is a disgrace he feels most keenly. 
 
 The plan of self-government has been found to develope 
 character and principle, and it relieves the professors of the dis- 
 agreeable duty of watching and spying around after the boys. Pro- 
 fessors of high standing did not care to do the duty of detectives 
 coming upon the students at unexpected moments — it did not 
 tend to bring about a good feeling between the professors and 
 students. All this has ceased to be, and our young men look upon 
 their professors as their friends and love and respect them. 
 
 To-day our college boys make rules of thoir own and some of 
 them are very strange, I remember a few only. 
 
 First year students are not allowed certain privileges. Fresh- 
 men, as they are called, cannot wear a moustache, but as very few 
 have one they can wear, this rule is seldom transgressed. It is 
 
however a sorry day for a freshman if he appears at College with 
 a visible moustache, and many are the tricks and impositions that are 
 resorted to, to remind him that he has gone beyond College pro- 
 priety. If he persists in appearing with his moustache his hands are 
 bound and he is walked off to the barber's shop (students go to the 
 barbers there) and forcibly made to submit to having his face 
 cleanly shaved. 
 
 Second year students are called ** Sophmores " and to them 
 it is allowed to wear the moustache and to carry a cane, an honor 
 second only to wearing a sword as the students do in Germany. 
 
 Third year students are called " Juniors " and they aro 
 allowed to have the moustache, and the cane, and to wear a certain 
 kind of dignified hat, which changes with the prevailing fashion. 
 
 Fourth year students or Seniors are allowed the moustache, the 
 cane, gloves, and the dress hat of the English and American man, 
 which is, I think, without exception, the ugliest hat that ever was 
 made, being neither beautiful nor useful. 
 
 In Germany the College-boys are much more rough. They 
 are seldom seen without the sword hanging at their side. In 
 many of the Universities they pride themselves on being the terror 
 of the citizens— especially of the women and young ladies. Their 
 standard of morality is low. To fight duels, to gash and disfigure 
 their faces, is considered the mark of the hero, and the warrior. 
 The greater the coward the more will he disfigure his face, neck 
 and hands, that he may appear to be a veteran soldier covered 
 with the scars of the battle-field. Within the last few years this 
 practice is not quite so popular, for the would-be hero often found 
 himself not the object of admiration, but of jest and ridicule. 
 
 The French students are always gentlemanly, are always 
 well-dressed, and never forget to be polite though it is possible the 
 German may stand equally high at examination time. 
 
 College boys at home have glees and songs that they sing, on 
 the " campus " in the moonlight, under the great old trees, and 
 it is one of the treats of evening — time to go to hear the college- 
 boys sing. I am sorry that as a nation and as a class you do not love 
 
music -for I think music helps us on in the world, it cheers us 
 up n bit when the heart is heavy, and then too it brings melody 
 and harmony down into our hearts. The Poet says : — 
 
 *' God sent His singers upon earth 
 With songs of sadness and of mirth. 
 That they might touch the hearts of men 
 And bring them back to heaven again." 
 
 Music helps us all along the journey of life. It soothes and 
 quiets the little ones, it helps the tired brain-weary student, and 
 Oh, it is such a joy in the home, when father and mother and the 
 boys and girls all sing together at the twilight hour ! In our 
 hours of sadness and mourning the holy pure thoughts of the 
 poet, sung to suitable music, lift the soul from earthly troubles 
 up to God and Love and Peace. My advice to you would be 
 — learn to sing. It expands the narrow chest, strengthens the vocal 
 chords and makes you stronger, stouter men. Oliver Wendall Hol- 
 mes says : — " Alas ! for those who never sing, and die with all 
 their music in them " 
 
 ** College students, the hope of the land.'* Yea verily. A 
 professor said, '* We talk that way to the students but when tJiey 
 repeat it, it is most absurd." I do not think it is absurd at all- Are 
 you then not to believe what your professors tell you ? Believe 
 them, and believe too that you are the hope of the country, and 
 begin in earnest to prepare for the duties that await you. 
 
 1 think the students of India as a class are earnest, some 
 times I think you take life too seriously and do not have games 
 and sports enough. However you are doing much better in this 
 respect of late, and are showing that you not only have reasoning, 
 philosophical minds, but that you are also developing that other 
 essential quality — force and velocity. Train your muscles. Base-ball 
 playing, using the arms and legs will develop and strengthen the 
 brain as well as algebraic equations. Do not neglect your 400 
 muscles. They must have been of great importance ov yon would 
 never have been given so many. Train every one of thera to act 
 promptly in response to the will, and do not hesitate, if need be, to 
 work out your own position in life. It will make you more perfect, 
 stronger and better men, than to languidly expect others to carry 
 
you over the road of life. Strive to be men fully developed, mentally 
 and physically. Do not expect the Government or a relative to 
 carry you up on to the heights and hold you up when you are 
 there, but work your way to the pinnacles, and you will be"able 
 to hold on when you get there. You ask, " Boio can I do it ? " 
 And then you sort out and arrange all the obstacles in the way of 
 such an undertaking and sit down and gaze at the insurmountable 
 pile that reaches before you from earth to heaven. 
 
 Professor Felix Adler, acknowledged to be one of the wisest 
 men of America, says— "There are three steps or stages necessary to 
 success. First, one should revolve tbe problem in his mind and con- 
 sider it carefully in all its lights and shades, consider its advantages, 
 its disadvantages. This begins the impression on the brain. After 
 months or it may be even years of careful thought, the second stage 
 begins and you talk about your wish to your friends and advisers. 
 Talking deepens the impression, and then follows the third and 
 last stage, which is action.''^ 
 
 Let us suppose a case, a young man sitting there thinks " I 
 should like above all things to go to London or New York." He 
 says nothing about it to any one but every day he thinks " How I 
 should like to make that journey." He reads every thing he sees in 
 the papers about London, all the books from the library that tell 
 of England. He goes to hear lectures about it. After a long time 
 he ventures to say to his most intimate friend, ** I have often 
 wished I could go to England and be a reporter on one of the large 
 papers there. Then my occupation would take me all over the city 
 and to many historical places and I could be growing wiser every 
 day. After years of apprenticeship and after I had grown wise by 
 my opportunity and success I should like to return to my native 
 land and be a wise help to my people. " His friend says to him 
 ''Suppose you learn (Evening's) short-hand reporting, that would be 
 a necessary step to such a point." Then he learns short-hand, and 
 another friend says to him " You ought to study journalism " and 
 now all his evenings are devoted to that. Then another friend says 
 ** You ought to go to lectures and try verhatim reporting to gain 
 experience " and he devotes every leasure minute to that until he 
 can report 60 words in a minute, and so on all the time getting 
 
ready, and at last when he is fully ready, there comes out to 
 India (during the cold season) one of the editors of the London 
 Times and gives a great lecture on some question that all England 
 and India are deeply interested in — and our short-hand reporter 
 gives to the Times of India every word of the lecture accurately, 
 and the London Editor says. " Well, that must be a clever young 
 man that could report my two hour's speech and not make one 
 mistake. I should like to take him back to work on my paper 
 at home." And off goes our determined student to a better posi- 
 tion than he ever dreamed of having. Now suppose he had wanted 
 to go before he was ready, or had sat down in the beginning and 
 said. " It is no use for me to try, for just look at all the obstacles, 
 there's my old grandfather, my father and uncles and aunts to be 
 taken care of, and it is no use trying ! " 
 
 You do your part and Providence will take care to remove 
 the obstacles in due time. But if you wish to succeed in life, do 
 not begin by asking others to carry you along, for they will be sure 
 to set you down before you have gone very far. 
 
 We can carry our own burdens much safer and surer than 
 others can carry them for us- I repeat — Map out the position you 
 wish to occupy in life and concentrate your energies upon it and 
 you will succeed before you are 50 years old. 
 
 College students, " College students the hope of the land," 
 all the great questions that are being discussed to-day will be 
 bequeathed to you for final decision. It will be for you to decide 
 what shall be the position and treatment of the *' Little Wives" 
 of this land, for you to decide the future educational policy, for 
 you to decide if the country is to have toddy and imported whis- 
 key shops everywhere. I believe you are now, and are to be in 
 the years to come, sober men. 1 hope there is not a young man 
 in this audience who has become or will resolve to be a blur-eyed, 
 red nosed, bloated man, nor one who will encourage others to 
 become so. Do not become the fashionable "moderate" drinker, nor 
 the tobacco smoker; keep free from these tyrants of Western 
 civilization. 
 
Let mo ask you to keep your eyes open to tho pure straigtfc 
 rays of light from above that are converging towards your mental 
 lens. Do not live eternally in the past. " Your wake is nothing, 
 mind the coming track." The skilful mariner does not take place 
 at the stern of the ship and study the wake to decide how and 
 •where to sail. But knowing that the conditions even beneath tho 
 seas are constantly changing he is guided by modern charts. 
 The old ones that were made thousands of years back arc vener- 
 ated more on account of their age than for their help to the mariner 
 of to-day. And do not say, as so many do in this country, it is 
 our custom and consequently there can be no change. It may be 
 one's custom to do very foolish things, to live under bad hygenic 
 conditions, to keep one's self in ignorance, to deprive one's self of 
 healthy exercise. It may be one's custom to lie and steal. But 
 is that any reason why they should not learn a better way, if there 
 be one ? What was a wise thing to do a thousand years ago, 
 would be supremely foolish to do to-day, when all the conditions 
 have changed. Take for your life long motto — 
 
 Eternal Frogression. 
 
 I should be disloyal to my sex if I did not take this oppor- 
 tunity to ask these young men, who arc just beginning active 
 life to remember always that *' The world was made for woman 
 also" and not to speak of woman as a " female." A cow, a cat 
 or a hen are females but woman is supposed to be a somewhat 
 higher order of creation. Do not, like the ignorant men of your 
 land, vainly think yourselves little gods, for you are nothing 
 of the sort, and you only make yourselves supremely ridi- 
 culous when you pretend to be. You are only ordinary human 
 heings, and full of human faults, as are all the human family. 
 Remember that you are created and born in the same way that 
 your sisters are, that you are kept alive by the same means. That 
 you suffer from disobeying the laws of nature just the same as they 
 do. All these things prove that you are not superior to thorn phy- 
 sically and by nature, yon are not superior to them mentally. 
 
 Embryologists now assert without fear of contradiction that 
 there is no man living that can tell the boy's brain from the girl's 
 at birth, nor tho man's brain from the woman's. There is no sex in 
 
8 
 
 brain. So that neither mentally nor physically are you superior or 
 inferior as a whole. Some women have larger brains, stronger in- 
 tellects than some men, and some men have stronger intellects 
 than some women. It is the lack of opportunity that places the 
 Indian women at a disadvantage in comparison with the men, and 
 it does not add lustre to man's position, that in his selfishness he 
 has taken all the advantages for mental developement and given 
 her none. However all this is changing here in India and no- 
 where can there be found cleverer girls than the sweet sad-faced 
 ones that go up each season to the yearly examination. They have 
 demonstrated that they are your equals. 
 
 I know so little of your home life that I hesitate to speak of it 
 I don't believe you are dictatorial and domineering in the home, 
 or at least I hope you are not. There should be no spot on earth 
 so dear to every man as his home. Poets have sung of the 
 beauties and delights of home, orators have given forth their 
 sublimest thoughts in telling of home, and the sweetest singer in all 
 the world, Adelina Patti, has touched the hearts of all who heard 
 her, by her rendering of that simple ballad " Home sweet sweet 
 home." During the late war of the Rebellion in the United 
 States, at one time the two armies were en camped on opposite sides 
 of the Potomac Eiver. On one bank were the loyalists, on the 
 other the rebels. Over the loyalists floated the Stars and S'ripes, 
 over the rebels the Stars and Bars. The war feeling ran highand 
 bitter between the boys in blue and the boys in grey. Life was 
 monotonous when the armies were in camp — and many were the 
 petty things the two armies contrived to do to show their hatred for 
 each other. One evening just at the twilight hour the rebel band 
 came down to the water's edge and played with all tho energy 
 posbible the rebel national song " Dixie Land." As soon as the 
 last strains had died away on the evening air the loyalists on the 
 opposite bank plnyod their national song " Star Spangled Banner." 
 This finished, tho opposite side answered bnck with the "Stnrs 
 and Bars " a highly patriotic production of the rebel army. Then 
 there was a pause, darkness had settled over the landscape, the 
 stillness of night was everywhere, when from across the river came 
 the strains of "Home sweet sweet home." It was taken up by iho 
 opposite side and both armies united in that song that told where 
 
the rebel and the loyal heart could unite, and all bitterness and 
 strife was swallowed up in the remembrance of " Home and loved 
 ones there" And the rapid flowing river tore on its broad waters 
 the sound of music sweet, that told of a united brotherhood, 
 higher, grander, nobler than party strife. 
 
 There can be no Jiome where there is selfishness and injustice,- 
 but each must do to the others as they would have the others do to 
 them, if they were to change places. Pitticus, the ancient law-giver 
 of Greece 650 years B. C, gave this Golden Rule to his disciples 
 and it has held its place as a sovereign rule of conduct all these 
 years, and will hold good to the end of all time. No matter what 
 nation or country a man belongs to, nor how far away from home 
 he may have strayed, he always carries with him a tender spot 
 in his world-hardened heart for home and mother. In the hos- 
 pitals, on the battle-fields, in the prison the hardest heart wilj 
 soften, if you talk of home and the loved one's there ; mother and 
 home are the two words that are most often heard on the dying 
 man's lips when on the battle-field or in the land of strangers* 
 Many times have I heard it as I have listened at the mid-night 
 hour to the rapid breathing of the dying man or boy, and noted 
 the changing expression as his life-blood ebbed away. I have 
 heard the stifiening lips articulate these two words Mother, Home. 
 Sometimes I have wondered at this, wondered why it was not 
 wife and child that dying thoughts returned to,but a man may 
 have had two wives and several children, but God can give him 
 but one moiher and he is bound to that mother by the strongest ties 
 on earth. 
 
 Young men ! Love and reverence your mothers, make their 
 lives as pleasant as possible, never be ashamed of your father and 
 your mother even though they did not have a College education. 
 No man need ever be ashamed of his relatives , they are allotted to 
 him by an All- Wise Being who never makes a mistake. But look 
 well to your associates that are of your oivn choosing. A man is 
 known by the company he selects. Do not go for a day or an 
 hour with a man who is on the wrong track, for you may get 
 a crook from which you can never be straightened. It is said, 
 if you go with a lame man a month you too will limp. I know 
 2 
 
10 
 
 a young man here in Bombay, who is attending one of the 
 Colleges, and who seemed to be heading in the right direction. 
 He went to Poona to stay over Sunday with a fossilized man, 
 one who is about a thousand years behind the age, and this 
 old fossil gave the young man's mind a twist that will go with him 
 through all his life. He came home from that one day's visit with 
 a distorted, bent, deflected mind that will tell throughout all this 
 life and the ages to come. He is no longer willing to see the truth, 
 he has received into his heart an error, and what is worse, he has 
 for ever shut the door against the truth. Keep your eyes ever 
 open to the truth and your hearts ever ready to receive it. Benja- 
 min Franklin, when a very old man, said, *'I have often, during 
 my long life-time, been obliged to change opinions which I once 
 was sure were right," and he asked the young men to doubt a 
 little their own infallibility and to listen kindly to those who 
 differed from them. 
 
 Next to Parents and Home cultivate a love for country. I am 
 sorry indeed for that man, or woman, who does not love " Yater- 
 land " as the Germans say ; a person without a country to love 
 and a country's flag to be proud of, as it floats from the highest 
 masts and spires, has my strongest sympathy. To me life would 
 be robbed of half its sweetness if deprived of these. Sir Walter 
 5cott said : — 
 
 " Lives there a man with heart so dead, 
 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 
 As home his footsteps he has turned, 
 
 From wandering on a foreign strand, 
 
 This is my own, my native land." 
 And never will I forget my feelings on beholding the flag of 
 my native land at the mast head of the staunch ship that waited in 
 the harbor to take me home after an absence of years, years of 
 hardship, of life among strangers, of eating strange and often 
 most unpalatable food, of wandering among strange men and 
 women, of living where ugly and blood-stained banners ever 
 flopped before my eyes and where the large majority of the people 
 never had sufficient to eat. And now there was an end to it all, 
 there was the flag of home, of native land, and it seemed to say, 
 
11 
 
 come home weary prodigal, come back to the land of plenty, 
 where there is bread enough and to spare. It is sweet to have a 
 Fatherland and a country's flag to be proud of. The dying sol- 
 dier sings ; — 
 
 " Oh wrap the flag around me, boys 
 
 To die were far more sweet 
 
 With freedom's glorious emblem, boys 
 
 To be my winding sheet." 
 
 Cultivate love of home and love of country, strive in what- 
 ever position you occupy in life to be always the kind courteous 
 trentleman. Did you ever think exactly what that means, a gentle 
 man 1 One who is gentle, kind, thoughtful to every one. It is a 
 grand word, and suggests a grand man* TRe word Ladij has no 
 such nobility of thought about it, however much it may be associ- 
 ated with those of titled birth. In fact so utterly meaningless is it 
 that an attempt has been made among the Ladies themselves (in 
 England) to substitute for it the word gentlewoman^ which is a 
 far better word. Gentleman suggests a higher development than 
 does the word man, as man represents a higher form of development 
 than does the word male, which places human beings on an exact 
 level with dumb beasts and animals. Therefore I ask you to rise 
 above the level of the brute creation and to be men and if possible 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Study in whatever line of research your life's work may lead 
 you, to do some original work to make man wiser, and richer, in 
 knowledge. Study to ascertain what is that as yet unnamed, 
 unclassified sense that enables us to know the thoughts and feelings 
 of those about us although not expressed in words. Ascertain why 
 one person affects us pleasantly and another unpleasantly, tell uS 
 what inhiitio7% is? Some one has said, it is the knowledge we 
 come into the world with. If this be true, why is it, that many 
 women know things intuitively that men only ascertain after 
 ranch study and thought ? 
 
 If any of you are going to be Doctors of Medicine, and 
 wish to immortalize your names, you can study the " psychical 
 influences " that afi^ect oar health — the action of the mind over the 
 
12 
 
 organs of the body. All these things are but imperfectly under- 
 stood, yet we can all recall instances where the fact has been 
 demonstrated. 
 
 General Grant in his memoirs relates that he had been ill in 
 bed for two days when an adjutant brought the message that 
 General Lee wished an interview. *' Instantly," says General 
 Grant, " all the pain left my body." What changes took place 
 in that second of time, we of the medical profession have kindly 
 left for you to discover. 
 
 If, as is sometimes claimed, the cure was the result of shock to 
 nerve centres, then why do we not more frequently have these 
 results. Surely, the treatment many a sufferer is subjected to is 
 quite sufficient to shock nerve centres. It is certain that there is 
 an element of force as real as the current of electricity that affects 
 lis in all grades of society. It is a subtle force, felfc but not 
 seen or heard, through which unspoken thought travels from man 
 to man. That we are all influenced favorably or unfavorably by 
 the unspoken thoughts of those with whom we associate, I think,, 
 most are willing to admit. 
 
 How this action is produced further research may be able to 
 determine. As yet we see through a glass darkly. Study to know if 
 light and darkness are identical in themselves, or if light is created 
 out of darkness, or must the light for ever shine in darkness and 
 the darkness for ever comprehend it not. The audaphone, the 
 telephone, the phonograph, the sphygmograph have not waited 
 for you to arouse them from their long slumbers, but there are 
 yet other phones and graphs ready to come forth when the magic 
 wand of the earnest student shall bid them. You may probe into 
 the depths of the solid earth and bid it give forth new treasures 
 for the use of man. The gold, the silver, the tin, the great 
 fields of coal, the deep wells of oil were all sleeping for ages 
 before man bade them come forth, Seek that you may find yet 
 other hidden treasures. The " Elixir of Life," even the long, 
 sought for *' Fountain of Youth " may he given into your hands. 
 
 * General Grant was at the head of the Union Army. General Lee 
 •was at the head of the Kebel Army. 
 
13 
 
 It will be a geological period or a complete " Man vantaric 
 Cycle " before the earnest student may weep that there are no 
 more hidden truths to be discovered. 
 
 Do not be content to store your minds with facts, that yon 
 have never assimilated. Always Search for the "Why." Go 
 back to the first principle, to the root word, to the molecule, the 
 atom and the bioplasm. By all means make your microscope 
 your " Vade inecum.^^ Learn to know the rocks the so-called 
 everlasting foundation of all things. Learn to know their name 
 and age, the geological period to which they belong, know the 
 h*uge boulders and the tiny pebbles. Watch them crumble 
 into dust, and then watch them give oflP their life to nourish the 
 plant. Then study the plant life, watch the leaves turn toward 
 the sun for its life-giving properties, and the roots and rootlets 
 seeking out in the dark their own nourishment. Learn to know 
 their names, their forms, their properties. And then coming on up, 
 study animal life, know the 'birds, the leasts and the fishes, study 
 to find the line of demarkation, or the connecting link from the 
 beginning of the works of creation up to man. 
 
 And then, strive to hioiv thyself. Know the wonderful mecha. 
 nism of the human body, the nerves of motion and of sensation, 
 the great strong muscles and the most delicate and minute ones, 
 study the anatomy of the human heart, that works ceaselessly on 
 from the dawn of life to the moment of its departure from the body. 
 Study the human eye, with its retina, so fine as not to be visible 
 to the physical eye of man, and which the microscope has enabled 
 ns to separate into 40 layers. Trace the impression of the object 
 on to the cornea through the lens and from layer to layer through 
 the retina, the optic nerve back to the brain. Study the ear, learn 
 how the sound waves reach the membrana tympani, and the 
 Cochlea with its nerve filaments, all as carefully arranged as are 
 tho keys on the key-board of the piano. Follow the wave of 
 sound on through the semicircular canals, the auditary nerve back 
 also to the brain, and then if you wish you can devote the remain- 
 der of your life to trying to ascertain what it is that hoars, what 
 that sees, what that thinks. 
 
 Tiring of these you can try to locate — to localize — the all per- 
 vading soul, and when you have finished your research into all 
 the wonders of nature I think we shall agree that none but an 
 Almighty Power could create, govern, and sustain all these wonders 
 of creation. 
 
14 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL SYNDICATE OF BURMAH AS A 
 
 SUBSTITUTE FOR A UNIVERSITY.* 
 
 Lecturer :— The Hon. Mr. Justice Jardine. 
 
 Hon'ble Sir, Mr. Principal, Ladies and Gentlemen,— As great 
 ideas dominate the world, so do great names impress the imagi- 
 nation : it is impossible to meet an audience of Elphinstonian 
 students without remembering that Mountstuart Elphinstone long 
 ago planted a system of education, which, after the passing of only 
 one generation and before that statesman was gathered to his 
 fathers, bore its natural fruit in the creation of your alma maier, 
 the University of Bombay, which in his Jubilee speech, when re- 
 viewing the present and the past, our late talented Governor, Lord 
 Reay, described as the most important of the corporate bodies of 
 this great city. You are aware, too, that the Elphinstone College, 
 to which we owe so many distinguished graduates, arose out of 
 the Elphinstone Institution, which had been endowed by the 
 natives of these parts as " the most appropriate method of testifying 
 the affectionate and respectful sentiments of the inhabitants of 
 Bombay" to Mountstuart Elphinstone at the end of his long 
 Indian career. I come here this evening to tell you of a work 
 similar to that of Elphinstone in Bnrmah, when I was there, by the 
 then ruler. Sir Charles Bernard. It centered round the corporation 
 called the Educational Syndicate, and I think from all that has 
 happened the same causes will produce the same results, and that 
 many here, and probably myself among the number, will live to see 
 that institution merge into a University for all the Turanian and 
 other races dwelling in Burmah, the Straits Settlements, and the 
 borders of Siam. As happened to your College, so in Rangoon the 
 professorial staff of the High School there developed into a separate 
 college, and it is fairly certain that the rivalry of the other colleges 
 in that country will soon produce a large number of learned 
 graduates whose intellectual desires will not be satisfied till a 
 University is established as a shrine of learning. I think that 
 in 1818 there must have been more of the higher learning in the 
 Deccan and the Konkan too than there is in Burmah. The 
 
 ♦ Delivered on Tuesday the 11th August 1891. The Hon. Mr. Justice 
 Telang, Vice-President of the Union, in the chair. 
 
15 
 
 Brahmin castes had century after century upheld the claims of 
 learning, and created a popular and traditional respect for it. At 
 Poena there was under the last Peshwa both the Dakshina Fund 
 and much knowledge of Sanskrit. Elphinstone had only to com- 
 bine the two, and found the Deccan College. Men in the Civil 
 Service like Steele or Borradaile, who turned their attention to 
 Hindoo Law, for instance, soon found Shastrees able to construe 
 Mann and Mitakshara and the Mayukha, and it was much the 
 same with Mahomedan Law. The Courts were readily supplied 
 with Pundits and Kazees, Philosophy, metaphysics, and the 
 higher mathematics had been studied here for ages: it was thus 
 comparatively easy to effect a meeting at the gate of India bet- 
 ween the learning of the East and the West. Clever boys were 
 ready to bathe in the new flood. It may interest you to know 
 that when at Dumfries some years ago I went to see a Professor 
 whom Elphinstone got out, and whose name still survives — I mean 
 Dr. Harkness — discoursing on times gone by, he inquired what 
 had become of a clever youth, a pupil of his, named Vishwanath 
 Narayen Mandlik. Most of us here who know about his learning 
 and respected career and his influence in the University, where 
 we elected him Dean, can answer that question. 
 
 In Burmah till lately there was little of the higher learning. 
 The American Baptist missionaries had made great research in 
 the study of the sacred Pali in Burmah, and especially among the 
 oppressed Karens. They did the same work that was done in Bom- 
 bay by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, and those devoted men and women 
 who come from the Land of the Thistle and the Heather and the 
 Blue Bell. But for some years after I first knew the country, no 
 Burman had taken a Bachelor's degree except one who had been 
 educated in America and graduated there. The highest educa- 
 tional institution was the Government High School at Rangoon. 
 Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism, the sister-language of 
 Sanskrit, was lazily studied in the monasteries ; but I never saw 
 or heard of any Burman competent to explain the obscurities of the 
 law books written in that tongue. The Buddhist religion renounces 
 caste and practises equality ; there is no hereditary race of Levites 
 there, handing down religious and legal learning from father to son ; 
 
16 
 
 ^nd the monastic rules have got relaxed. On the other hand, the 
 monks and abbots have done, and still do, much for the common 
 education, and instances often occur of holy women, adopting the 
 religious life and joining in a nunnery to set up a girls' school, 
 But still progress had for years been going on. The Rev. Dr. 
 Marks, as Warden of the Church of England College had long 
 exercised a wide influence, and was eager to spread a greater 
 learning. The Government system had extended all over the 
 country ; and the missionaries who there, as in many parts of 
 India, had first set the ball rolling, had under their management 
 great institutions, working up to the middle standards and eager 
 to do more- Over the Government schools was the Director of 
 Public Instruction ; and he had a considerable control over all the 
 others under the system of grants-in-aid. It appears from a 
 speech afterwards made by Sir C. Bernard, who in 1881 was Chief 
 Commissioner of Burmah, that for some time it had been felt 
 that future success and progress would bo best secured by associat- 
 ing other men interested in education with the Director in his 
 management, and especially that the great teaching interests 
 nvhich in Burmab are missionary should bo quite satisfied with 
 >the system of examinations held under some new rules about 
 grants-in-aid lately introduced. A kind of Board, he felt, was 
 Tequired, even though for the present it would be most occupied 
 with the primary and middle stages of education. You are aware 
 that Sir Raymond West once suggested that a Board of this kind 
 should be created here, and I suppose this is the reason why my 
 friends in the University and the colleges wished to learn about 
 the practical working of the Board in Burmah. You are aware 
 also that in Bombay a similar Board gave a very good account of 
 itself when in 1857 it merged in the University, and the Director 
 of Public Instruction was created to do the rest of the work. After 
 tk good deal of inquiry Sir C. Bernard on the 25th August, 1881, 
 notified the new departure. Looking over the hill-tops of time* 
 he had a vision of a University in the future. He called his Board 
 the Educational Syndicate, and said it was to represent all parties. 
 There were to be at least two Burman members, and the Educa. 
 tional Department and the officers of the Burman Commission 
 were not to be left out. There was always to be on© barrister and 
 
17 
 
 one medical man at least. He took good care, moreover, to appoint 
 the most influential men of the hitherto excluded classes. Thus 
 the Roman Catholic Bishop Bigandet, the greatest scholar there, 
 came in as Vice-President after declining the President's chair. 
 We talk of technical education here as if it were a 
 product of the Victorian era. But if you will look at my 
 edition of San Germano's Burman Empire, you will find in 
 an appendix a little history of the triumphs of the Roman 
 Church in Burmah. In 1720 it sent out learned priests from 
 Milan, skilful in chemistry and medicine. In 1749 the great 
 Bishop Nerini, who died a martyr's death, had established a 
 great school. I quote from an old Italian book as follows : — " The 
 people met in the church at the sound of the bell ; baptisms were 
 performed with solemnity ; they made processions and went sing- 
 ing psalms through the squares and the streets, and everything 
 was done as in Italy. For the boys, many schools were made 
 of geography, arithmetic, navigation, and such sciences and arts as 
 might be useful to them ; and over all Father Nerini presided 
 untiring night and day." He also worked hard at a trilingual 
 dictionary. There is a pleasant picture of the past. But to return 
 to the Syndicate. The Great Church of England and the American 
 Baptist Mission, famous in the land since the time of Judson, sent 
 up their ablest men. Sir Colin Scott MoncrieflP, who has since 
 thrown barriers across the Nile, was the member for the Public 
 Works, and did what he could to make canals for learning. I 
 was then the Judicial Commissioner of Burmah, and was asked to 
 become President. As you know, I am not an educationalist and 
 have had little to do with such things except when I have been 
 Secretary to a Government or engaged in the business of our 
 University. I accepted the position with diffidence, wondering 
 whether I would be of use and how the thing would end. I receiv- 
 ed assurances that I would be supported by the heads of colleges 
 and by the non-official community. I believe Sir C. Bernard knew 
 I was in favour of his policy of giving the heads of the great edu- 
 cational interests, I mean the missionaries, with their long expe- 
 rience, great services to linguistic knowledge, close acquaintance 
 with the people, and control over large schools and orphanages for 
 both sexes, a powerful and independent voice in the general con- 
 3 
 
18 
 
 trol. I wished also to see the learned professions represented, and 
 my thoughts reverted to Bombay and the Senate and the Syndicate. 
 The Government Proclamation, I must tell you, entrusted to the 
 Board the management of the primary and middle examinations ; 
 also those for teachers and those for survey. In Burmah a great 
 survey is going on, and so mensuration is an avenue to public 
 employment. We were also to deal with grants-in-aid, and so had 
 the power of the purse. The Board were also to think about 
 higher things, and if it chose to frame proposals respecting medi- 
 cine and surgery, engineering, law, and technical arts, it received 
 authority to give its opinion when consulted on other matters. A 
 paid Registrar was to be appointed, and we soon selected the 
 Professor of Mathematics. The Government undertook to pay 
 the Board's expenses. In a week or two the business commenced. 
 The first meeting began with a breakfast at my house, to which 
 Sir C. Bernard came. Then breakfast over, he shook hands all 
 round, wished the Board success, and went away. We walked 
 into another room and made our rules. The next few months 
 were occupied in settling the details of many examinations which 
 had to be held. It seemed then as if the teaching classes had 
 all found a voice. One Baptist Missionary, far away on the frontier, 
 would like that his strange and peculiar tribe of Karens required 
 papers set in their own dialect which no one in Rangoon knew. 
 The Mussulmans desired Urdu to be made a language, and that 
 was done as Urdu is the lingua franca of the East, although on the 
 first occasion only one candidate in Urdu passed. The Director one 
 day brought to notice that khere was something unsuited to Burmese 
 girls in the needle-work standards about patching and darning. 
 Scores of details like these were settled, and larger questions were 
 referred by the Chief Commissioner for the advice of the Board, in- 
 cluding the provisions of free primary education, the enlargement of 
 Municipal power, and the grouting of aid to poor European and 
 Eurasian scholars. During this period, for a few months, the Board 
 had no meeting-house. Our Educational parliament mot in my draw- 
 ing-room usually in the afternoon, after oflSce hours. The members 
 came in tired, bat punctual ; the proceedings began with tea and 
 cake, my wife presiding. Then the cups and plates were cleared 
 away, and I took the vacated chair. That miniature House of Com- 
 
19 
 
 mons even received deputations. Well I remember the impression 
 made by three missionaries coming like the Magi from the Far East 
 who were hailed as experts on the differences in language and learn- 
 ino' of the Pwo Karens and Sagau Karens. At length the Chief Com- 
 missioner gave the Board a noble handsome hall, with a long oval table 
 like that used by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ; book- 
 shelves and books soon added to the furniture ; it is now the Bern- 
 ard Free Library as well as the Board room. The procedure of the 
 Board was not unlike a University Senate: its resolutions were repor- 
 ted in the Government Gazettef and so were the minutes, debateSr 
 and speeches, This publicity was invaluable as it stimulated and 
 satisfied the public interest. I was told by the Rev. Mr. Nicholls, 
 who is the head of the American Baptist Mission at Basseic, where 
 they have a great college and many self-supporting churches near 
 with Karen Pastors, that the Karens regarded him as their member, 
 and read the debates and were ready to heckle him and question him 
 when he returned to his constituency. For a long while the local 
 Press published these proceedings, but at last asked for payment, 
 which the Board refused, having no funds. Nothing is safe from ridi- 
 cule, not even Boards and Parliaments and we were no exception. 
 It is even now curious to read the following : — " The President said 
 that the Syndicate had to decide on a question whether in the exa. 
 mination in needle- work and cutting out for the Middle Department, 
 under the head of 'knitting,' the standard should be changed i. e. 
 that the kitting of infants' socks should be substituted for the knit- 
 ting of full-sized youths' socks. Mr. Hodson, in reply to the President, 
 said that he had made inquiries and found that the Burmese children 
 wore socks and knitted caps, but that the men did not. The Presi- 
 dent put it to the Syndicate, and asked whether they answered the 
 question in the affirmative. No one dissenting, it was unanimously 
 carried that the knitting of infants' socks was allowed- He then ask- 
 ed the members if they would consider the Bishop of Rangoon's offer 
 of an endowment first, or the question about the establishment of a 
 College." It is also interesting to come across a notification as 
 solemnly signed by the Registrar specifying for the standards such 
 things as "hemming, seaming, felling, button-holing, gathering, stro» 
 king, a tuck run, whipping, setting on frills, fixing the above, any 
 garment which can be completely finished by the above stitches 
 
30 
 
 -e, <7., a plain night-dress" — things like these roused the humour of 
 the Rangoon wits, and were fair game for the newspapers. They 
 asked what we knew about these handiworks of girls, what meant 
 4his wonderful parade of learning, and they drew pictures, very 
 near the real fact of conscientious members going home with 
 those nice little educational books made by the Science and Art 
 Department at Kensington, where you find drawings of frilling and 
 herringbone, and asking their wives to coach them up in these arts. 
 The moral was that lady members were wanted on the Board, and 
 this necessity was again shown in fixing the standard for some Karen 
 girls in a Normal school of the American Baptists, where we would 
 have been at sea if we had not driven ofi" post-haste to consult with 
 the lady teachers who knew all that was wanted. Still my recollec- 
 tion is that the decisions on knitting and herringbone and hem- 
 ming a baby's flannel gave as much satisfaction as any othere, and 
 did not occasion as much division at the Board table as those de- 
 tails about the curriculum in Arts, which has divided us here for 
 the last four years until Mr. Principal Oxenham's golden tongue 
 persuaded the Senate to an agreement last Saturday. Indeed, all 
 this while the work had gone on prosperously, so much so, that the 
 "Chief Commissioner wrote to ask the Board to undertake all the 
 examining of candidates for the Subordinate Civil Service in all 
 subjects, including athletics; and this was done. 
 
 Nor were the permanent interests of learning being neglected. 
 The Judicial Commissioner wrote to say that he had determined to 
 make the English language the medium of examination for the office 
 of Advocate, and asked the Board to co-operate and appoint exa- 
 miners and take over the work. Sometime afterwards the Recorder 
 of Rangoon made the same offer about the qualification of Advocate 
 for his Court which is like the original side. Early in 1883 the 
 Board began a new duty as a teaching University by establishing 
 two chairs in a Law School, and was beginning to take a look 
 round into medicine and surgery. But before this, the need 
 of a library had become very manifest. What is a University op 
 even a college without a library ? Every Missionary College would 
 like to have all the best books on teaching and a copy of the Ency- 
 chpcedia Britannic a. But every college has not got the money for 
 uch expensive work. In February 1883, the Bernard Free Library 
 
21 
 
 with many thousands of books, the best in all literatures and all the 
 Aria and Sciences, was opened for the public by the Board, and Sir 
 C. Bernard came and consented to let it bear his honoured name. 
 In addressing him on that occasion, I find I said : — " We 
 felt our deficiencies ; one reverend member proposed that we should 
 make a library of educational text-books ; another pointed out that 
 we ought to have books of reference for the use of our examiners 
 in setting papers ,* then some one added that if we got many and 
 good books, the masters and teachers of all schools, Government 
 and aided, should get the benefit. — in fact, a good learned library 
 would be a grant-in-aid to them all, as there are many expensive 
 books which we can hardly expect schools to be able to pur- 
 chase. So gradually the inspiration came that books should be 
 open to all comers, scholars as well as teachers, the general public 
 as well as these classes ; and having agreed that the best use 
 of learning is a popular use, and that its records ought not be 
 imprisoned in a secluded room, we had no hesitation in going to Mr. 
 Bernard to get sanction for the first free library of the country, and 
 to ask him to lend to it the honour of his name." 
 
 The establishment of a great free library in a backward province- 
 was a long step towards a University and that same day in his reply 
 Sir Charles Bernard announced another. The time had come, he 
 said, when young Burmans should complete their studies in Burmah 
 for the degree, instead of being obliged to go to Calcutta far across 
 the sea ; he meant to provide funds and to ask the Syndicate to esta- 
 blish a college, under their own control, out of the twenty undergra- 
 duates there in the High School. In course of time, a despatch 
 from Lord Ripon's Government was submitted to the advice of 
 the Board, The Viceroy wished to know if the Municipality of 
 Rangoon would undertake to manage a College of Arts, or if the 
 missionary bodies would like to do so ; and if both these proposals 
 were unworkable, if the Syndicate would accept his ofi'er. The 
 Board advised that the two first suggestions were impracticable* 
 The second is a very curious one; it was rejected on grounds care- 
 fully stated by the Rev. J, Marks, d.d , the Warden of the Angli. 
 can College. Their religious constitutions and aims would make 
 f concord impossible. '* I may mention," he said, "a case where such 
 tin attempted union was once made. At La Martiniere College, 
 
22 
 
 Calcutta, Bishop Daniel Wilson, the Roman Catholic Archbishop, 
 and the Presbyterian Chaplain, joined together to produce a cate- 
 chism which should teach Christianity without any controverted 
 points being mentioned. The work was a curiosity in its way; but 
 the Pope vetoed the concordat, and ordered the Catholic clergy to 
 withdraw from the institution." Dr, Marks' views were shared by 
 the other clerical members, and were unanimously agreed to by the 
 laymen at the Board Table. But when in the course of the 
 discussion it was found that he and the Baptist Ministers were at 
 one in warmly advocating that the Board should accept the Vice- 
 roy's offer, a great debate arose. The Director of Instruction 
 argued that the Board was unfit for such duty, and that the new 
 college should be under him and him alone. The missionaries, who 
 knew by this time what it was to have a legal and acknowledged 
 share in the control, urged that to make it a success, it must be 
 under the Board which had its missionary members. Moral train- 
 ing came in; if they were on the direction, they would send their 
 undergraduates, not otherwise. Moreover, they flung back on 
 the Director that without endowments the college would be feeble, 
 and that he had never succeeded in getting a single endowment. 
 The Roman Catholic Bishop proposed a sort of compromise— to 
 put the college under the Director with a Council of his own. The 
 debates lasted many days, the Director pressing the Board to refuse 
 the offer of the Viceroy, which Sir C Bernard wished it to accept ; 
 ultimately it was accepted by my own casting vote. The college 
 was soon after established by the Board on a treaty with the Vice, 
 roy who undertook to give large subsidies to the Syndicate, calcu- 
 lated on the number of students in attendance, and the number 
 who should pass First B. A., or take their Bachelor's degree. Seve- 
 ral years have passed since then, and I have never heard that the 
 Board has been anything but entirely successful in its m anagement 
 of that college. But in April, 1884, many competent persons 
 doubted, and I had some doubts myself, whether the matter shoul d 
 have been decided by my casting vote. People said it was an arbi- 
 trary Cromwellian act; perhaps, it was. But then it is ancient 
 doctrine that the prerogative i? to be used for the public good ; 
 things had come to a crisis; if the President, being neither a 
 missionary nor an educationalist, could not take an impartial view 
 
23 
 
 I did not see who else could. The Syndicate could not afford to 
 quarrel with the local Governor, much less with the Viceroy of 
 India ; and it seemed a very sensible argument that if the Viceroy 
 who provided the money wished the Director to manage the college 
 he might have said so. It was as hazardous for the Board to 
 suggest the Director as for that officer to do so himself. The 
 missionaries took sorely to heart the argument of the officials that 
 the Board was an incompetent body. They insisted in plain terms 
 that thay spent their lives managing colleges, and from theso 
 colleges most of the pupils must come up for the B. A. course ; 
 they would not be patronised, but have as much control over the 
 College of Arts as their seats at the Board gave them over other 
 matters. They taunted the Director that he was a mere critic, 
 never having managed a college himself, while they had. It seemed 
 to me that they were right, and that it would be better to give 
 that control jointly than leave it to the Director alone. Seven 
 years have passed since then, and old Father Time whom the 
 Greeks called the Greatest Judge, because, at last he decided every 
 controversy, has. I know, justified the heads of the missionary 
 colleges. But they were not alone; the Burmans and the indepen- 
 dent members were with them- It was the view of both Sir Arthur 
 Phayre and Sir C Bernard that the well- tried and highly popular 
 system of Buddhist teaching in the monasteries should not be 
 overthrown by the officials. It is important, therefore, to have 
 Burman gentlemen in the control of the college. I thought too 
 that mere departmental management would be incompetent to deal 
 with the problems on the threshold of higher education, no real 
 learning in law or medicine was possible till we got men able to 
 read the text-books in English. The rough medicine practised was 
 in whole groups of cases highly injurious, in obstetrics especially. 
 A barbarous operation might be followed by the common treatment 
 of half roasting the mother for some days in a room made as hot 
 as Gehenna. 
 
 Every day in court I was baffled by the meagre know- 
 ledge of the Buddhist Law. There was not even a Burmese 
 primer on Contract or Torts or the Law of Evidence. It was 
 plain as a pike-staff that new blood was wanted. It was clear that 
 
24 
 
 we ansfc encourage the Bachelor's degree; and Lord Ripon*s piopo. 
 sals to pay by result seemed altogether right. The missionaries 
 and the non-official members were also correct in urging that 
 unless the College of Arts were put under a popular body, endow- 
 ments would never be subscribed. The Departmental Officers did 
 not understand endowments. You, Elphinstonians, of, course, know 
 that you began with Rs. 2, 29, 656, collected after one meeting in 
 1827, that this accumulated to Rs. 4, 43, 901, and that Mr. Cowas- 
 jee Jehangir Ready money afterwards gave another two lakhs to 
 build the College. In Burmah, somehow, appeals to the people'^ 
 liberality have not been successful. The Syndicate, however, bad 
 just begun to attract very liberal offers of money to found scholar- 
 ships, when a bolt from the blue-book — I mean a despatch froni 
 Sir C. Bernard's locum tenens, Sir Charles Crosthwaite — came,, 
 informing the Board that it had no legal capacity to hold property. 
 This nipped the subscription in the bud; the donors withdrew their 
 offers, and a great opportunity was lost. That despatch was like 
 a sharp ball coming near your wicket, and when we tried to block 
 it by incorporation, we were nearly stumped out by opposition even 
 to that. We hardly knev7 which way to turn : we sometimes felt like 
 the bull does in the Arena in Spain. The incident, however, led 
 the Syndicate to insist on incorporation. This I wished to get done 
 either by a special Act of the Legislature or by a Royal Charter 
 such as is often given to boroughs, banks, and learned societies. 
 The Director said he was afraid this course might stereotype the 
 infant University too soon; and, strangely enough, the Board which 
 o-overned the education of four or five millions of people was incor. 
 porated only as a Literary and Charitable Society under Act 21 of 
 3860. Now the French say, '^Lemieux est toujours I'ennemi du 
 bien " and we say, '*flalf a loaf is better than no bread;" and as I 
 was about to leave the province, so the Board accepted this view, 
 and it was carried into effect under the new President, Mr. Ward 
 who is now Chief Commissioner of Assam. It was for the Govern, 
 ment of India to decide, but I have often wondered why Lord 
 Ripon, who saw that the Syndicate had proved itself a good exam- 
 ple of self-government, did not give a charter. Perhaps, the 
 Government of India were alarmed at the College proposal, made 
 by the Viceroy himself, and meant to be a compliment to the Syn- 
 
25 
 
 dicnte, being so nearly rejected as to depend on a casting vote ; 
 and it stands to reason that the Viceroy's Government must not 
 imperil its dignity. There is mischief in extremes and in pushing 
 a controversy too far. Yet, after all, I am certain there would 
 have resulted no annoyance to the Viceroy's Government, if it had 
 conceded a more dignified form of constitution. 
 
 It will interest you to learn that in all these controversies, which 
 taught the members to feel their own strength, the experience of 
 Bombay was often appealed to. The Deccan and Elphinstone Co- 
 leges became familiar names, so did the greater lights of the University 
 of Bombay, A learned barrister, a Bengalee, Mr. P. Sen, for instance, 
 confuted the Director out of the mouth of Sir Raymond West. He 
 produced the Educational Commissioner's Report, and read as follows 
 out of para. 345 : — '* It has been suggested by the Hon, Mr. Justice 
 West that in order to bring out a complete understanding between, 
 the University and the Department of Public Instruction, there 
 should be a Central Educational Board for each great province, to 
 which all important questions of principle should be referred. On this 
 Board in Bombay there should be two or three representatives of the 
 University, as well as two officials (one the Director of Public In- 
 struction) and two others, appointed by co-operation or at the dis- 
 cretion of Government, in order to make room for the casual posses- 
 sor of speciEil qualifications. To this Board the proposed course of in 
 struction in the higher secondary schools should be submitted eacli 
 half-year, in order, without excluding local and personal initiative,, 
 to preserve a general balance of studies. To the same Board reports 
 of the history and progress of each College and superior school 
 should be submitted from time to time for consideration. Its advice 
 should be taken on every proposed alteration of system. It should 
 be consulted on the allocation of funds among institutions and sub- 
 jects." Here he found a scheme, cut and dried ; and if there is a 
 general desire of change, the success of the Syndicate in Burmah 
 will, no doubt, be urged. I am not aware whether Sir R. West, 
 now that he is in the Government, means to follow Sir G. Bernard's 
 example in this matter ; that may be known to some of you, to 
 the Vice-Chancellor, of course, and, perhaps, to the Syndicate. I 
 3 
 
 I 
 
26 
 
 have never studied the subject. But, as a matter of fact, T may- 
 add that the Board in Burmah left all the primary examinations 
 to be conducted by the Director as their delegate, and I suppose 
 no one would propose to interfere with the Director of Instruction 
 without a full study and understanding of the system, by which 
 the Home Department in England works with the Local Bo ards 
 there, in controlling poor law relief, sanitation, vaccination, and 
 such things. Here, too, we have scores of Local Boards ; if you 
 read the local Government Blue-book published yearly in England, 
 you will see that the central authority has often to criticise their 
 doings ; and without experience here, and much study from the 
 inside, a cautious man would refrain being too sure that a Board 
 of six would work better than one man. Remember, Bombay 
 differs essentially from Burmah in this. Here you have a Univer- 
 sity, a Senate, and a Syndicate : one is bound to ask whether a 
 smaller Board like Sir R. West's can* co-exist with the larger. 
 But the results of the Syndicate are in its favour. Sir Raymond's 
 proposal was lost by only one vote, and what is to be mentioned in 
 this College, Mr. Justice Telang was one of its supporters. It 
 <5omes before you therefore with very high claims. I suppose^ 
 however, the question will not come within the region of practical 
 politics till the long deferred University Bill approaches the end 
 of its long and memorable history. 
 
 I must now come to the end of mine. I have tried to show how 
 in less period than it has taken to pass that heart-sickening Univer- 
 sity Bill the Educational Syndicate, besides conducting and regulat- 
 ing all the examinations, including the awards of Municipal and Go- 
 vernment scholarships and the practical settlement of grants-in-aid, 
 became an advising body like the Privy Council, a teaching body in 
 regard to Law, the providers of aLibrary such as great colleges desire 
 and the creators and managers of the only college of Arts ever 
 started in Burmah. It does or did the mechanical part of the exami- 
 nations held in Rangoon by the University of Calcutta, To the advo- 
 cates, it is the Inn of Court ; and to candidates for the Government 
 service it resembles the Civil Service Commission. It has been 
 
27 
 
 identified with a revival of learning, especially of legal learning, 
 and the carious discovery which annoyed the Barmans that their 
 sacred civil law is only the famous Hindoo Shastra more or less 
 disguised by Buddhism. I expect some considerable change will 
 also come over Burman medicine through the influence of the Syn- 
 dicate. For all these reasons, and also for the learning and ability 
 of its members, I call it a substitute for a University, In its earlier 
 years it went on ahead, in spite of the groans of those who 
 wished for delay. That was just as well. For since then some are 
 dead, including that thorough and learned archajologist, Dr. Forch- 
 hammer. Sir C. Bernard lives in England, Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff 
 in Egypt, and the Rev. Dr. Vinton, who used to teach the Karens 
 to plough with prize ploughs from America, now sleeps beneath the 
 soil. Ars Tonga you will say vita hrevis, and I agree with you^ 
 Vigorous force alone countervails lazy opposition and vis inertia. 
 What most endangered the institution in its earliest years was 
 the occasional coolness of high oflB.cials who knew not Joseph — I 
 mean who did not fully share Sir C. Bernard's aspirations. I 
 am not blaming them because in every society you find a party 
 as estimable as your own who prefer old ways to anything new- 
 fangled. It is a cry from Burmah to England ; and perhaps there 
 is a tendency for officials to forget the great and useful part played 
 by the parish vestries, the borough magnates, and the country 
 gentlemen. 
 
 And now let me tell yon one thing, and it is the only piece 
 of advice I give, for I have not come here to exhort you on 
 morals, and I feel no call to perorate on the cardinal virtues. But 
 perhaps a Dean of Arts may be allowed to touch on style. If 
 ever you hold the position of Secretary to any authority, munici- 
 pal, or local, or academical, cultivate suavity, let your weapon be 
 a persuasive and courteous style. Bead Quintilian, imitate Cicero, 
 but don't take Tacitus too much as your literary model. DoJce 
 parole fa Zii gentilezza. Scratch out your sarcasms ; bethink you, 
 as Lord Bacon says, that you may have sharp wits, but other 
 men have long memories. Grave and reverend seniors, prelates 
 
28 
 
 priests, and judges, who have been asked to give their time and 
 services to the State, without money or reward are pained, if 
 they are plied with curt and abrupt conclusions on the assumption 
 of infallibility. On one such occasion, I remember, the Recorder 
 of Rangoon remarked, as we took our seats, that it was about time 
 we all resigned. But such incidents were few and trifling, and of 
 course that retaliation was not seriously meant. Lahor vincit omnia. 
 Now I have often been asked why the official reports about 
 Burmab, of late years, do not contain more about this unique and 
 important Board, whose working for the last ten years is relied on 
 so strongly by the promoters of self-government. Since my work 
 in Burmah ceased, it has been worked by far abler and more 
 painstaking men. Mr, Meres, now retired, and Mr. Ward, who 
 governs Assam, ruled over the educational world during the period 
 of incorporation and the establishing of the College. To them 
 the permanent success of the system is due. It will please you to 
 know that the influences of Bombay are just now powerful in Ran-- 
 goon, where Mr. Fulton, of the Bombay Civil Service, and Fellow 
 of this University, has become the virtual Lord of Education in 
 presiding over the Syndicate. The day will come when for Bur- 
 mans, Talains, Malays, Chinese, Shans, Chins, Kachyins, and other 
 strange tribes of the Golden Khersonese, a University will be 
 npreared in Rangoon, shedding the radiance of learning over the 
 "vride swamps and dark forests and green islands of those regions^, 
 -over "rivers unknown to song." Then will the names of Lord 
 R<ipon and Sir C. Bernard be held in remembrance. 
 
 " Their praises will be sung. 
 
 By many a yet nnmoulded tongue, 
 
 Far on in summers than we shall not see.'' 
 
VEMACUUR LITEMTUEE.' 
 
 LECTURER: Mr. W. E. HART, b.a. 
 Late Chief Judge, Small Causes Court, Bombay, 
 
 Principal Oxenham, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 Whenever a man proposes to himself the task of talking to 
 others for any useful purpose, it is in the first place important that 
 he should know himself exactly, what he is going to talk about. 
 Hardly less important is it that his hearers, too, should know what 
 they are going to hear about. For unless the speaker and his 
 audience understand the same words in the same sense, the one 
 will never be properly understood by the others. It will be well, 
 therefore, at the outset precisely to explain what I mean by the 
 words which I have chosen for the title of my lecture. 
 
 By Vernacular Literature I mean the collective body, in writ- 
 ten form, of the learning and culture of a country, finding original 
 expression in its native language at the hands of native authors. 
 I have already privately explained to the President of this Society 
 that T do not propose to discuss the literature of the Indian verna- 
 cular languages, for two very sufficient reasons. In the first place, 
 I think a lecture on the present literature of the Indian vernacular 
 languages would be somewhat like that famous article on the snakes 
 in Ireland, which consisted of the words, *' There are no snakes 
 in Ireland." In the second place, as I am myself ignorant of the 
 vernacular languages of India, I could hardly presume to discuss 
 their literature in such company as the present. 
 
 But what I propose to do is to try and find the reason why 
 the vernacular literature of India is so defective and to see if a 
 more perfect one is possible. This is a subject which should 
 have a special interest for my present audience. You, natives of 
 
 * Delivered under the presidency of Principal R. G. Oxenham on 
 Thursday 10th September 1891. 
 
30 
 
 India, and members of a Literary Society in an Indian University, 
 represent the pick of Indian literary cultnre. In yonr hands is of 
 necessity reposed the trnst of guarding the growth and determining 
 the history of native Indian Literature — if it is to have one. Yon, 
 who enjoy the benefits of the highest education that India can give 
 her sons, as you pluck its fruit from the Tree of KnDwledge, you 
 must bear always in mind that you have no right to devour the 
 feast in silence and alone. It is your duty — nay, why do I call it 
 a duty — it is your privilege, and your right, to bid your less 
 fortunate brethren to the banquet, and help them freely to share 
 in what has been freely bestowed on you. But how can you impart 
 to the unlearned mass of your countrymen the results of the learn- 
 ing you have gained, save through the medium of a common 
 tongue ? You best, if not you alone, can do this, and in proportion 
 as you produce original works for the enlightenment of the people 
 in the people's tongue, you create a literature native to the land 
 that gave you birth. Therefore I say the subject is one of special 
 interest to my present audience, and I say it is one of special 
 interest at the time, and in this place. 
 
 For you know that there are now not a few among the most 
 learned and most respected of the Elphinstonian graduates who 
 have made it their business to press for a reform in the scheme of 
 higher education that shall admit the vernacular languages to a 
 place in the University curriculum. So far their efforts have been 
 met with one fatal objection, that there is not in the vernacular 
 languages of India a literature sufficient, either in quantity or 
 quality, to afford material for a high class education such as an 
 University should give, and without works of this standard as a 
 medium of tuition, higher education in the Indian vernacular lan- 
 guages is impossible. Some of the objectors go so far as to say that 
 the production of literary work of the necessary class for this pur- 
 pose in the Indian vernacular languages is impossible, because they 
 are already archaic in relation to the highest thought of the day, 
 and incapable of giving expression to the refinements of modem 
 
31 
 
 culture. Now, therefore, is the time when the want has made itself 
 felt of such works in the Indian vernacular languages, as are worthy 
 to be called a literature and where if not here, in the Hall of the 
 Elphinstone College, and at the call of old Elphinstonians in their 
 need, can we expect to find men fit to supply that want ? 
 
 Let ours be the task to-day to see what conditions are neoes- 
 sary for the growth of a vernacular literature as I have defined it. 
 Then shall we be able to judge how far one is possible for India, 
 and to what extent and in what way the reproach may be taken 
 from her of sitting dumb among the nations of the earth, while her 
 sons learn all that is best and worth knowing from foreign teachers 
 in a foreign tongue. To this end I think it would be useful to consi- 
 der the literary history of a country that has a vernacular literature, 
 of its own. For if it be true that what hath been shall be, and 
 what men have done men yet may do, we shall thus be able to 
 argue from cause to efiect and see what results we may expect from 
 influences now at work. The histoy which I propose to take for 
 this purpose is that of England, Not only because her literatu re 
 as a whole, is one of the most excellent the world has ever seen 
 nor only because that literature is the one with which I suppose 
 the majority of my audience are most familiar. Bnt also, and 
 chiefly because the history of England, in many of those particulars 
 that must have influenced the development of her language and 
 literature, is in striking accord with that of India. 
 
 To begin then with England at the time when she first began. 
 The hordes of heathen pirates who, about the middle of the fifth 
 century, swept in their black barks across the German ocean upon 
 the shores of Britain, and bestowed on the island which they wrest* 
 ed from their Keltic predecessors their own name, -^nglaland, 
 the land of the Angles, or men of the Angelu, brought with them 
 no literature as we are to underbtand the word. 
 
 But, like most nations of Aryan descent, they possessed a store 
 of legends, poetical in form, which had been handed down from 
 generation to generation by oral tradition. In subject they all 
 
more or less nearly approached what we understand bj the epic type. 
 That is they consisted in the narrative of the signal achievements of 
 exalted personages, gods and heroes of Teutonic mythology, or 
 princes of ha man birth descended from them. In style, as is 
 natural, in the early oral compositions of a primitive people, they 
 were diflfuse even to tediousness, but remarkable for their earnest 
 directness of expression, for their wealth of poetical imagery and 
 personification, for their vivid description and spirited action, and 
 for their simple but consistent delineation of character. As might 
 be expected of the favorite poems of the hardy warrior race in 
 which tbey had their birth, the virtues most praised are boldness in 
 the fight, fidelity to the prince, and liberality to friends ; the deeds 
 most extolled are those wrought in the battle's brunt, aud in spite 
 of the forces of nature, or even of supernatural power. 
 
 These were the poems which the gleeman, to the accompani- 
 ment of his harp, used to chant to the warriors assembled in the 
 mead-hall to celebrate in deep carousals their own late achievements, 
 and to be stirred by tales of former prowess to deeds that should 
 emulate the glory of their sires. But it was long before they could 
 be reduced to writing. For the first century and a half after the 
 coming of the Angles, the art of writing, so far as they knew it, 
 was confined to inscriptions in the Gothic character on swordblades, 
 drinking horns, and monumental stones. In the long years of 
 fierce struggles with the former inhabitants of the land, and of 
 sanguinary quarrels among themselves, which followed their 
 invasion, there was little opportunity for the growth of a literary 
 class to record existing poems or compose new ones. Even then 
 the beaten Celts had at last withdrawn into distant fastnesses of 
 mountain and moor or fen and forest, and the new comers had 
 settled into some semblance of order, still the men and characters 
 to whom those stormy times had given birth were not those suited 
 for the creation of a literary class. Nor was there yet any such 
 national tongue as could be taken for a standard of literary speech. 
 For each band of rowing warriors, from a difierent German tribe 
 as it landed, settled where it could find a footing in each new 
 settlement long remained independent of the rest. Thus was the 
 
33 
 
 land split up into a nnmber of small principalities eacb distinct 
 under ifs own petty chief, and speaking each its own distinct 
 dialect. The process by which these were at last to be absorbed in 
 one, and the leading speech to prevail over all, was a long and 
 gradual one. 
 
 In the meantime some instruction was necessary and some 
 impulse to a more general and persistent cultivation of the arts of 
 peace, which none in that wild community of warriors could give, 
 before their rude utterances could be refined into a standard of 
 language, and preserved in a written literature. Such instruction 
 and such an impulse were given by the missionary priests under 
 St. Augustine, who landed on the shores of England in 597, bring- 
 ing with them the learning and religion of Rome. They worked 
 with such effectual zeal that they soon converted to Christianity 
 those wild Northern pirates, and induced their rulers not only to 
 •countenance but io aid their efforts by the active and substantial 
 Support of churches, schools, monasteries and colleges. The mis- 
 sionaries brought with them not only a gospel and a religion, bat 
 literature and science. Through the former their converts seized 
 the latter. 
 
 Thus there arose in England a native literary class, having its 
 origin in a religious one. It was only natural that the new religion, 
 widely spread and sincerely followed, should make its influence felt 
 in the language and literature of the people. Those who collected 
 and reduced to writing the old poems they found in vogue, would 
 be apt to interpolate into the heathen composition, expressions and 
 passages more appropriate to the new cult than to the old. Such 
 treatment of an old legend in transcribing it from oral tradition, 
 even for the purpose of recording it in its original language and for 
 its original possessors, is not unnatural, when we consider who the 
 first transcribers were. It must always be borne in mind that those 
 old priests were generally proselyfcizers first and scholars afterwards. 
 Possibly they might have been glad to sweep bodily away the 
 heathen lays, with all their wild, warring, drinking gods and beroes> 
 
34 
 
 their goblins, giants, water fiends, and demons of mountain, forest 
 and moor, and to substitute in their stead the tale of God's love 
 for his creatures, the story of tho gospel of peace, and legends of 
 the lives of the saints. But they appreciated the truth and wisdom, 
 of the parable, told by the Founder of their own religion, of the 
 man who having drunk old wine desireth not new, for he saith 
 ** the old is better," And finding that the lajs of the heathen glee- 
 men had truck so deep a root into the hearts of their hearers that 
 they could not be lightly plucked up and cast away, they wisely 
 detremined to graft on their wild stock slips from a better fruited 
 tree, and thus make of the popular poem a means for the conveyance 
 of instruction to the mass of their ignorant disciples in their owa- 
 language. This accounts in a great measure for what are undoubted- 
 ly later Christian glosses in the old heathen epic. To some extent 
 too, these may have been introduced owing to what we may call 
 the religious vanity of the teachers striving to impress upon their 
 pupils the universality and antiquity of the tenets they professed, 
 and pretending that they were to be found even in the old native 
 lays. 
 
 From a scholar's point of view, it may be regretted that such 
 glosses should find their way into any original text. But where they 
 occur in the oldest English poems they are easily separable. And 
 •we must remember that it was only through those who introduced 
 them that a national English literature became a possibility. There 
 is, therefore, to my mind, something mean and grudging in the 
 pedantic view, which blames those old monks for defacing the 
 earliest monuments of English genius, but omits to praise them for 
 having made possible the erection of the later and better. Those 
 defacements are easily wiped off", while the foundations which their 
 perpetrators laid for an additional structure, which should stand 
 the wonder of all nations for all time, remain to us Jctypia *es *aeiy 
 a possession for ever. 
 
 But besides thus editing the works of their predecessors, t he 
 members of this new literary class produced compositions of their 
 own, in which, in like manner, they tried to popularize their instruc* 
 
35 
 
 tion among the less learned in the mass of their audience, by con- 
 veying it in the form which they knew to be most acceptable to the- 
 general mind. Not uncommonly, too, a gleeman would become 
 a priest, and bring, to aid him in the discharge of his new duties, 
 the skill he had acquired in the pursuit of his old calling. Or a 
 scholar of the cloister school would become a glee-man, and utilize 
 in his profession the subjects with which he had been familiarized 
 in his pupilage. Hence it is that wo find coming into existence in 
 the eighth century a new class of religious epic, in which Christian 
 subjects and the deeds of Biblical heroes are treated in the style of 
 the old heathen epic, though with the difference in phraseology to 
 be expected from the difference of subject. Besides this, words 
 and figures of speech taken from Latin, the mother tongue of the 
 first missionaries, and the literary or scientific language of the 
 learned class which they created, by degrees forced their way into - 
 the English diction. This was the more easily effected, as the 
 teachers in no way set themselves up, apart from their pupils, as an 
 exclusive priestly or learned caste. Their convents, monasteries, . 
 and schools were scattered about the land. They lived among the 
 people, mixed with them, imparting freely to them the knowledge 
 they possessed, and freely admitting to their own ranks such of 
 them as could sufficiently profit by it. 
 
 In this way were the rudiments of knowledge conveyed to the 
 people in their own speech and the foundations laid of a national 
 literature in their own tongue, supplemented where it was deficient 
 by the language of their instructors. For close upon two centuries 
 after the introduction of Christianity into England, the infancy of 
 English literature, chiefly poetic in its form, and religious in its 
 expression, thus thrived under the fostering care of the Church. 
 During this time the language of the people had been undergoing 
 C' a gradual change. 
 
 As we have seen, the first result of the Teutonic invasion was • 
 the splitting up of the country into a number of small independent 
 states, each under its own chief, and each speaking its own dialect. 
 By degrees, owing partly to quarrels and aggressions among them— 
 
36 
 
 selves, in which the weaker were forced to snbmit to the stronger, 
 and partly through the more pacific means of alliances and 
 combinations of different states, or the operation of the intermar- 
 riages and successions of their rulers, the smaller states were 
 absorbed into the greater, till there remained but three kingdoms 
 independent of each other. Anglia in the North, Mercia in the 
 middle, and Wessex in the South. Of these Wessex had from the 
 beginning been conspicuous for strength ; and when Mercia at last 
 succumbed to her power, about the end of the period which we have 
 just been considering, that is, towards the beginning of the ninth 
 century, Wessex decidedly took the position of the leading power 
 in England. This supremacy of the Southern kingdom, in a 
 measure, accounts for the general prevalence of her dialect towards 
 the end of the eighth century, notwithstanding the fact that the 
 iprincipal Christian religious epics were composed in the Northern. 
 
 At the end of the eighth century began a series of invasions of 
 England by the Danes, commencing with their practical incursions 
 in 787, in which the northern kingdom was the chief sufferer. 
 These new invaders, commencing their deprecations as roving 
 robbers, ended as conquerors and Colonists. For nearly a century 
 and a half, England was first in deadly conflict with the savage foe> 
 and then subject to the foreign rule which his short-lived triumph 
 introduced. 
 
 Daring these dark years of dangers and distress little was to 
 be expected of the national literature, and the native epic dwindled 
 to the dimensions of the ballad, or song descriptive of a single 
 incident. Yet even this period of desperate crisis was not without 
 its salutary influence on the young btit hardy plant of English 
 literature. In their first attacks the Danes harried the northern 
 shores of England, which they first approached. They there plun- 
 dered the churches, sacked the monasteries, and overthrew the seats 
 of learning which, as we have seen, had sprung up throughout the 
 land during the two centuries before their coming. Thus it was 
 that the Northern kingdom was the chief sufferer by their depreda- 
 tions* 
 
37 
 
 In the South the heroism and vigour oi King Alfred offered 
 a determined opposition to their further advance. But even here 
 long unsettled fears of sanguinary struggles with a foreign power 
 necessarily ended in a general decay of learning, which in the 
 North may be said alftiosfc to have perished. When more peaceful 
 times returned, it was King Alfred, labouring in his own person, 
 and encouraging by his own example, who collected and fanned 
 the dying embers of learning and religion, and gave a fresh impulse 
 to education and literature. Thus it came to pass that the centre 
 of literary activity was shifted to tho ^-'outhern kingdom, the dialect 
 of which, we have seen, had begun to be preferred to the others.. 
 The manner in which King Alfred worked also conduced to extend 
 the scope of English Literature, by lifting it out of the groove of 
 epic poetry, in which it had so long worked. When he undertook 
 those great pacific reforms, which even more than his bravery in 
 the field and prudence in the council, have marked him as one of 
 the greatest rulers the world has ever seen, he found that in the 
 troublous times so lately past, the knowledge of Latin had almost 
 disappeared from England. In his own word " the learning which' 
 formerly foreigners sought among the Angles, Angles must now 
 get from foreigners," 
 
 To enable them to do this, a knowledge of Latin was essential,, 
 especially in the fields of science and theology, as that language was 
 then the main vehicle of instruction in those subjects. Partly to 
 encourage the study of Latin, and partly to bring within the reach 
 of the mass of his subjects, the religious works written in that 
 language, Alfred undertook their translation into the vernacular . 
 Many he translated himself, others he procured to be translated by 
 the learned and pious men whom he advanced to high ecclesiastical 
 offices. The making of these translations powerfully promoted the 
 cultivation of English prose composition. 
 
 A further impulse to prose writing was given by the codifica* 
 tion of the English law, undertaken by Alfred, and a still more 
 powerful one by the encouragement given to the compilation of the 
 chronicles of contemporary and recent history, now known aKS the 
 
38 
 
 :8axon Chronicles, which was commenced in his reign. Thus was 
 laid the foundation of that English prose literatare which is now so 
 •rich in works of the highest merit in every branch of culture. 
 
 The encouragement thus given in prose writing possibly reacted 
 upon poetry in the direction of intensifying the unproductiveness 
 induced by the decay of learning consequent on the Danish invasion. 
 For the example of the king would naturally give an impulse to 
 the cultivation of various forms of prose composition, almost to the 
 exclusion of the poetical. But this was not without benefit, even 
 to poetry, for in the first place it led to a discontinuance of that 
 ^pic style, in which there seemed some danger of English poetry 
 becoming permanently fixed, and prepared the way for the reception 
 of other forms of poetical composition, first from the Danes, and 
 later from the Normans. In the second place, it is in its prose, not 
 in its poetry, that the vernacular speech of a nation must be chiefly 
 sought, for it is there that its main strength lies as a means for the 
 expression of the ordinary ideas of daily life. 
 
 In encouraging prose composition, then, by men of learning 
 and culture, the first step was taken towards settling the native 
 language in which the vernacular literature of England was to find 
 expression, and from this the whole literature would benefit, as 
 anuch in its poetical as in its other branches. 
 
 Now one great effect of the translation of a large number of 
 Latin works into the vernacular English was to increase in the 
 -vocabulary of the latter language the number of Anglicized forms 
 of Latin words which had found their way into it by the contact 
 •of the English with the Roman missionaries. For in translating 
 Latin books, especially those treating of special subjects, in which 
 are contained a number of technical terms, the translator would 
 constantly come across a word which had no exact equivalent in 
 the vernacular. He then simply transliterated, instead ot translat- 
 ing it. Another effect was a tendency to Latinize the style and 
 •construction of the vernacular language itself, so that, in the origin 
 
39 
 
 of English prose, we can detect traces of an influence tending, not 
 only to enlarge the rocabulary, but to modify the nature of tho 
 language. That this influence made itself felt, not only in the 
 religious and theological works, translated or imitated from the 
 Xatin, which formed the bulk of the English prose literature com- 
 menced by King Alfred, but in the common speech of the people, 
 is evidenced by the fact that such Latinisms are to be found in the 
 Saxon Chronicles of current events, which were continued after 
 the death of Alfred until the end of the tenth century. 
 
 Concurrently with this influence of Latin, the language of the 
 
 people of England felt the influence of Danish. In le&s than 100 
 
 years after their first piratical incursions in 787 the Danes had 
 
 obtained so strong a footing in England that Alfred was compelled 
 
 in 878 to cede to them the whole of the northern and a great part 
 
 of the eastern provinces. During his life he succeeded in keeping 
 
 them within these bounds. But he died in the second year of the 
 
 10th century, and after his death, especially during the disastrous 
 
 reign of Ethelred, they constantly extended their borders until in 
 
 1013 they were masters of the whole island, and from that time, for 
 
 a period of 30 years, England was under the sceptre of Danish 
 
 Kings. 
 
 This subjection to a foreign rule, however short and mildly 
 administered, could not but have exercised some depressing and 
 humiliating efiect upon the national spirit, when poet and chronicler 
 compared the glorious times of Alfred or Edgar with their present 
 state. But the national spirit was by no means broken, and the 
 Danish kings wisely avoided rousing it, for they felt that their 
 tenure of the sovereignty was still precarious. The Danes were 
 largely outnumbered throughout the whole country by the English, 
 among whom still smouldered the embers of a patriotic pride that 
 could ill brook the way of a foreign master. Dull and dimmed they 
 might be under the crushing weight of late defeats, yet they needed 
 but small encouragement of opportunity and success to be fanned 
 into a blaze so fierce as should speedily destroy the conqueror. Th 
 
40 
 
 great Canute, when lie succeeded to the throne in 1016, must hava 
 realized this in his politic mind, for throughout his rein his object 
 seems to have been to keep the English portion of his subjects quiet 
 and contented. He adopted as his oflficial language the southern 
 dialect of the English tongue, which had under Alfred become the 
 literary language of his kingdom. In this dialect he promulgated 
 his laws, which he was careful should in the main be adjusted to 
 those which had already long been in force, and annul neither those 
 of the West Saxons, nor Merician?, nor of the Danes themselves. 
 The whole realm being thus brought under the sway of a ruler as 
 wise as he was strong, and careful to ease so far as possible the 
 friction which it might be feared would arise between the various 
 discordant bodies which he governed, England at last entered upon 
 the rest of which she was so much in need, and without which it is 
 useless to expect in any country any material progress in literature. 
 
 On the sudden death, without issue, of Hardicanute, in 1042^ 
 the sceptre passed by a bloodless revolution back to the line of 
 English kings. For the Danes found themselves unprepared with a 
 Successor to the throne. They were without concert among them- 
 selves, and without a leader. The English, on the other hand, were 
 determined to rid themselves of the foreign yoke, and unanimous 
 in their counsels, while in Earl Godwin they had a leader of capa- 
 city, able to give effect to those counsels. Hence, at the general 
 meeting which he called at Gillingham to determine to the suc- 
 cession, the Danes, outnumbered and outvoted, were easily cowed,, 
 and deterred from any real opposition, and Edward the Confessor,. 
 a son of Ethelred, was crowned King of England. Under his just 
 and impartial rule the amalgamation of Danes with the English 
 was completed, all the sooner, thanks to the fact that Denmark, 
 torn with internal dissenJ^ions, was unable to offer any material 
 opposition to his succession, or even to spare an army of invaders^ 
 for the assistance of their kinsmen in England. 
 
 This contact with the Danes was not without material effect 
 both on the language and literature of England. On the language 
 it operated to some extent by altering and enlarging the vocabulary 
 
41 
 
 by the introduction of Danish terms, principally in the northern 
 districts, bat chiefly by unsettling the system of inflections. For the 
 Scandinavian tongne of Denmark, though closely allied to the low- 
 German one of England, had lost most of its inflections, while 
 English, at the time of the Danish invasions, was still an inflected 
 language. In literature the Danes were not so far advanced as the 
 English, but, thanks to the loss of their inflections, thej had attain- 
 ed to the use of rhymes in their poetry, while the English still 
 adhered to the alliterative method of the ancient epic, as better 
 suited than rhyme to the terminations of an inflected language. 
 The Danes introduced their rhyming rimesongs, and as the English 
 language lost its inflections, it adopted the use of rhyme in poetry, 
 and by consequence the rule of alliteration was relaxed. 
 
 With the restoration of Edward the Confessor to the throne of 
 his fathers, the spirit of national independence revived in England 
 and a fresh impetus was given to the cultivation of the national 
 literature. But at the same time a taste for French forms of com- 
 position was imported. For the king had been educated at the 
 Court of Normandj, where he imbibed the French tastes and habits, 
 which he brought to the throne of England. The air of French 
 grace and refinement, affected in the court of the king, naturally 
 flavoured the whole atmosphere of polite society, extending even 
 into the realm of literature, and chiefly the province of poetry. 
 
 Thus a quarter of a century before the Norman conquest, was 
 England brought into contact with the Roman element, which waa 
 to play so large and important a part in the development of her 
 language and literature. The effect of this influence was so has- 
 tened and heightened, by the Norman conquest of England, in the 
 latter half of the 11th century, some ten months after the death of 
 Edward the Confessor, that one is apt to ascribe to the later event 
 all the eff*ect of that contact. But there can be no doubt that 
 the contact had begun, and its influence had been felt, at least 
 on the polite literature of England, during the 24 years of Edward 
 the Confessor's reign, and the way had been to some extent pre- 
 pared, for the influence of the Norman rule on th© language and 
 4 
 
42 
 
 literature of England. At this point then we see that England, if 
 not yet actually possessed of a literature worthy of the name, has 
 at least shown a capacity and disposition to create one, while to 
 some extent there has been a standard of language established in 
 which to give it expression. Then came the Norman conquest in 
 1066, which while it changed so much and destroyed so much, yet 
 added so much more, that in a comparatively few years the 
 language was settled nearly as we have it now, and a vernacular 
 literature had leaped to sadden life^ that numbered among its 
 productions some of the masterpieces of the world. This is no 
 exaggeration. 
 
 So far we have been considering the history of six centuries, 
 from the first invasion of England by the low German tribes in 
 449, to the death of Edward the Confessor in 1065. During the 
 first 150 years of this period, there was no writing, no literature, 
 no language, in the sense of a common national speech. During 
 the next 469 years, that is from the advent of the Roman mis- 
 sionaries in 597 to the battle of Hastings in 1066, the English lan- 
 guage had been exposed to the latinizing influence we have noticed, 
 and the literature had progressed to the extent of producing some 
 epic lays, ballads and religious songs in poetry, some chronicles 
 tind devotional treatises in prose. But of the language, which was 
 still in its inflected state, there was no generally accepted standard 
 of correct diction, and the literature was still in the merest rudi- 
 mentary stage. Both would be alike unintelligible to the modern 
 Englishman. 
 
 But in the six centuries after the Norman conquest what do 
 we find? In 1683, that is 617 years after the landing of William I 
 at Hastings, a period equal to that which had previously closed 
 between that event and the first settlement of the Angles in Eng- 
 land, Dryden and Banyan, the poets of the Restoration and the 
 Philosophers of the Royal Society, were speaking and writing 
 modern English, identical in every material particular with that in 
 which I address you to-day. Even in 1535, that is 469 years after 
 
the Noi'maii conquest, a period equal to that over -which the Latin 
 influence had previously extended, we are in the Tudor period, 
 within 30 years of Lord Bacon and Shakespeare, whose language 
 is intelligible and familiar to us all, and in an epoch, of which the 
 literary types are Sir Thomas More, Sir John Cheke, and Roger 
 Ascham in prose, and Surrey and Wyatt in poetry, whose works, 
 with the exception of a few archaic expressions, might well furnish 
 a model for the correct composition of English in the present time. 
 
 It would, of course, be a great mistake to ascribe only to the 
 Nornian Conquest all the rapidity and completeness of the change 
 which the language and literature of England subsequently under- 
 went. The discovery of the art of printing, to mention no other- 
 cause, would account for much of it. But it is not too much to 
 say that at least a great portion of the change is to be traced to t\ie 
 advent of the foreigners, who became the ruling class in the 
 country, and imposed upon it a foreign aristocracy, bringing with 
 them foreign manners, a foreign literature, and a foreign language, 
 which alone was spoken in the judicial tribunals and the great 
 councils of the realm, in the Court of the Monarch and the castles 
 of the nobility, and without which none could hope for preferment 
 in any rank of life. 
 
 A full discussion of all the effects of the Norman rule on the 
 language and literature of England would afford ample material 
 for a whole lecture in itself, and X cannot enter on it here. But I 
 may briefly indicate some of the chief results. The Normans, 
 though Scandinavian in their origin, had by the middle of the 11th 
 century become thoroughly naturalized as Frenchmen. Their lan- 
 guage and their literature were those of a Roman tongue, and they 
 were themselves foremost in every respect among the people 
 characterised by it. They brought with them to England a grow- 
 ing literature of their own, and stores of learning, not yet perfect, 
 derived from ancient Greece and Rome and the Arab conquerors 
 of Spain. But they came as conquerors and governors, not as 
 settlers. Hence their literature continued to progress in England 
 
44 
 
 fer a time distinct from that indigenous to the soil. During this 
 time the aristocracy of the country in all its branches -was Norman. 
 The native language consequently fell into disfavour, even with 
 the English themselves, for they saw that the readiest way to profit 
 and preferment was to consult the tastes of their Norman rulers. 
 
 The effect of this on the language was a shattering and dislo- 
 cating one, so that the tongue, which, we have seen, was already in a, 
 fair way to become the standard of national speech, was again split 
 np into a nnmber of provincial dialects. English literature, there- 
 fore, could make but little p regress, not only by reason of the want 
 of a generally accepted standard of the national language, but 
 because the most accomplished English scholars generally affected 
 the Norman forms of composition either in French or Latin. But 
 the time was at hand when the Norman element should no longer 
 exist side by side with the English, but be absorbed into it ; and it 
 was then the great change was wrought in the English language, 
 which resulted in that rapid growth of the English vernacular 
 literature we Just now had occ^ision to notice. This absorption 
 of the Norman element into the English was brought about by 
 the severance of the connection between the Normans in Ensrland 
 and the Normans of Normandy in 1204, when Philip II of France 
 wrested the Dukedom of Normandy from John, King of England 
 and re-united it to the realm of France, directly subservient to her 
 king. Up to this time the Normans in England had been rulers 
 only of the country they had conquered, but with their states, their 
 homes, their sympathies and tastes all in Normandy. But by th^ 
 loss of Normandy, the Normans in England were cut off from the 
 country of their birth, forced to adopt as their home the country of 
 their conquest and themselves to become a portion of its people. 
 
 In this position it was inevitable that they should be absorbed 
 into the bulk of the population, for they were in so small a minori- 
 ty that they could not continue to exist as a separate nation. But 
 by reason of the superior culture and intellectual power of the 
 Normans, the absorption would be in such a manner as to convey 
 
45 
 
 a strong tincture of the element absorbed into the absorbent. Hence 
 it is that we find in England, some two centuries after the Norman 
 •conquest, a new people, with virtually a new language and by con- 
 sequence a new literature. This brings ns to the time when. 
 •Chaucer was writing his poems in a midland variety of that 
 southern dialect of English, which we saw before the conquest had 
 well nigh become the standard of the national speech, but with 
 «uch admixture.of Norman terms and such change in the English 
 forms, that the Canterbury Tales would have been as unintelligible 
 to the subjects of King Alfred as the Saxon Chronicle to most 
 English readers of to-day. In fact, by Chaucer's time the speech 
 of England before the Norman conquest had become as much a dead 
 language as it is now, and it was that new language, formed by the 
 fusion of the English and the Norman, which Chaucer did so much 
 to popularize and settle, that became the basis of our modern 
 speech, the vernacular in which our national literature is expressed* 
 
 I do not propose to consider further in detail the history of 
 the development of the English language and literature, for we 
 have reached now the point where that language is settled and 
 <that literature has begun. For within three centuries of that time 
 the language was much the same as I am speaking now, and the 
 works of Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton had been given to the 
 world. This is the point then, where I think may usefully be 
 instituted the comparison I proposed at the outset between India 
 and England. Tou must have been struck with several points of 
 similarity. In both we have a like congeries of pretty principalitie_ 
 with different languagcF, in which we can detect the first rudiments 
 of literary composition. In both we have the gradual absorption 
 of these into a few leading nationalities, whence originate a preva- 
 lent form of speech. In both we have the development of learning 
 and accretions to the indigenous speech, due to the education 
 imparted by a foreign race of greater culture. In both we have 
 much the same vicissitudes of foreign conquest and foreign rule. 
 
46 
 
 So far as these are concerned then, India would not appear 
 to labour nnder any special disadvantage, that makes impossible, in 
 her case, the existence of a vernacular literature, that has been 
 proved to be a possibility in England. Come then to the points of 
 difference, and see if there is in them any special advantage to 
 England. First, there is the unity of her vernacular language as 
 compared with the diversity of those of India. But this, I think, 
 is a difference, more apparent than real, arising out of the difference 
 in size between the two countries. Where you have a territory so 
 vast as that of Indiaj inhabited by people of different places, 
 kept asunder by differences of religion and caste, you have 
 almost of necessity different languages, as in the case of different 
 countries in the same continent, but it does not follow that each 
 may not have a literature of its own. Another, perhaps more 
 material, difference is the religious origin of the instruction 
 imparted to the English by their foreign teachers, which firs'' 
 made a vernacular literature possible. You remember how the 
 misfcionary priests of Rome dwelt among the people to whose educa- 
 tion they devoted themselves, and except for their superior know- 
 ledge, themselves were of the people. This was possible for them, 
 for they were not held at arm's length by the people themselves. 
 They were not met by any strictures of caste, rules, or the seclusion 
 of Avomen. But after all they only began the work, which was 
 carried on by their native pupils among their own people. The 
 same result should not bo impossible of attainment here. If those 
 who receive their higher education here would but labour, with the 
 same self-devotion to spread it among their less fortunate fellows, 
 they might leaven the whole mass of their countrymen, just as did 
 those English scholars of the Roman Cloister Schools. 
 
 The most material point of difference, and the one, I think, 
 in which England enjoys the most signal advantage over India, 
 was in the amalgamation of the Normans with the English. When 
 once that fusion of the dominant race with the subject had taken 
 place, we have seen how complete was the change it wrought in 
 
47 
 
 the language, and how rapid was the growth therefrom, of the 
 national literature. Such a fusion is, I think, impossible here. In 
 the first place, I do not think, the English iu India will ever be 
 completely cut off from the English in England, unless indeed some 
 foreign power captures England, or the exchange value of the rupee 
 sinks so low that it will be impossible for us here to maintain our 
 connection with the country of our birth. In the next place, even 
 if the severance took place, the English in India would simply 
 remain a separate race that would soon die out, for it would be 
 impossible for them to be absorbed into the native races, from which 
 they are excluded by the rules of caste and the social and religious 
 prejudices of the natives themselves. 
 
 But the question still remains, whether it is possible in India 
 otherwise to effect what in England was effected by the fusion of 
 the two peoples into one. The result of this was, that without 
 substituting one language for the other, that of the majority, which 
 was the common speech of the country, but of the two, the less 
 capable of use for the purposes of higher culture, by admixture 
 with the other became as capable of such use. It seems to me not 
 altogether impossible to obtain such a result, by means much the 
 same as King Alfred used, when he sought to enrich his language 
 with the learning of Rome. Of course, the process would be slower 
 than by the fusion of the races, and possibly not so complete. But 
 I think, if encouragement were given to prose composition in the 
 vernacular languages, while education was generally diffused by the 
 publication of translations into them of the best modern English 
 works, in which the terms peculiar to modern culture, for which 
 there are no Indian vernacular equivalents, should be rendered not 
 by translation or paraphrases, but by transliteration, in process of 
 time the Indian vernacular languages would be so changed and 
 enriched as to be able themselves to give original expression to the 
 highest thoughts of modern culture. * 
 
 Thus would an Indian vernacular literature be possible in all 
 its branches. Perhpas I shall be told that what I propose would be 
 
48 
 
 B " corrnption " of the native languages, I replj that this was the 
 very process by which the English language was enabled to produce 
 the glorious literature which it now possesses. It is no more a 
 corruption than the seed can be said to be corrupted by the soil 
 and water and manure, that enable it to germinate and bear fruit a 
 hundred-fold. For every language, so long as it is to adopt itself 
 as a living language to the requirements of the day, must be in a 
 constant state of flux and change, of decay and growth, when it 
 ceases from this it is a " dead language." But to have a vernacular 
 literature you must have a living vernacular language. 
 
 But how is this change to be produced ? Again, I say, you 
 my present audience, are the most fitting instruments for the work. 
 You possess the traditions of a glorious past in a classical antiquity, 
 such as England never had. You have all the learning of the 
 present brought to your very doors, and you are masters of the 
 people's speech. In your hands, then, you hold the destinies of that 
 speech, and it is for you to say whether it shall be attuned to 
 thoughts divine in noble words, or remain for ever unable to give 
 expression to anything much more subtle than an old wife's fable 
 or inspiring than a marauder's ballad, while you set apart from your 
 fellows, rich perhaps in the knowledge which you owe to strangers, 
 but passing poor in the contentment born of the thought of duty 
 done to your brethren and to the land whose sons you are. I will 
 not suggest as possible to any of my present audience a baser 
 alternative, which yet we know to have been adopted by some, who 
 owe to an English education whatever knowledge they possess 
 and whatever influence that gives them among their ignorant 
 fellows. 
 
 To spread real knowledge by cultivating true thought, is not 
 that a nobler ambition than to foment discontent by propagating 
 lies ? Is not that, too, a surer means — as well as a safer— by which 
 to attain your end, for such of you as have those honest aspirations 
 after national vanity and independence, with which every true 
 Englishman must sympathize ? Not till a people think, can they 
 
49 
 
 tict, and not till they think and act, are they fit to stand alone. It 
 is true that you cannot have in its perfection a national literature 
 without national independence. But it is eqaally true that yon 
 cannot lay the foundations of the latter without the beginning of 
 the former, for in this you have the capacity for thought and the 
 power to give it expression, by which alone any great idea can be 
 spread among the people. Therefore I say it is only while making 
 possible a vernacular literature that you can hope to attain to 
 national independence. 
 
 HEREDITY AND THE REGENERATION OF INDIA.* 
 Lecturer: — Professor M. Macmillan. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 • The sphere of the law of heredity extends over all animate 
 existence. The law that like producers like prevails over the gene- 
 rations not only of animals, but also of plants. In treating the 
 question, a distinction must be made between specific and individual 
 heredity. Specific heredity, the law that plants and animals of one 
 species cannot produce plants and animals of another species, that 
 the seed of the oak cannot develope into a beach tree, and that a 
 lion cannot be the parent of a tiger, is so invariable that like the 
 law of universal causation and the succession of night and day, it 
 excites neither the wonder nor even the notice of unreflective minds, 
 who see nothing remarkable in the normal course of nature and 
 irrationally reserve their wonder for the exceptional and uncommon. 
 When we pass from specific to individual heredity, the operation of 
 the law becomes less clearly recognisable, because more liable to be 
 
 * Delivered on Saturday the 17th August 1891, Mr. Phirozeshaw 
 M. Mehta, M.A., Barrister at Law, in the chair. 
 
50 
 
 defeated by counteracting causes. Though we are certain that the 
 offspring of human parents must be a human being, we may expect, 
 but cannot be sure, that a child will inherit most of the peculiar 
 characteristics of mind and body, by which its parents were distin- 
 guished from other human beings. This is, however, just what 
 might have been expected from the operation of the law of heredity. 
 We have to remember that, though by the law of heredity, men's 
 physical and mental characteristics are mainly determined by their 
 parents, they may be influenced in a less degree by grand-parents 
 and more remote ansestors. Being the descendants of countless 
 generations of human beings, we have no ancestors from whom to 
 inherit the nature of tigers and horses. But, though our parents 
 may have one set of individual characteristics, we may inherit a 
 large admixture of opposite characteristics from a grand-father. 
 Thus Edward III. resembled not his father Edward II., but his able 
 and warlike grand-father. Yet, on the whole, children are more 
 likely to resemble their parents than their grand-parents. Accord- 
 ing to Galton, we inherit about l-16feh of our original nature from 
 our grand-parents and a whole quarter from our parents. For the 
 sake of simplicity, confining our attention to inheritance from 
 parents, we can say with regard to individual charateristics that 
 children tend to resemble their parents, that the child of virtuous 
 parents is more likely to be virtuous than the child of vicious 
 parents, and the children of parents strong in mind and body are 
 likely under ordinary circamstances to grow up into men and 
 women strong in mind and body. The truth of this, as a general 
 rule, is so obvious that it has been recognised from the earliest times 
 of which wo have any record. Moral heredity is recognised in the 
 laws of Mann where we read, *' A woman always brings into the 
 Yforld a son gifted with the same qualities as he who begat him "» 
 and " We may know by his act the man that beloogs to a low class, 
 or who is born of a disreputable mother," and again, "A man of 
 low birth has the evil dispositions of his father or his mother, or of 
 both — he never can hide his descent." The anciently established 
 caste system of India and of Egypt is a recognition on an immense 
 
51 
 
 scale of heredity, for its cliief justification is that physical and 
 mental aptitudes for work are handed down from generation to- 
 generation, that the descendant of many generations of carpenters 
 starts life with an inherited capacity for working in wood, so that 
 it would be in most cases a waste of talent to educate him to any 
 other trade. Another practical illustration of the belief in the 
 principle of heredity is to be found in Japan, where, it is said, the 
 parents of criminals are punished for the crimes of their children. 
 The proverbs of all nations recognise the resemblance between 
 parents and children. In England, a son resembling his father is 
 proverbially declared to be a " chip of the old block." An Indian 
 proverb tells us that " a son takes after his father as the fruit of the 
 banyan tree is like the tree on which it grow?." Quotations In sup- 
 port of heredity might be collected from most of tbe great writers 
 of ancient and modern tinies. Aristotle illustrated it by the story 
 of a father, who, being dragged out of the house by his son, 
 besought, that son to drag him no farther than the threshold, for, 
 he said, "I in my day dragged my father no farther than the 
 threshold." The grim humour of this story Is reproduced in 
 Browning's poem of Halbert and Hob. But it is useless to accu- 
 mulate the various expressions of belief in heredity to be found in 
 the writings and sayings of all ages. Enough has been said to 
 illustrate how widely the principle has been accepted as true by 
 the wisdom of the ancients. 
 
 It may, however, be objected that many generalizations, once 
 widely accepted, have had to be rejected by modern science, as- 
 based upon no better foundation than a certain number of affirma- 
 tive instances, that by their strange coincidence attracted attention, 
 while the contrary Instances, having nothing remarkable in them,, 
 were easily forgotten. As Bacon clearly pointed out, all the old 
 superstitious ^)eliefs lu astrology, witchcraft, charms, omens, and all 
 kinds of magic were due to this tendency of the human mind to- 
 attend to positive instances and neglect the duty of searching for 
 negative instances. Can the same be said of the principle of here-- 
 
52 
 
 ■^dity ? Can we believe that it; is based only on a few chance cases 
 in which children happened to resemble their parents, and could 
 we find, if we looked for them, just as large a proportion of 
 instances of resemblance between men born, say, in the same year, 
 or in the same house, as between parents and children ? ]f this, 
 were so, then this generalization, like the superstitions of the 
 ignorant, must be condemned as a popular delusion for which there 
 is no rational foundation. This, however, is very far from being 
 the case. Modern science, instead of attacking the belief in heredity, 
 confirms it on rational grounds. Specific heredity, the law that 
 animals can only reproduce their own species, is of such universal 
 necessity that it admits of no exception. Indeed, the universality 
 of specific heredity is a very strong argument in favour of indivi- 
 dual heredity. Seeing that through the whole animal and vege- 
 table world, parents of one species can never produce offspring of 
 another species, it is natural to expect that parents who transmit 
 all their specific qualities should also transmit some of their indivi- 
 dual peculiarities also. You have probably all got in your own 
 • experience instances of the resemblance between parents and chil- 
 dren in private life, that are far too striking and numerous to be 
 attributable to chance. Writers upon the subject of heredity in 
 collecting statistics have to confine themselves to the relationships of 
 eminent men, whose characters are known from history, so that 
 readers may test the accuracy of their instances. Even from this 
 limited range of selection Galton and Eibot can bring forward a 
 convincing array of instances. It would be useless for me here to 
 bring all this great mass of evidence before you. Let me, however, 
 as good typical modern instances of intellectual heredity, direct 
 your attention to the amount of literary talent and learning that has 
 been displayed by two English families — the Arnolds and the 
 
 Wordsworths— in both which cases I happen to be able to supple- 
 ment the information attainable in biographical dictionaries by my 
 own individual experience. The literary reputation of the Arnold 
 family appears to begin with Thomas Arnold, head-master of 
 
 Rugby, whose history of Rome deserves to be regarded as one of 
 
53 
 
 the very greatest master-pieces of English prose. His eldest son 
 was Matthew Arnold, the poet ; a younger son was W. D. Arnold, 
 Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, author of OaJcfield,. 
 whose death is consecrated in one of his brother's most beautiful 
 and pathetic poems. The second son of Thomas Arnold was another 
 Thomas Arnold, who has written several works on English litera- 
 ture. His daughter is Mrs. Ward, the authoress of Robert Elsmere. 
 One of his sons, who was my contemporary at Rugby, won scholar- 
 ships there and at Oxford by his marked superiority in English over 
 other candidates. The only original work, as far as I know, that 
 he has yet produced, is his treatise on the Roman System of Pro- 
 vincial Administration, by which he won the Arnold Essay at 
 Oxford ; but he may be expected in the future fully to sustain the 
 family literary reputation. The literary talent and genius mani- 
 fested in the Wordsworth family is equally remarkable. The great 
 poet's sister Dorothy is known to have rivalled him in poetic insight 
 and keen susceptibility to the beauties of nature. His brother was 
 the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, and author of Ecclesiastical Biographies. Two sons of the 
 Rev. Christopher Wordsworth became Bishops, one the Bishop of 
 St. Andrews, the other the Bishop of Lincoln. The Bishop of St. 
 Andrews wrote a work on the Bible in Shakespeare. His younger 
 brother, the Bishop of Lincoln, is the author of " Greece Pictorial 
 and Descriptive " and many other learned works. One of the 
 Bishop of Lincoln's sons, whose lectures I bad the privilege of 
 attending at Brasenose College, Oxford , has since become Bishop of' 
 Salisbury, making the third Bishop in the Wordsworth family. 
 He is an eminent Latin scholar and is the author of '* Fragments of 
 Early Latin." His brother Canon Wordsworth wrote *' Social Life 
 in the English Universities." His sister is joint authoress of a 
 biography of her father, the Bishop of Lincoln. If we now turn to 
 the direct line of descent from the poet we find it well represented 
 by the late Principal of Elphinstone College, whose literary talents 
 and poetic genius are well known in Bombay and deserve to be 
 better known by the world. 
 
54 
 
 Two such instances of family genius 1 only give as examples. 
 They would prove little in themselves if they were not supported 
 by the large array of similar instances, far too numerous to be 
 included in this short paper, of hereditary genius collected by Galton 
 from his investigations into the family history of eminent judges, 
 statesmen, commanders, men of science, poets, musicians, painters, 
 and orators. Our own personal experience makes it plain to us 
 that as might be expected, bodily strength, moral character, and 
 ordinary intellectual ability are as distinctly hereditary as genius. 
 We may, therefore, safely conclude that the intellectual and moral 
 •character and the physical strength with which a child begins life 
 are entirely or almost entirely derived from its parents. It may 
 perhaps be objected that in many cases healthy parents have un- 
 healthy children and wise parents have foolish children. This, of 
 course, cannot be denied. But such exceptions are quite compati- 
 TdIc with the fact that the children of healthy parents are more 
 likely to be healthy than the children of unhealthy parents, 
 and that the children of wi^e parents are more likely to be 
 wise than the children of unwise parents. In the case of large 
 -numbers — for instance, if we consider whole nations instead of 
 individual instances — the exceptions due to chance or counteract- 
 ing causes would disappear. Just as a thousand picked marksmen 
 woule be sure to make a better score at the target than a thousand 
 men unskilled in the use of the rifle, although one or two of the 
 best shots made by the unskilled riflemen might happen to be better 
 than one or two of the worst shots of the picked marksmen, so, 
 other circumstances lemaining the same, the next generation of 
 a nation of parents Etrong in mind and body is sure to be stronger 
 in mind and body than the offspring of a nation of mentally and 
 physically weak parents- 
 Having thus established that the bodily and mental powers of 
 children are to a very large extent determined by the bodily and 
 mental health of their parents, it is natural next to enquire whether 
 
55 
 
 a child derives more of its original character from its father or its 
 mother, and whether any distinction can be made between the 
 inheritance derived from the two parents. Schopenhauer was 
 strongly of opinion that a distinction could be made between the 
 mental gifts derived from father and mother. He was firmly con- 
 vinced that a child derives its intellect from its mother and its 
 will from its father. Tf this were so, it would be expedient in the 
 interests of the coming generation to cultivate especially the intel- 
 lects of girls and the will power of boys. But in this as in other 
 cases Schopenhauer seems to have generalised for the most part 
 from his own instance. As he happened himself to inherit his 
 intellect from a clever mother, and Goethe and many other eminent 
 men are known to have resembled him in this, he elevated this 
 order of mental succession into a general rule, ignoring the equally 
 numerous cases of men, who like William Pitt, Hartley Coleridge, 
 and J. S. Mill inherited their intellect from their fathers. However 
 numerous the instances we examine, it seems impossible to accept 
 any such distinction as Schopenhauer believes to exist between the 
 kind of influence, that male and female parents have upon the mind 
 of their offspring. As far as can be seen, it appears that father and 
 mother both have a share in affecting aU the elements of their off- 
 spring's character by hereditary transmission, the will, the intellect, 
 the emotions, and the sensations. In some cases a child may in- 
 herit more of its father's will and its mother's intellect, another 
 child may inherit more of its father's intellect and its mother's will, 
 a third may inherit an intellect and will about half way between the 
 intellects and wills of its two parents. Nor can any distinction be 
 made between the quantity of hereditary influence exerted by fathers 
 and mothers over their sons, on the one hand, and their daughters 
 on the other. Although the code of Manu, as we have seen, fully 
 acknowledge the fact that sons inherit their character from their 
 mother as well as from their father, it is, I believe, the prevalent 
 opinion in India that sons resemble their fathers and daughters 
 their mothers. But many eminent European physiologists have 
 beld the opposite theory of cross heredity, that daughters take 
 
56 
 
 after their fathers, and sons after their mothers. Michelet the 
 historian, calls this a " law of which history has but few exceptions.'* 
 It has been called in to explain the fact that so many great men have 
 ordinary sons. Ribot, the French psychologist, is inclined to 
 believe that cross heredity has fewer exceptions than heredity in 
 the same sex. But an impartial examination of statistics seems to 
 give no decided preponderance to either of these two opposing 
 theories, so that we are naturally driven to the conclusion that 
 mothers and fathers exert an equal influence upon the original 
 ground- work of character, with which the boys and girls of the next 
 generation commence life. 
 
 It is at this point that w^e are in a position to apply the doctrine 
 of heredity to the question of the regeneration of India, Why is it 
 that India, which in the golden ages of Sanskrit literature was in 
 the forefront of the world's civilization, has been for the last 
 thousand years in a backward condition, while other nations have 
 been progressing rapidly and far outstripping her in the race .'' 
 Why is it that the nation, that in the past produced poetry and phi- 
 losophy fit to rival the masterpieces of Greece, has for so many 
 centuries produced no literary work of high rank, no great poet, or 
 dramatist, or historian, or philosopher, no great name in literature 
 since the days of Sanskrit literature, no man of first rate eminence 
 in practical life since Akbar, and even he, though an Indian by 
 birth, belonged to a family but newly settled in India ? No single 
 cause can account for this strange retrogression, but I am convinc- 
 ed that the consideration of heredity plainly shows that the principle 
 cause has been the introduction of the practice of female seclusion, 
 which appears to have gradually become more prevalent and strin* 
 gent from the date of the earliest Aryan invasion of India, and 
 came to a climax at the time of the Mahomedan conquest. If you 
 accept the law of heredity — and I think you cannot refuse to 
 accept it — the practice of female seclusion must constantly tend to 
 national deterioration, to diminution of physical, intellectual, and 
 probably also moral strength in each successive generation, Intel- 
 
57 
 
 lectnal and physical strength are equally dependent on active 
 outdoor exercise for their development and establishment. Strict 
 female seclusion prevents the mothers, that is, half the parents of 
 each succeeding generation, from exercising their minds and bodies, 
 except in the feeblest manner. What physical exercise, worthy of 
 the name, can be enjoyed by secluded women, who are never allowed 
 to breathe the free air of heaven on foot or on horseback, and even 
 when they can afford the luxury of what is called by a misnomer car- 
 riage exercise, have the air excluded by blinds and curtains ? Equally 
 little mental exercise is afforded to women confined entirely to 
 domestic duties indoors, and having no opportunity of taking any 
 part whatever in the active life of their husbands and brothers. 
 The consequence of this mode of life is that a girl grows up to 
 womanhood with her mind and body imperfectly developed, and 
 transmits, as far in her lies, her own weakness of mind and body 
 to her children. Let us try to put the matter more clearly by ex- 
 pressing in a numerical form the way in which female seclusion 
 tends to make each generation weaker in mind and body than its 
 predecessor. Let ns imagine a nation in which female seclusion is 
 the invariable rule, and suppose that the average man at the time 
 of marriage has had his mind and body well developed by a good 
 education including the experience obtained by active out door life. 
 Let us express his mental and bodily strength by the number ten 
 and say that he has 10° of mental and bodily strength. Assuming 
 that the average woman is somewhat inferior in bodily and mental 
 strength to the average man, we may suppose that the average 
 woman in this nation was capable of being developed by a good 
 education to 8^ of mental and bodily strength, but that, owing to 
 seclusion, her mind and body were so imperfectly exercised that at 
 the time of marriage her mental and bodily strength was only 6°. 
 Thus we have an average father of 10° and an average mother 
 of 6° of mental and bodily strength, so that by the principle of 
 heredity the average child of the next generation may be expected 
 to be born with a capability of being developed by good education 
 to the amount of capacity midway between that of the father 10°, 
 5 
 
58 
 
 and that of the mother 6°, that is, to 8°, the arithmetical mean 
 between 10° and 6°. Making the same distinction as before 
 between male and female capacity, we may say that the average 
 men of the next generation will be developed by a good education 
 to 9° of capacity, and the average woman, though capable of being 
 developed to 7°, will owing to female seclusion be only developed 
 to 5°. When the men and women of this generation marry, the 
 average child will only be of 7° of capacity, whereas but for female 
 seclusion the average child of each successive generation would 
 have had 9° of capacity. If any one takes the trouble to follow up 
 this calculation, he will see that in this way female seclusion, by 
 stunting the mental and bodily development of the mothers of 
 each generation, tends to produce steady deterioration as time 
 goes on. Though this tendency, like many other tendencies, may 
 be counteracted by other opposing circumstances, it is just as 
 likely to be aggravated by other causes acting in the same direc- 
 tion, so that it is natural to expect that any nation that adopts 
 female seclusion will deteriorate steadily in intellectual and bodily 
 strength. 
 
 On the whole, I think, we shall find that this conclusion 
 deduced from the law of heredity is confirmed by the experience 
 of history, so far as historical facts with their complex inter- 
 mixture of causes and effects can give support to any law of cause 
 and effect. At any rate, historical facts harmonise with the 
 conclusion. The rapid rise and fall of great Oriental Empires may 
 be mainly attributed to the effect of female seclusion. The usual 
 history of Oriental Empires is that they originate in some poor 
 tribe or nation overpowering a wealthy monarchy and taking its 
 place for a time, only to be displaced after an interval of wealth 
 and prosperity by some other race of poor conquerors, who go 
 through the same cycle of conquest, prosperity and decay. 
 The history of Europe shows that wealth and prosperity does not 
 necessarily lead to national weakness. The decay of power may 
 
59 
 
 more naturally be attributed to the practice of female seclusion 
 rendered possible by wealth and making the nation that adopts 
 it an easy prey to poor enemies, whose poverty and nomad life 
 have prevented them from adopting the custom. I imagine that 
 it was thus that the hardy Marathas, who seem to have allowed 
 their women more share in active outdoor life than is usual in 
 India, were able to wreck the Mogul power. The same explanation 
 may be given of the early Aryan conquest of India. The decreas- 
 ing stringency of female seclusion, that we find as we go back by 
 the help of Sanskrit literature towards the earliest times of Aryan 
 India, indicates that the ancestors of the modern Hindus allowed 
 their women in Central Asia the same freedom that is still enjoyed 
 there among the nomad Koords in spite of their Mahometanism. 
 Thus the early Aryan conquerors of India and the men of genius, 
 -who endowed the world with Sanskrit literature, were the descen- 
 dants of many generations, the women of which had been adapted 
 by a free life to be the mothers of children strong in mind and body, 
 and so paved the way for a period of success in war and literature, 
 rivalling the age of Elizabeth in England and the outburst of 
 Athenian genius that followed and accompanied the Persian war. 
 Perhaps only one_ Oriental parallel can be found to these great 
 epochs of national history, and that in the conquests of the Arabians 
 at the beginning of the Mahometan era and the triumphs of lifcera- 
 'ture and science that followed these conquests. The brilliant part 
 Ihat the Arabians then played in the history of the world is another 
 fact harmonising with the view that female emancipation is con- 
 ducive to national greatness, for, as Palgrave remarks in the 
 account of his Arabian travels, " The absolute seclusion, which, it 
 is well known, imprisons physically and morally the fair sex in 
 orthodox Mahometan lands, is seldom if ever observed in Arabia, 
 where women bear a great part in active life and domestic cares, 
 keep shops, buy, sell and sometimes even go to war." If so much 
 freedom is now enjoyed by Arabian women, we may infier, and the 
 ancient poetry of idolatrous Arabia supports the inference, that 
 
60 
 
 they were still freer before Arabia was converted by Mahomet. So 
 that there we have an instance of a nation, nnenervated by the 
 intense heat of the climate in which they lived, issuing forth to 
 conquer a great part of the civilised world, and taking the leading 
 position not only in arms, but also in science and literature ; and 
 the Oriental nation that effected this was one conspicuous for the 
 breach of the custom of female seclusion. In course of time, when 
 the later Arabians became rich enough to build harems for their 
 wives and daughters, their valour and genius began to suffer decay*. 
 I must before leaving the subject of these historical instances again 
 remind you that, owing to the vast complexity of the causes to 
 which national success is due, they can only be expected to illustrate 
 and verify and not to prove my position, which almost entirely rests 
 on the indisputable fact that the mental and bodily power of chil- 
 dren is to a large extent determined by the mental and bodily 
 power of their mothers, and that the mothers of the next generation 
 cannot be expected to be strong in body and vigorous in mind, if 
 they are confined to a sedentary indoor life. 
 
 It mny be objected that, even though the practice of seclusion 
 may be prejudicial to the intellectual and physical strength of indi- 
 viduals and nations, it is nevertheless extremely valuable as a 
 safeguard of moral virtue. It is, of course, jierfectly true that 
 seclusion defends women against temptations that they wonl^ 
 encoonter in an unsecluded life. But it must be remembered that 
 the absence of temptation, though it may diminish the amount of 
 actual wrong-doing, does not constitute virtue. A man with mur- 
 derous or thievish inclinations is not necessarily made more virtuous 
 by being imprisoned for life, though he may be thereby deprived of 
 all opportunities of committing theft and murder. The highest 
 virtue consists in facing and resisting and conquering temptations, 
 not in fleeing from them. Although in some cases it may be a good 
 thing that a man, who has some reason to distrust his own resolution, 
 should retire from public life and its temptations, such cloistered 
 virtue, as Bacon calls it, is far inferior to that of the brave man, who 
 
61 
 
 foUo-ws tlie rules of virtue in the midst of all the temptatious of 
 ordinary daily life. Tt is this struggle that, if successful, really 
 strengthens the moral character, and it must be remembered that 
 the power of resisting temptation is like all other mental qualities 
 iiransmissible by heredity. So that every one who gains a moral 
 victory makes the gaining of such victories easier in the future to 
 liis children and his children's children, and so paves the way for 
 their moral progress to greater victories. But such training in 
 militant virtue is denied to women by the practice of seclusion ; and 
 when they become mothers, they hand down to their children moral 
 wills unstrengthened by exercise. In their own case, the want of 
 power of resisting temptation would not perhaps so mnch matter, 
 as it might be nrged with some plausibility that it is useless to arm 
 them against temptations to which they will never be exposed. 
 Nor would the want be so material, if the law of heredity went by 
 sex, and sons took after their fathers and daughters after their 
 mothers. But there is no reason to believe this is the case, and 
 some believers in heredity, as we have seen, actually on the contrary 
 Tjelieve that sons rather take after their mothers and daughters after 
 their fathers. Without accepting this extreme view, we have every 
 reason to believe that sons derive at least as much of their original 
 <jharacter from their mothers as from their fathers, so that the un- 
 trained moral will inherited from a mother bred up in seclusion 
 may descend to her son, who is not, in like manner, protected against 
 temptations to error, and thus falls an easy prey to the temptations 
 of vice when ho becomes his own master and goes out into the 
 world. 
 
 Thus, even if there may be a certain amount of doubt as to the 
 moral effects of seclusion on the women who are secluded, it is 
 liardly possible to deny the bad moral effects it is likely to have on 
 their sons by transmitting to them a character ill fitted to cope with 
 temptation. If to this bad moral effect be added the gradual dete- 
 rioration of intellectual and physical strength that seclusion tends 
 to produce in each successive generation, it is clear that any nation 
 
62 
 
 that adopts the practice of female seclusion is, to use a sporting 
 phrase, severely handicapped in every kind of contest with nations 
 that do not adopt this custom. A nation with this custom, when it 
 competes with other nations for political, literary, scientific or any 
 other kind of pre-eminence, may be compared to a gladiator fighting 
 with one hand tied behind his back, who may by good luck gain 
 temporary success, bat can scarcely hope to be permanently victo- 
 rious. Therefore, any true patriot, who sincerely wishes for the 
 regeneration of India, and has any care for the future of his country, 
 should try to further female emancipation by all means in his power, 
 or else he will be guilty of the logical inconsistency of desiring the 
 end and refusing to use the means. How the emancipation of 
 women in the East is to be accomplished, is a question on which I 
 can say nothing. There are, no doubt, immense obstacles in the 
 way, the strength of which it is impossible for an outsider like me 
 to appreciate; and all that can be said with certainty on the subject 
 ^s that it must be very gradual. Attempts to introduce female eman^ 
 cipation suddenly are almost sure to defeat their own subject. But 
 until progress in tliis direction is somehow or other eflfected, gene- 
 ral progress will be woefully retarded* 
 
 Some twenty-three centuries ago, the Athenian public assembly 
 was discussing the fate of Mitylene, a revolted city that had been 
 re-conquered. The Athenian demagogue Cleon proposed that all 
 the men fit to bear arms should be slain, and that all the women 
 and children should be sold into slavery. Another orator, called 
 Diodotus, argued against this monstrous proposition. It is an 
 extraordinary fact that in his whole speech, as reported by Thucy- 
 dides, Diodotus makes no appeal to the compassionate feelings of 
 his audience, and deliberately bases all his arguments on national 
 interests and none on pity. I have followed the same course in 
 urging the necessity of female emancipation. Had I been an orator, 
 I might have attempted to draw a vivid picture of captives pining 
 for liberty and freedom to live in the sunlight and breathe the free 
 air of heaven. No doubt, it would have been urged on the otber 
 
63 
 
 side that custom reconciles women to a secluded life, as it prevents 
 the canary bird from feeling its captivity. This counter argument 
 is, however, not quite convincing. Those who bring it forward 
 forget that girls must inherit from their fathers aspirations for a 
 free life, and are allowed a short taste of freedom in their childhood. 
 But I prefer to follow the example of Diodotus and base my argu- 
 ment entirely on national interests. Those of you who know me 
 best, my own pupils who have wandered with me year after year 
 through the mazes of Logic and Moral Philosophy, know that, as a 
 rule, I am not a person of very decided opinions ; that I am almost 
 too prone to see both sides of every question. But as to the pre- 
 judicial effects of female seclusion upon the mental and bodily power 
 of any nation or community, that adopts the custom, my conviction 
 is so strong, that in urging the necessity of female emancipation as 
 necessary to national progress, I feel justified in concluding my 
 address, as Milton's Satan concluded his speech to his followers 
 lying at his feet in the oblivious pool of Lethe, with the words :• — 
 " Awake, arise, or be ever fallen," 
 
 POLITICS, ANCIENT AND MODERN.* 
 
 Lecturer :-~F. G. Selby Esq., m.a. 
 Principal , JDeccan College y Foona, 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 "When you did me the honour of inviting me to lecture to you, 
 my first difficulty was how to choose a subject upon which I could 
 hope to say something which would be interesting to you, and, if 
 possible, also, in some measure helpful to you. 
 
 It occurred to me that one of the most definite, and at the 
 same time fruitful, ways in which we may hope to help you who 
 are studying Western History, "Western Thought, and Western 
 
 * Delivered on Tuesday, the 15th December 1891, Principal E. G. 
 Oxenham m the chair. 
 
64 
 
 Institutions amid scenes and conditions far removed from those of 
 Western life — and in which, at the same time, we may be of some 
 help to those Europeans who want leisure and opportunity for 
 extended reading and study — is by doing what we can to make real 
 to you the life and thought of old times in the West. 
 
 This is not, as might at first appear, a subject of merely anti- 
 quarian interest. We are often told, and told with truth, that the 
 division of history into ancient and modern is a purely arbitrary 
 one. In the life of nations as in the life of individuals there is 
 really no past. It requires but little knowledge of history to show 
 that the direct influence of Greece and Rome upon the world has 
 never ceased. I am thinking equally of their spiritual and of their 
 political influence. Upon the issue of the battle of Marathon 
 depended the whole character of European civilization. The East 
 was permeated with the spirit of Greek culture through the work of 
 Alexander and his successors. The civilizing work of Greece was 
 taken up by Rome, who, though she developed no independent 
 speculation of her own, still carried on the traditions of the Greek 
 schools. Further she bequeathed to the world the rich inheritance 
 of her law, and determined by her secular organization the frame- 
 work of the institutions of modern Europe. 
 
 We are concerned more especially to-day with the inheritance of 
 thought : and that Greece a nd Rome are always with us is evident 
 from our literature alone. I am not thinking simply of the form 
 of our language, which is the proper subject of philology, but of the 
 style and the substance of our literature. The full flavour of that 
 literature is caught only by those whose minds are steeped in the 
 xnaster-pieces of Latin and Greek literature, and, I may add, in the 
 English of the Bible. Of course an Englishman's half-instinctive 
 appreciation of his own language will enable him to unfold the 
 general drift of a writer. A perusal of translations and a judicious 
 use of classical dictionaries will enable a man to detect the more 
 obvious literary references, but apart from the studies which I have 
 indicated, a man must miss much, not only in reference to the 
 
65 
 
 •source of ideas, but in reference to the subtle suggestiveness ot 
 words, and the remote allusiveness of phrase and diction. In con- 
 firmation of what I say I need only refer you to lectures to which 
 you must yourselves have listened on such learned writers as 
 Spenser, Hooker, Milton, Gray, Burke, and Tennyson. 
 
 One might, if necessary, go further back for an illustration. 
 Dante, that wonderful writer in whose pages we have the concen- 
 trated essence of the mediaeval civilization, is unintelligible apart 
 from Aristotle and Christian theology — that theology itself being 
 modified by Greek influences, while again the organization of the 
 Church is unintelligible apart from the history of Rome. Or, again, 
 that the spiritual and secular influences of Greece and Rome deter- 
 mined the ideas and moulded the organization of kingdoms through 
 centuries is evident in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, 
 which has fitly been written by one who is at the same time a 
 scholar, a lawyer and a politician. We may point also, by way 
 both of illustration and confirmation, to the continuous loyalty of 
 the Church to Aristotle. For it must be borne in mind that the 
 power of the Church has been not spiritual only. She has helped 
 4o wield the destinies of the world. Even now the Pope issues 
 Encyclicals which are not without efiect on political and social 
 questions. The last Encyclical which I read was on the relation 
 of capital and labour. It was couched in the language of Aquinas, 
 which is the language of Aristotle. Nor, finally, must we forget to 
 attach due weigh t to the deliberate study and conscious imitation 
 of ancient models at the time of the Renaissance. The long disci- 
 pline, feudal and ecclesiastical, of the Middle Ages then came to an 
 end, and the spirit of man once more asserted its right to an organi- 
 zation of society which should satisfy it simply because it was the 
 reflection of it. 
 
 Turning now to our special problem, viz., the relation of old to 
 new in the sphere of political thought, we may approach the problem 
 from different points of view. For example, it is both interesting 
 and instructive to trace the growth of those conceptions, lying on 
 
65 
 
 the borderland of Ethics and Politics, and seeming to ns so simple 
 that they can hardly have had a history. Such, e.g., is onr concep- 
 tion of law. To us it is the expression of the public conscience. It 
 defines and enforces by penalties that set of relations which, it is 
 thought, ought to maintain between individuals and classes. But 
 in our earliest Western records, ix., in the pages of Homer, there 
 is no word for law. In place of it we have decisions, or precedents,, 
 backed by a divine sanction, and guarded and transmitted from 
 generation to generation by the supreme authority — the king. I 
 may notice also that the Bindu conception of law, as expressed in 
 the Code of Manu, differs from our own, according to which law 
 owes its origin to, and is modifiable at will by, purely secular 
 authority. 
 
 Look again at our conception of punishment as being not 
 primarily retributory, but deterrent and reformatory. In ancient 
 times we find merely the conception of retaliation. " An eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth,'* as the Mosaic law expresses it. 
 Offences were offences not against society, but against the indivi- 
 dual sufferers, who might accept such compensation, even in money,. 
 as would satisfy them. It is in the dialogues of Plato, notably the 
 Gorgias, and even more conspicuously perhaps in the dramas of 
 ^schylus and Sophocles, that we trace a progressive moralization 
 of the idea of punishment. Even amongst ourselves, in certain 
 vindictive states of the public mind, the older and the lower view 
 of punishment as retaliatory finds expression. 
 
 I do not, however, propose to-day to follow up the history 
 of isolated conceptions. I wish rather to point your attention 
 to certain general resemblances and differences between old and 
 new political theories — to show how the old ideas are still working, 
 and to consider to what extent and with what modifications the 
 older theories are instructive. 
 
 As I have already indicated, by the word oldy I mean Ch'eek, 
 "We are not surprised to find Greece rich in political thought.. 
 Her great variety of forms of Government and her fatal frequency 
 
67 
 
 of revolution naturally invited speculation as to the proper form of 
 State organization, and the means of giving it stability. It is 
 remarkable how many of the ideas of modern times were anticipate 
 ed in Greece. Rousseau's invective against law is only an echo- 
 of the paradox of Thrasymachus that justice is the interest of the 
 stronger. Rousseau is at one with Plato and Aristotle in maintain- 
 ing that there is such a thing as political justice, i.e., an organiza- 
 tion of the State which is justifiable because it renders possible the 
 perfection and happiness of human life. The controversy between 
 Hobbes and Locke as to the nature of the contract to which it is 
 thought that society owes its origin only repeats the question of. 
 Aristotle — Does the State exist by nature or only by convention ? 
 
 We may say, to begin with, with as much truth as such broad 
 generalization ever admits of, that the Greeks tended to regard- 
 politics as an art, whereas we regard it rather as a philosophy 
 or a science. They treated it rather in a practical and deductive 
 way. Our method is rather inductive and historical. Of course 
 this distinction cannot be sharply maintained. In such passages 
 as those in which Aristotle points out how geographical and moral 
 influences must determine the form of Government appropriate to a 
 State, he rises to the scientific plane of thought. Conversely, in the 
 latest published book upon Politics, Mr. Sidgwick treats the subject 
 in a practical deductive manner. Starting with a few broad 
 generalizations about human nature, he considers how the State 
 may be organized so as to secure the maximum of happiness to the • 
 community as a whole. But in each case we feel that the writer is . 
 passing away from the point of view proper to his age. 
 
 It was natural to Aristotle to treat Politics as an art. The 
 Greeks tended to treat ethics in the same manner — simply because - 
 a new and untried subject must be treated on the analogy of simpler 
 and better known subjects, e.g., Plato in attempting to define 
 justice, seeks for a definition which shall be parallel to that of " the 
 other arts." ^-g-t medicine, he says, gives health to the sick. 
 
68 
 
 What is it he asks that the art of justice gives or does, and who are 
 its patients ? Aristotle was the first to draw definitely even such a 
 simple distinction as that between action and production — doing 
 and making. Again, the frequency of political disturbances 
 naturally drew the attention of thinkers to devising means for 
 preventing these. Thus while we regard society as an organism, 
 the form of which is predetermined by circumstances and by laws, 
 which are only partially modifiable, the Greeks regarded it as a 
 piece of mechanism which may be consciously put together for the 
 realization of a certain end, and which when put together may be 
 held together by law. The constitution of the United States and 
 the form and rules of Government in British India are approaches 
 in fact to the Greek idea. They are mainly matter of statutory 
 enactment. This is illustrated by the importance which is assigned 
 in Greek History to the law-giver. Gladstone will never hold in 
 history the kind of position which is assigned to Lycurgus and to 
 Solon. We may allow that he has caught and given expression to 
 the unspoken tendencies and wishes of the great masses of his 
 countrymen — but it will never be said of him that he moulded 
 men and circumstances to his own individual will — that he himself 
 gave form to the State. I take Gladstone as an instance to point 
 my contrast, because he has undoubtedly been at least as powerful 
 as any other man for good or evil in his generation, and has left his 
 mark ineffaceable upon the form of English society. But the chief 
 reason for the contrast on which I am insisting is that the Greeks 
 did not possess the material necessary to an historic treatment of 
 the subject. Aristotle's knowledge was wide and far-reaching for 
 his day. He made an exhaustive examination of constitutions. 
 His treatise on the constitution of Athens has only recently been 
 recovered. But if we except what he gathered from hints in 
 Homer, his knowledge did not go far back into the past. *' The 
 Greeks were ever children." Nor would he consider the forms of 
 contemporary barbaric life as worth the study which we should devote 
 to them. The comparative method of Maine and Lyall would be a 
 
69 
 
 revelation to him. Thus though he traces the State back to the 
 household — it is rather an anticipation than an interpretation of 
 nature. Similarly the natural succession of Forms of Government 
 traced by Plato is based upon moral and psychological considerations. 
 It is not a generalization from history. But above all things every 
 one must be struck by the practical absence of economic considera- 
 tions in Greek political discussion. What Aristotle achieved in this 
 matter is a good illustration of what is possible in the way of 
 anticipation to an acute mind. He has defined money as the 
 standard of value and the medium of exchange. In the secular 
 controversy between the upholders of private property and socialism 
 he has taken what the majority of the modern world would consider 
 the right side as against Plato. His arguments are very modern in 
 tone. He shows that what is wanted is not so much an equalization 
 of wealth as an enforcement under moral pressure of the duties of 
 wealth. He recognizes that, in the words of Burke, voluntary 
 charity is better than State aid. He recognizes the pride of owner- 
 ship as contributing to self-respect and to efficiency, and he recoo-, 
 nizes the opportunities which the possession of property affords for 
 the display of virtue. Above all he sees that such discontent as 
 exists does not spring simply out of the inequality of property- 
 -man does not live by bread alone." But he failed to seethe 
 value of large production and fair distribution as instruments of 
 moral and intellectual culture. An educated man degraded himself 
 in his eyes when he sought for money more than enough to supply 
 the wants of himself and his household. The Greeks could not 
 realize as we do the importance of industrial phenomena, nor was it 
 possible for them to construct a science of finance. They could not 
 contrast direct with indirect taxation, because, with the exception 
 of taxes on land, they had no direct taxes. In other cases, where 
 we pay taxes to the State, the rich citizens of Greece performed 
 services at their own expense for the State. Sach services were 
 
70 
 
 ^called liturgies. Disfcrusfc prevented credit, consequently in place of 
 borrowing, tlie Greeks were driven to accumulate treasure. Inter- 
 national trade was largely a matter of barter. In the case of 
 Laced89mon the mere absence of a navy was sufficient to render 
 ? international trade impossible. Less money was required than now 
 because much work was done by slaves who were not paid. I'he 
 rate of interest was high, because money was chiefly accumulated in 
 the hands of a wealthy few. The taking of interest was discouraged 
 partly as unnatural, partly as a mode of benefiting by the necessities 
 of the poor. There was little variety of industry. The pure Greeks 
 dndeed mainly confined themselves to agriculture, and there was a 
 prejudice against the alienation of land. Lycurgus divided the land 
 into equal portions and forbade the selling of any portion with a 
 view to maintaining the original equality. But as daughters could 
 inherit, large properties accumulated in the hands of a few, and the 
 inequality of property hastened the downfall of Sparta. Other trade 
 was largely in the hands of metics or resident aliens. 
 
 Lastly, the Greeks were not called upon to consider the 
 question of population as we are. Their difficulty was not to 
 prevent the working classes from outrunning the means of subsis- 
 tence, but to prevent the citizen class from being so reduced by 
 war as to be at the mercy of revolutionary violence. You may 
 remember that in Prof. Seeley's view the downfall of the Roman 
 power was largely due to the falling off in the numbers of the Roman 
 population. In Greece political malcontents or parties worsted in 
 revolutionary contests often went off and founded new colonies. 
 
 Perhaps the passages which show most distinctly how firm 
 a hold the conception of Politics as an art had obtained upon the 
 minds of Plato and Aristotle, are those in which they discuss the 
 question whether the rule of law or the rule of one man is the better. 
 Socrates had argued that it was absurd to elect authorities by lot or 
 iby the vote of «n ignorant multitude. We can imagine his contempt 
 
71 
 
 for the modern principle of *' one man one vote." Toa might as 
 ■well, he said, allow the passengers on a ship to choose their own 
 Captain and steersman. The system of education laid down in 
 Plato's " Republic " is directed towards securing a combination of 
 ability and morality in the rulers. In his " Politicus " he argues 
 that there must be injustice under laws which are general, simply 
 because they are general. To fetter the ruler by unvarying laws is, 
 he says, like forbidding a gymnastic master to modify the general 
 system of training laid down so as to suit individual peculiarities 
 of constitution. Similarly Aristotle argues that where one man can 
 be found immeasurably superior to his fellows in intellect and 
 character, the wisest thing that they can do ia to entrust him with 
 absolute power, A parallel to this may be found in the eulogy 
 passed by Gibbon on the rule of the Antonines, He attributes the 
 then prosperity of the world to the union of ability and wisdom in 
 the absolute ruler. This is not really the highest conception in 
 politics. It is essential to the full development of human character 
 that each individual should feel that he has a value in the State. 
 I have sometimes thought that the conditions under which Aristotle 
 regarded autocracy as justifiable are realized so far as possible in a 
 Native State in modern India. The educated ruler is infinitely 
 above the mass of his subjects. A Native State is small, its problems 
 are relatively simple, and the Chief can himself watch and control 
 all that is done within the limits of his Territory. 
 
 But though we have to insist upon the tendency to ideal 
 construction, arising necessarily out of the practical view which 
 the two great thinkers of Greece took of Politics, we must be careful 
 not to exaggerate the contrast between ourselves and them. There 
 are always two lines of thought in Plato and Aristotle :— (1) What 
 is the ideal form of Government ? (2) What is the best that can be 
 realized ? Their ideals are never altogether in the air. They are 
 criticisms of the weak points in existing Greek constitutions. So 
 far as actual reform went, their experience of democracy was such 
 
that they could nob favour it. But iu the Laws, Plato advocates- 
 "what we should call an aristocracy, i.e., a Government by those^ 
 Tvhose wealth affords them time for study. Aristotle, in a strikingly 
 modern vein of reasoning, advocates a polity, *.e., a system in 
 which power is in the hands of the middle class — of those who are 
 too poor to be revolutionary and yet not sufficiently rich to provoke 
 envy. Masses of men together, and it is an argument which we 
 often hear now, are wiser and better than the single individuals who 
 compose them. Every one from every class, who can contribute to 
 the good of the State, should have an opportunity of doing so- 
 Here, and in the provision which Plato makes for tho elevation of 
 worthy men from a lower to a higher caste, we have an anticipation 
 of the modern principle of competition — '* Tools to those that can 
 use them." I wish next to direct your attention to the form impress- 
 ed upon the political theories of Plato and Aristotle by the leading^ 
 thoughts of their metaphysics. We must never forget that they 
 had a carefully worked out theory of the State. They never forgot 
 that law and Government mast be relative to the idea of the State. 
 By the space which they devote to the consideration of abnormal 
 or perverted forms of Government, they show clearly that in their 
 view there is a right and a wrong in political organization. We 
 may express the general thought of Plato by borrowing Tennyson's 
 conception of one far off divine event to which the whole creation 
 moves. He imagines a hierarchy of the sciences, each growing out 
 of that below it and leading to that above it, each dealing with 
 some special sphere of existence, but the totality of them embracing 
 all existence and manifesting the Universe as a rational and intelli- 
 gible whole. Similarly, Aristotle looks at the State, as at every other 
 object, from the point of view of existence as a combination of 
 matter and form. Every object embodies a plan, or an idea, and it 
 is in the realization of this idea that the reality of the object consists. 
 The matter of a State is its land and its inhabitants, but the matter 
 must be informed by an idea before an aggregate of individuals with 
 
73 
 
 a common dwelling place is transformed into a State. What then 
 is the State as embodying the divine idea on earth ? The State 
 accordino- to Plato, is a community bound together by common 
 interests, and law and Government are relative to this end — to the 
 prevention of everything which can disturb the equilibrium by 
 making the interest of one man the loss of another. Whatever- 
 divides is bad. Each must find his own in others' good^ 
 Looked at from the point of view of contemporary history, this is a 
 protest against the never-ending political disturbances of Greece, 
 The emphatic dictum of Plato that there was no one State in 
 Greece, for that every State was many States, receives practical 
 illustrations and confirmation from one of the most remarkabe- 
 passages in ancient History, viz,, the reflections of Thucydides upon 
 the outrages perpetrated in Corcyra by the victorious popular party. 
 Dr. Arnold summarizes the passage thus — •" The example was 
 afterwards but too well followed, and was even outdone in horrors. 
 The conflict of the aristocratical and popular interests disorganized 
 the whole state of society, overdrew all Sanctions of religion, morality 
 and natural afiection, and encouraged an unscrupulous and atrocious 
 party-spirit, which identified all virtue with an uncompromising 
 zeal for the interests of its own faction, and openly expressed its- 
 abhorrence of impartial justice and enlarged patriotism .... 
 The evil of human nature, triumphant over the ordinary restraints 
 of law and public opinion, indulged itself in its worst excesses and 
 tended to perpetuate itself, because each successive act of atrocity 
 became a pretext for a more bloody retaliation." As Aristotle says, 
 in a Greek State there were always classes, whose sense of political 
 justice was not satisfied by the existing state of things. But apart 
 from this the conception is one of real permanent value, and the im- 
 portance of it is always forcing itself upon us. The narrow limits 
 of the city states of Greece rendered actual revolutions natural and 
 inevitable. With us the political equilibrium is less easily disturbed. 
 The resources of our civilization are not easily exhausted. The 
 history of Rome proves how fatal was the danger against which 
 Plato protested. The Eepublic fell, because the elaborate system of 
 
74 
 
 checks and counterchecks devised to secure equal justice to all, at 
 last rendered Government under that system impossible. It is 
 remarkable that the conception of disinterested agitation hardly 
 presents itself to the miuds of Plato and of Aristotle. The 
 present agitation for Home Rule in Ireland— the constant strikes 
 of labour— the demands of the people of this country for more 
 extended influence and power, all are instances of the disruptive 
 tendencies which Plato has in mind. They show a conviction in 
 the minds of some that the State as it exists does not realize Justice* 
 Modern extensions of the franchise are from one point of view 
 justified as strengthening the State, because they make all who are 
 m the State also of the State. 
 
 The idea that the form of the State is necessarily predetermined 
 hy the natural end or purpose of the State, is equally prominent in 
 Aristotle. The conception of the State as natural especially leads 
 to important results. In the first place, it gives sanctity to the 
 State. As Burke says, the social order is a divinely ordained 
 system into which we are born. We cannot escape the duties and 
 responsibilities which it imposes upon us. In the second place, it 
 determines the State ss being a system or organic whole, and not a 
 mere accidental aggregate of individuals. For in a natural organism 
 each part is subservient to the life of the whole. Thirdly, what 
 is more important still — it must be an organism in which the 
 lower parts exist for the sake of the higher. Just as the body 
 exists for the mind, so to use a modern phrase, the masses exist 
 for the classes. This conception of natural, comh'imng with the 
 inevitable tendency to regard what is as natural leads to striking 
 consequences. The Greeks being acquainted with no higher type 
 of civilization with which to compare their own, naturally regard- 
 ed what they had achieved as the best. For example, Aristotle 
 found slavery existing — the institution seemed justifiable, because 
 it rendered leisure possible to the cultured few — it seemed to him 
 natural, in virtue of the differences between man and man, especial- 
 ly between Greeks and barbarians. To all this we must perhaps 
 ;add a consciousness of the danger of emancipating the slaves. 
 
75 
 
 The helofc population was a standing menace to Sparta. In any 
 case, as has been said, " to an ancient Greek a society composed 
 of a small group of free men, having recognized claims on each 
 •other and using a much larger body of men, with no such recogniz- 
 ed claims, as instruments in their service, seemed the only possible 
 society." We must add ihat Aristotle goes on to find for slavery 
 a farther justification, viz., that it is good for the slave. Hegel 
 lias summed up the lesson of universal history in a sentence — '* In 
 •the East one was free, viz., the despot; in Greece some were free, 
 viz., the citizens ; in modern Europe all are free, i.e., the rights of 
 man as man arc recognised.'* According to Aristotle and Plato 
 the trading and labouring classes were not members of the State 
 at all. Plato in his " Republic" says nothing whatever about the 
 -education of the lower order.s^ whom by the way he calls tillers of 
 the ground, a striking illustration of the predominance of agricul- 
 ture in Greece. We may compare the State, as Aristotle and Plato 
 conceived it, to a modern College or Univer.sity. In this part of 
 the world the Deccan College comes nearest to the idea. It stands 
 high upon ground carefully chosen with regard to health — the air 
 is pure — the surroundino^s are peaceful — there is an abundant 
 supply of good water. There reside those whom Aristotle could 
 call the citizens — picked men, men whom nature has marked out 
 as capable of realizing the highest life which man can realize. 
 Their family life is in the background. These men are all acquaint- 
 ed with one another, they live a common life — they have common 
 aims, common enjoyment.?, common meals. They are united by 
 a common spirit — an ffprii de corps. And what they receive from 
 the College in the form of help they repay by a proud affection. 
 The servants who wait upon them and the traders who sup[>Jy 
 their wants — the lower castes in fact who minister to them — live 
 afar off from them. They do not jostle them in their wnlks, nor 
 disturb the even tenor of their meditations. One thing I fear is 
 ■wanting to complete the parallel. Art has not always so beautifi- 
 ed their surroundings as to elevate their tastes and purify their 
 character. From the point of view both of her philosophers ard 
 
76 
 
 of her statesmen the art of Athens contributed largely and for 
 good to mould the national character. 
 
 The next point to which I wish to draw your attention, is the 
 close connection, which existed between Ethics and Politics in the 
 minds of Aristotle and Plato. The Politics of Aristotle is 
 supplementary to his Ethics. Life must be regulated in a manner 
 favourable to the growth of virtue, and this regulation it is the 
 business of the State to provide. That the State is a condition 
 of material well-being is its lowest justification. Its true value 
 lies in its being a condition of human perfection. In this view of 
 the matter, several of our greatest thinkers follow the Greeks. 
 Hooker, for example, repeats Aristotle. Milton writes in the 
 spirit of Aristotle. " To Milton," it has been truly said, " a State 
 is a (jommunity living together in the practice of virtue, in the 
 worship of God, in the pursuit of truth. Material happiness,, 
 prosperity, riches, and warlike glory appear to him something, but 
 he requires also good things for the higher part of man : true 
 religion and moral teaching appear to him much, but even this does 
 not satisfy him, he requires also Cultivation for the mind — arts,, 
 science, literature. He has adopted without reserve the maxim 
 of Aristotle that we must hold political society to exist for the 
 sake of honourable deeds, not for the sake of joint livelihood." 
 Burke, as you know, writes in the same spirit and is inspired from 
 the same sources. Morality, according to him, is in its nature 
 social, and it is the business of the State to secure conditions 
 favourable to the growth of morality. He could not any more 
 than Aristotle separate Ethics from Politics. His justification for 
 instance of a State church is purely ethical. When Burke says that 
 '' Society is a partnership in all science, in all art, in every virtue, 
 and in all perfection," he is simply amplifying the well-known, 
 
 saying of Aristotle yiyverai fiev rov Crjv 'veKa, eari be eucKa rov ev Cw- 
 
 It;is said that when a father asked Pythagoras how he should 
 educate his son, Pythagoras replied, *' Make him a citizen of a 
 c^ood State," For according to the Greeks, the constitution of the 
 State reflected the moral ideal of the citizens. After describing. 
 
n 
 
 the character of a constltutiou, Plato describes the character of the 
 corresponding man. Oligarchy is the expression of the worship of 
 wealth. Democracy is the apotheosis of license- That forms of 
 Government influence character is true now, though necessarily 
 not to the same extent. The democratic American is distinguished 
 from the Englishman by his abhorrence of all social distinctions. 
 Similarly, Hindu character has been modified in ways easy to 
 perceive, however hard to define, under and in virtue of the English 
 regime. We all know the expression, " a Hindu of the old school," 
 and feel that it denotes a type that is passing away. The fact that 
 a constitution requires for its stability a given type of character 
 is emphasized by Montesquieu, who of course learnt it from the 
 Greeks. 
 
 That law and opinion may be favourable or unfavourable to 
 intellectual and moral excellence is plain. Plato complains that 
 philosophy could not flourish in Greece because there was no 
 ^tate organized worthily of it. It was an exotic sickening in an 
 alien clime. So now it is sometimes asked, What is the use of 
 higher education? Such a question shows that it is not generally 
 understood in what the real value of education consists. Similarly 
 in England the repressive policy of James II„ and the materialism 
 of the Georgian era, were fatal to culture in the Universities. 
 There may be a poison in the moral as in the physical atmosphere. 
 Conversely one may be health-giving like the other. What made 
 the influence of the state more dh-ect and more powerful in G reece 
 was the narrow limits of the Greek state. According to the ideal 
 of Aristotle the London of to-day is forty times too large for a 
 single state. In a city-state a man is above all things a citizen. 
 If you wanted to translate our word social into Greek, you would 
 have to render it political. Greek life was not divided among 
 the many interests which we possess. There was no room for the 
 modern diversity of independent activities. How could there, e.r/., 
 be municipal meetings when every meeting was a meeting of the 
 state ? The one interest, the one moulding influence, was the state. 
 The state exercised the same enormous influence upon the character 
 
78 
 
 of the citizen that the army does upon that of its officers. The 
 locus classiciiSy for the influence of the state upon character, is the 
 famous funeral oration of Pericles. He shows how the Athenians 
 owed to their laws their combination of culture with manliness, of 
 freedom with self-respect, of enjoyment with order. The marked 
 difference between the oligarchical and democratical types of 
 character is taken for granted throughout the speeches in 
 Thucydides. It is not only that there are differences of aim 
 and of policy, bat there are distinct divergencies of character 
 corresponding to differences in the form of political organisation. 
 Identity of constitutional forms was the recognized basis of 
 alliances in Greece. This was because the Greek saw his own 
 ideal of reason embodied in his own state. The one dominant 
 principle for him was life for the state. His own individuality was 
 merged in that of the state. The state was the element in which 
 he lived and moved and had his being. It was the teaching of the 
 Sophists which first broke up this perfect unity of the citizen with 
 the state. The characteristic of Athens in its prime was the 
 utmost development of individuality compatible with the predo- 
 minance of the national idea and the national spirit. Sparta, on 
 the other hand, was distinguished by the absence of culture under 
 the pressure of military interests. We may again compare the 
 influence of the ancient state to that of the modern church. The 
 church not only puts an ideal before its members, and supplies 
 them with a rule of life. It associates itself with all the important 
 events in their lives, by its services and sacraments. It upholds and 
 stimulates them. It envelops them in an atmosphere which is. 
 favourable to spiritual growth. The care of the church is repaid, 
 by the contented service of her sons. Such was the ideal relation 
 of the Greek citizen to his state. The ideal community was a. 
 happy band of fellow- workers in the service of the fatherland. 
 
 Closely connected with this conviction of the moral value of the 
 state is the importance which Plato and Aristotle attach to the 
 support and control of education by the state. This is a subject 
 
79 
 
 which they treated in no hap-hazard or accidental way. They 
 had a definite view on the matter, carefally deduced from clearly 
 conc«^ived theories as to the capacities of human nature and the 
 highest interest of the state. Right education they considered as 
 the first condition of good citizenship. Every form of constitution 
 is the expression of a certain set of ideas : and how can a State or 
 Government expect loyal citizens, if it is not careful to bring them 
 up to understand and respect the principles on which it rests and 
 the methods by which it works ? The amount of money, which the 
 state may have to give to education, and the degree of detail to 
 which it may have to push its supervision, will vary from time to 
 time and from state to state. The duty and the interest of the 
 state in this matter have been somewhat overlooked in England^ 
 because England is peculiarly situated. Higher education is large, 
 ly provided for by private endowments ; direction is largely 
 secured by the action of universities, which, however, are them- 
 selves under state control. The universities, e.g.^ may not exclude 
 any from their privileges except by the consent of the state. They 
 were nationalized by the abolition of religious tests. Other 
 countries, less richly endov^ed from private sources, have recogniz- 
 ed the claims of education on their resources as paramount. They 
 have rendered impossible the complaint, which Aristotle makes in 
 his day, that education is left to the capricious action of individual 
 parents, who often know nothing of the nature, physical, in- 
 tellectual, or moral, of those whom they propose to educate ; 
 nothing of the goal to which that education is to be directed ; 
 nothing of the nature and claims of the state of which they will 
 grow up to be citizens. 
 
 From what I have said, you will have gathered that the old Greek 
 conception of the state is different from that which has sometimes 
 prevailed, according to which its sole end is to secure the material 
 interests of its members. I must not omit to point out how oppos- 
 ed it is to the individualistic principle which has been so powerful 
 in modern political theories. The supremacy of this principle has 
 been largely due to the influence of Political Economy. Because 
 
aa 
 
 greater freedom was required in the interests of production, it came 
 to be thought that the best way to keep society together was to 
 leave every one free to act as he thought best with a view to his 
 own interest. Now unfortunately Political Economy makes 
 abstraction of the most distinctively human elements in the charac- 
 ter of man, and in the application of its results there is an unfortu- 
 nate tendency to forget to make allowance for the abstraction. 
 Carlyle has told you that the Gash neoius alone will not hold society 
 too-ether. According to Plato and Aristotle, individualism means 
 democracy and democracy means license. As Borke says, " a per- 
 fect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world." Plato 
 says that the democratic individual is the " incarnation of license 
 shamelessness, and disorder." In many departments it is now 
 beginning to be felt that even so far as their material well-being is 
 concerned, there are classes in the state who are not able to take 
 •care of themselves, and that, therefore, the collective force of society 
 must be put forth for their protection. Nor is it a less conspicuous 
 feature of our time that the forces of society are invoked in the 
 interests of men's moral and spiritual well-being. There is a move- 
 ment in this direction both from above and from below. The 
 masses naturally claim to use their newly acquired power for the 
 improvement of their own condition : and some of the most power- 
 ful thinkers have co-operated with them on independent grounds. 
 I have already alluded to Carlyle. Hegel — a man whose mind was 
 saturated with Greek thought — has exercised a powerful influence 
 on the minds of some who are now powerful teachers. If you refer, 
 for an example, to Green, you will find that he rests the state on a 
 moral basis, and that he justifies legislation on moral grounds. So 
 that we come round once more to the Greek view that the state is 
 an organic whole and not an aggregate of individuals, and that in 
 its ideal perfection it is not a weathy community, but a cultivated 
 and a virtuous community. In such a society there would be 
 realized freedom, in that sense of the word in which freedom means 
 voluntary subjection to the law of reason. Law and government 
 as the embodiment of reason could no longer be regarded as anta- 
 
81 
 
 gonistic and coercive forces checking the free play of individual 
 action and restraining the free development of individual character. 
 Rather they would be regarded as the condition of intellectual and 
 moral development, as the condition of those higher and wider 
 interests, those more extended relations, those ampler sympathies, 
 which alone give fulness and richness to human life. 
 
 It might seem at first sight as if the speculations of Aristotle and 
 Plato could have no practical significance for us, because they 
 assign to the state a supreme power of regulation which we should 
 grudge to government. We tend rather to limit than to enlarge 
 the power of Government. But this idea springs from a misunder- 
 standing, I have already told yon that the Greek state, both in 
 fact and idea, was a small state — a city-state. *' A state," said 
 Aristotle, " must be capable of being taken in at one view." It 
 seemed to him that only a small body of men could be pervaded and 
 effectually influenced by a single spirit. Common aims and interests 
 implied, he thought, a common life and mutual acquaintance. We 
 must therefore be clear in our notions of state and government, 
 and must not confuse the one with the other. To the Greek the 
 action of the community was the action of the state. With us ifc 
 is by no means so. If the state were to us what it is to Aristotle, 
 we should probably have thought as he did. London to-day is too 
 large for one civic community. It is extremely difficult to bring 
 it under one municipal organization* A Londoner has not the same 
 local patriotism, the same municipal spirit that the inhabitant of a 
 provincial town has, yet, for all this, a national spirit is possible. 
 The feeling of patriotism is normally, perhaps, dormant, but it is 
 not extinct. Our country is dear to us because of the number of 
 things dear to us which it provides and secures to uf.' The limita- 
 tion of man*s sympathetic and imaginative faculties concentrates 
 his habitual interests on special objects and special individuals, yet 
 the larger feeling of patriotism is evoked under the stress of 
 national dangers, and in the pride of national achievements. But 
 in Greece each state was limited in area and weak in numbers. It 
 
82 
 
 •was surroanded by states which were mostly hostile to it. It 
 therefore demanded the whole life of the citizens. It could not 
 afford to allow the interests and activity of the citizen to be« 
 divided among a number of subordinate associations, or to scatter 
 themselves in the varied channels of private sympathies and private 
 aims* Man there could not serve two masters. The community^ 
 if it worked at all, worked necessarily as a whole. With us the 
 case is different. The very extent of the field and the complexity 
 of the conditions involve the existence and operation of subordinate 
 Organizations, subject to the supreme regulation of the state. For 
 the idea of political action, therefore, we must substitute what is. 
 for us the equivalent — organized activity on the part of the com- 
 munity or of some part of the community. Such subordinate 
 activity does not now divide our allegiance to the state, nor has the 
 state any reason to be jealous of it. A man is not the less a good 
 patriot because he is an enthusiastic soldier or churchman. Local 
 action has an elasticity, an adaptiveness to special circumstances 
 and special needs, which the action of a supreme Government can- 
 not possess. The state now does not regulate every detail of trade 
 and taxation — yet trade is not unorganised. You have your local 
 Chambers of Commerce. The state does not altogether impose 
 taxation. Yet taxation is not arbitrary. You have your Munici- 
 palities. The state now does not necessarily^or universally regulate 
 or provide religious teaching. Yet this is not left to chance or, 
 caprice. You have organized ChurcheF. In England, as I have 
 said, where the state does not provide, or entirely regulate, higher 
 Education, the work is done by regularly organized Schools and 
 Universities. Thus, in each sphere, there is organized and dis- 
 ciplined activity — and this is the principle for which Aristotle 
 contends — only applied to a different set of conditions. We give 
 to every man an interest in the state, and to the state a supreme 
 control over every man in his own interest. It is becoming every 
 day more manifest that absolute centralization is impossible. Any 
 attempt at it would paralyse the state. We therefore secure the 
 real interest of every man in the state together with a real power 
 
83 
 
 and influence on the part of the state by allowing local indepen- 
 dence subject to imperial controb 
 
 For example, the moralisation of the community was, in Aristotle's 
 view, the business of the state. So far as we connect the notions, 
 of State and Government, we must regard it as the business of the 
 community — of public opinion — or of some section of public opinion. 
 Plato says that whatever in literature is detrimental to virtue must- 
 be banished from the state. We recognize equally that the com- 
 munity has a duty in the matter of literature. But we think it 
 better that reform should come from the action of opinion than 
 from the action of what we call the State. Plato's language indeed 
 now has a very closw application. It was the fashiim, he says, in 
 his day to accuse the Sophists of corrupting youth. Similarly we 
 are accustomed to throw blame upon the writers of certain books, 
 and papers. But, as Plato says, the Sophists did not form public 
 opinion, they only reflected it. So now, pernicious literature is 
 only read, because and in so far as it is liked. No man can force 
 us to buy his works. Here, then, as Plato says, is an opportunity 
 for the interference of the the state as a moralising agency, or, as 
 we should put it, the community has ceased in any real sense of 
 the term to be a community unless it can bring the force either of 
 opinion or of law to eradicate that which demoralises it, and so to- 
 prepare the way for an elevation of the common tone of life. The 
 only difference is that we look first to the operation of agencies 
 subordinate to the Government, and not in the first instance to the 
 Government itself. 
 
 Similary Plato says that the Stake must regulate art in the 
 spheres of music and the drama. His conception has not lost its 
 value ; it has not lost its influence with us, simply because in our 
 effort to educate the people through artistic influences, the words 
 State Agency are not the first which rise to our lips. We recognize 
 that the matter is one, which must not be left to chance or to the 
 caprice of individuals. We recognize that the community — or as 
 Plato would iiave said the State — has an interest and a duty in the 
 
84 
 
 xaatter. The justification of our National Galleries and our 
 National Museums is what Plato asserts it to be. The state is a 
 moralizing agency. You do not lose your respect for the state 
 simply because it allows and even requires you to do for yourselves 
 what in old days it would have done for you. Rather your loyalty 
 to it is increased because of the opportunities for independent 
 action and consequent fulness of life which it affords you — for the 
 helf) which it aflfbrds when your own efforts fail. The same set of 
 considerations will apply in the other sphere which I have men- 
 tioned of religion and education. The state is not the less a potent 
 influence for good and evil in our lives simply because the idea of 
 it is less exclusively dominant and regulative in our minds. As 
 Carlyle says, the wealth of a man is the number of things which 
 he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by. This wealth 
 we owe to the State in the most extended sense of the term. 
 
 The more we study the speculations of the ancients the more we 
 see how much we have to learn from them simply for this one 
 reason that they had thought out the problem of the State. Even 
 when we learn nothing from their results, we can still leain from 
 their method. They had framed an idea of what the State ought to 
 do, and therefore of what it ought to be. The complaint of Plato 
 is still true, that so-called statesmen mistake mere conventions for 
 first principles. They legislate either according to the dominant 
 opinion of the moment, or on conside- ations of temporary expedi- 
 ency. Plato said, what Burke said afterwords, that a man when 
 lie enters on political life should have a formed system of opinions — 
 on no other condition can his views or his measures be other than 
 temporary, occasional, and accidental. Plato and Aristotle witnessed 
 the States of Greece in their decay. If it had not been so, their 
 teaching would not have been so instructive. The collapse of old 
 principles and the failure of old methods drove them to go to the 
 root of the matter — and to strive to build a theory of the ideal 
 upon the failure of the actual. Greece did not solve the problem 
 of politics. Her history is a record of political failure. But she 
 enabled her thinkers and through them ourselves to see that a 
 
85 
 
 state must rest upon principles which have their foundation in 
 reason. 
 
 We rnay notice from another point of view that Greek specula- 
 tion has not lost its value, simply because city-states have been- 
 supplanted by nations. The smaller organizations which we find 
 in the history of human development were only stages in the pre- 
 paration for larger systems. They are, as Burke says, '' inns and 
 resting-places." Our duty as citizens is independent in principle 
 of the size of the state of which we are citizens. We may therefore 
 learn the principles of duty from the Greeks, though we may have 
 to extend its application. Ideal citizenship, as they conceived it^ 
 was the absolute self-devotion of the individual to a community 
 with whose interests his own interests were bound up. We have 
 enlarged our notion as to the number and the ground of the claims 
 upon us, but it was necessary that the love for the part should 
 precede the love for the whole. Plato was jealous of the family 
 as dividing a man's interest with the state. We can see that the 
 life of the family is the first lesson in obedience and unselfishness, 
 and that the political value of the family lies just in this, that it 
 not only accustoms men to the idea of authority, but that it pre- 
 sents that authority in an attractive form. In a similar manner 
 the various trade guilds of the Middle Ages developed and enforced 
 a sense of duty, no matter how small might be the number of those 
 to whom it was thought that a duty was owed. The institution of 
 castes has worked in the same way. Even if he thinks that be 
 owes nothing to others, the Brahman is at least taught that he has 
 a duty towards Brahmans. Thus being habituated to the concep- 
 tion of a duty to some, he is prepared for the lesson of a duty to 
 all. We have to universalize the Ethical principles of Greece, just 
 as you have to universalize the principles of a moral system based 
 on caste. Consequently they failed to realize the national and, still, 
 more, the imperial idea. 
 
 The tone of Greek philosophic thought was, as I have shown, 
 aristocratic and exclusive. We are now principally concerned to 
 
86 
 
 emphasize the duty of tlie state towards i^reciselj those classes 
 who, in the Greek \iew, were not of the state at all. How far this 
 is due to the fact that these classes have insisted on making them- 
 selves heard we need not stop to inquire. England undoubtedly 
 *owes her democratic constitution largely to her industrial system. 
 It is sufficient to note that the foundation of a wider and more 
 sympathetic morality was laid in the substitution of empires for 
 city states. Aristotle himself was the iustuctor of the great head 
 of the Macedonian Empire. Then came the wide dominion of 
 Rome which, by consolidating the scattered units of the world, 
 prepared the way for the doctrine of a common humanity, which it 
 ivas the business and the gl«»ry of Christianity to publish, and to 
 enforce. You will find that after Aristotle the tone of philosophic 
 thought altogether changes. The old independent communities 
 were brought in subjection to a king. Patriotism w as necessarily 
 "destroyed. The only chance of activity was in rebellion or in the 
 serrice of the despot. The philosophy of the Stoics and of 
 Epicurus, so far as it is practical, is concerned simply with the life 
 of the individual. That was why these philosophers found such a 
 welcome later in Rome, Under the tyrannies which preceded the 
 regime of Augustus, as under the tyranny of his successors, men 
 found it consoling to think that the pursuit of pleasure was really 
 more satisfying than the life of political activity from which they 
 were excluded. Sterner natures found consolation and support in 
 the rigid asceticism of the Stoics, while the more impatient wel- 
 comed their justification of suicide as an escape from the ills of 
 iife. 
 
 At the beginning of my lecture I indicated what 1 considered to 
 be the general value of a study of Greek literature. I may perhaps 
 at the close of this lecture, without being unduly didactic, be 
 permitted to indicate the special value which it possesses for those 
 of you who are students in this University. Circumstances are 
 such that you are inevitably' attracted at an early nge to political 
 
87 
 
 criticism. It is for you to see that what you think and what you 
 say is worthy of the subject and of yourselves. The guilt of 
 thouo-htless speech is compared by Plato to the guilt of homicide. 
 Yon may remember that Boswell once said reproachfully to John- 
 son, "Why, Sir, you seem to laugh at schemes for political improve- 
 ment." "Why, Sir" replied the sage, "most schemes for political im- 
 provement are rather laughable things." No such schemes, I trust, 
 may emanate from any of you. But it must be remembered that 
 political wisdom comes only, if it comes at all, of long and serious 
 study, and of deep and conscientious thought. I have endeavoured 
 to-day to indicate to you one genuine source of inspiration, one 
 real fountain of wise thought and right feeling. If I may give you 
 a piece of advice it is this — that while you attend your lectures in 
 Philosophy, you should never neglect the features which are open 
 to you in European History, specially on its constitutional side. 
 If philosophy is the truth of history, history is the body and substance 
 of philosophy. This is fundamental. If you will not keep in touch 
 with the realities of life, you must " vanish in the fume of vaitt 
 speculation." 
 
 Further, I say advisedly European History, because I venture to 
 think that the history of this country is not politically instructive- 
 There has been, I venture to think, no progress, no attempt at 
 progress. Of course I recognize and attach due weight to the 
 occasional appearance of enlightened and beneficent rulers. But 
 their work has not been enduring in its results. An Empire has 
 been organized, but only to crumble again into atoms when the 
 hand of the organizer was withdrawn. There has been further no 
 diversity of organization. Custom, aided by religion, has conse- 
 crated the principle of absolutism. Thus the history of India has 
 been largely a succession of purely dynastic wars. Literature and 
 philosophy, unsupplied by materials from history, have turned 
 aside to the arts, to science, to theology, and to metaphysics. To 
 what extent the shock of Western thought may disturb the 
 Apparently immobile fabric of Eastern life and thought cannot yei 
 
88 
 
 be fnllj determined. It will depend largely on you whether the 
 contact between the two civilizations shall be ultimately for good 
 or not. I feel sure that having your country's good at heart you 
 will prepare yourselves by a stern preliminary discipline for true 
 citizenship. 
 
 I would not for a moment be guilty of the impertinence of 
 Suggesting that our ways are necessarily or universally better 
 than your ways. But your system, like every other system, must 
 be capable of improvement in some respects. At any rate, you 
 cannot expect, and, I think, you should not hope, that it will 
 remain quite unaffected by contact with us. I feel sure that you 
 will do your best, by a study both of past and present, to fit your- 
 selves not merely for a superficial appreciation, but for a real 
 assimilation of the higher elements, whatever they may be, of 
 Western thougrht and Western life. 
 
MAMTHI POETRY* 
 
 LECTURER; H. A. ACWORTH, Esq., C.S., Barrister-at-Law. 
 Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay. 
 
 Hon'ble Sir, Ladles and Gentlemen, 
 
 Before proceeding with the subject which has been notified for 
 my lecture to-day, I wish to anticipate two questions which some 
 of you are probably asking yourselves, and are inclined to ask me ; 
 first — Why I have chosen the poetry, and not the whole literature^ 
 prose as well as poetry, of the Marathas, as my subject; and se- 
 condly, What I mean by the term Maratha ? 
 
 As regards the first, I may say as a preliminary that the poetry 
 and particularly the ballad poetry, of the Marathas has been my 
 favourite subject of mental recreation during many years. Of the^ 
 ballads of the Marathas I have both written and spoken a great 
 deal elsewhere, and I purpose to say nothing about it to-day be- 
 yond this, that one of the reasons why it interested me, not the 
 main reason of course, but one of the reasons, was that it interested 
 nobody else; and that those very men whose ancestors' exploits 
 have been celebrated in what is now, I hope undying verse, but 
 which would have been very mortal verse indeed if its immorta- 
 lity had been left to them, seemed utterly indifferent whether it 
 lived, died, or even existed at all. But the poetic literature of the 
 Marathas, the poetry that has been recorded or preserved, has run 
 no risk of such a fate, and I take it as my subject, and not the 
 prose literature as well, because I know of no prose literature 
 worthy of the name. My Maratha friends must pardon me for 
 saying so. There is written prose of course, both old — not very 
 old — and new. There are the Vidur Niti ( r^5,<Mn7l ) or Morale 
 
 * Delivered on Saturday the 19th December 1891, The Hon. Mr.^ 
 Justice Telang, Vice-President of the Union, in the chair. 
 
 7 
 
90 
 
 of Vidnr, Vetal Panchavisi ( %?TT2f i^ff^ ) or twenty-five stories 
 of Vetal, the Shaka Bahaturi (5^ ^tTO ) or twenty two stories 
 of the Parrot, and so on. The first is a book which contains useful 
 moral instruction, but from a literary point of view deserves not 
 much notice. The second, which has been translated into Guzerati, 
 Hindustani, and English, is doubtless known to most of you. The 
 stories which are embraced in the third are not without humour 
 and wit, but are wnthal so elaborately foul and coarse that I am 
 glad to know that the work is out of print, and I do not think it 
 is worthy of exhumation. By many Marathas a high value is 
 attached — and not altogether without reason — to the Bukhurs, or 
 memoirs. But I think that their importance begins and ends with 
 the contributions which they furnish to real historical knowledge ; 
 and to ascertain this they require to undergo a very severe pro- 
 cess of sifting. They have been used to a great extent by Grant 
 Duff, who, by means of his " History of the Marathas," acquainted 
 the civilized world with the acts and the personages of one of the 
 bravest and most intelligent of Oriental races. It is to be regret- 
 ted that he did not preserve in their original garb the Bukhurs 
 he collected ; but what he failed to do the patriotic Maratha should 
 achieve, and it is gratifying to find that some have been collected 
 and published. But in point of literary merit they cannot for a 
 moment bear comparison with even such a work as Plutarch's 
 Lives, and they will never to a foreign critic possess much interest 
 or value until or unless some one among you, a Telang or a Ranade, 
 arranges, sifts, and vivifies the chaotic mass of mingled fact and 
 fiction, and gives to the world a true — which will be a romantic — 
 picture of the deeds of his most romantic race. 
 
 As regards the modern prose literature of the Marathas, it 
 shows signs — God forbid that they should be, and I do not believe 
 them to be, symptomatic — of national degeneracy. It is mostly 
 imitative translations, paraphrases, adaptations, of English and 
 Sanskrit works. No nation yet ever throve upon imitation. Assi- 
 milaie all worthy ideas, but ^produce your own. Works like Mr. 
 Bhagwat's '* Marathya Vishayi Char Udgar" {^KXm f^^ ^K 
 
91 
 
 ^^JTR) and Vichar Madhukari (f^^T ^TgW) no doubt possess 
 novelty and interest even for the foreign reader. ! si sic omnia ! 
 Such works are few and far between. Much has been made of the 
 Nibhand Mala, {f^M^ ^^) of Vishnoo Shastri Chiplunkur. He 
 was no doubt a facile writer, and had, like his learned father, great 
 command of his mother-tongue. He tried to imitate the author 
 of the Spectator (Addison), but not successfully. The wisdom, the 
 huniour, the perceptive criticism of Addison, where are they to be 
 found in Chiplunkur ? He gained for a time great popularity, but 
 it was at the expense of other?, and so far undeserved. You can 
 ■easily become as popular. Satirise your own great men, abuse 
 social reformers, extol your own methods, your own customs, your 
 own sectarianism, your own literature, your own selves, as the best 
 highest and holiest that ever existed, pick out a few promiDeut 
 officials, (not myself ??ci/4 enteudu), then get a dictionary and tack 
 to their names all the violent adjectives you can find in it, and 
 you will soon be shining lights — for a time. Butter goes a long 
 way ; so does mud. I do not mean to say that this is not an 
 •exaggerated description of the " Nibhand Mala/' but there are a 
 good many essays in it which more or less deserve it. 
 
 But I have still to answer one of the two questions with which 
 I began — Who are the Marathas ? or rather what do I mean by tho 
 term Maratha ? the Marathas, say some, are the people of Mahara- 
 shtra ; Mahomedans described them as Guleem or enemies ; and 
 by others — horrible to relate — they are identified with the Mahars, 
 and their country spoken of as Maharrashtra. Marathas differ 
 among themselves as to the true derivation. The orthodox Brah- 
 mans of the Deccan degrade the definition which is most noble in 
 its significance and the most comprehensive in its expression to 
 the denotation of a caste or castes of Kunbis or Kulwadis. Tn fact 
 with Brahmans and other Pandhurpeshas, the word Maratha is a 
 «ynonym for a Knnbi, or KuPwbi of the better class. The esteem in 
 which these hard-working Kunbis, the backbone of the Maratha 
 oommunity, were held by the better fed and better clad Pandhur- 
 peshas is probably well known to you, and if not, you may form 
 
92 
 
 an idea of it from the proverb, still current—" None so liberal ta 
 give as the Kunbi ; he gives nothing without a thrashing." :— 
 
 I cannot believe that, as the late Dr. Wilson would have it, 
 the word Maratha is derived from such words as Mahar or Mahar- 
 rashtra. While we find such words as Kirata (f^UcT) and Matang 
 (TrcTT) in the ancient works of the Hindus, the word Mhar or 
 Mahar is hardly ever mentioned. I should be inclined to say that 
 the word Maratha comes from the Prakrat Maharatha (Tfirs), which 
 means a warrior, or great warrior. The word Maharashtra would 
 follow the name of the race. What I mean therefore by the Mara- 
 thas is the Hindoo inluibitants of Maharashtra who speak the 
 modern Marathi language, or whose mother tongue is Marathi. 
 I say modern Marathi, because the more ancient tongue, which, 
 may be divided into Maharashtri or Marathi proper, Magadhi and 
 Paisachi, differs much from the modern. 
 
 I do not pretend to have discussed, as you will observe, or 
 attempted to discuss, with any completeness, the derivation of the 
 word Maratha. All I have endeavoured to do has been to tell yoa 
 what I mean by it. 
 
 The Marathas have had a poetic literature for about one 
 thousand years. During these thousand years the Marathas rose 
 at two different j^eriods to special importance in Maharashtra, and 
 with their martial power the scope of their literary effort was 
 enlarged. The first of these periods was from about 1113 to 1313 
 A.D., and the second from about 1600 to 1800 A.D. In the former 
 the whole country of the Marathas was ruled by their own country- 
 men, the celebrated Yadavas, or, as they are popularly called 
 Jadhavs, of Dewgiri or Dowlatabad. Some of the kings of this 
 dynasty, as Jaitrapal and Ramdev, were great patrons of learning, 
 and it was during their reigns that the real foundation of Marathi 
 literature was laid. Mukundraj and Dnyanadev, two of the best 
 
93 
 
 known Maratha poets, flourished during this peiiod, and they were, 
 as will be shown farther on, patronized bj the kings of this dynasty. 
 The second period is more important than the first. The power 
 of the Marathas was re-established and consolidated, and their 
 name and language pervaded the length and breadth of the Indian 
 Peninsula, while both in numbers and in merit this was the golden 
 age of the Maratha poets. 
 
 Mukundraj is the oldest Maratha poet, the Chaucer of the 
 language. The exact date of his birth is not known, but from the 
 following lines which appear at the close of the *=• Vivek Sindhu,'* 
 one of his works, he appears to have flourished in the twelfth 
 century after Christ, and to have been patronized by the Jadhav 
 King Jaitrapal : — 
 
 "Ballal (Bhillam ?} was the son of Nrisinha. His son was 
 Jaitrapal, who made me accomplish the task of writing this 
 treatise." Mukundraj is the author of three known works — the 
 "Vivek Sindha,'' or "Ocean of Discrimination," '•' Purum Amrita," 
 or " Great Nectar and '* Mulasthumbha" or " Primary Pillar," a 
 title of Shiv. Of these the first two are metaphysical, on the 
 principles and doctrines of Vedautism, and the last is a panegyric 
 of Shiv, the god of destruction. 
 
 Next in chronological order, if not in order of merit, come the 
 celebrated saintly poets Namdev and Dnyanadev. Namdev was 
 by caste a tailor, and by some Maratha writers as well as the Eng- 
 lish scholars Wilson and Stevenson he is believed to be the oldest 
 of the Maratha poets. But this supposition appears, judging from 
 the style of each, as well as the dates appended to their works, to 
 be erroneous. He wrote chiefly in the Abhang Metre, and his 
 miscellaneous Abhangs like those of Tukaram are very popular 
 with the peasantry. Most of these verses end with the words 
 ^rmj If ^, Nama says. Dnyanadev was a Deshasta Brahmin, and 
 
94 
 
 lived in fcbe village of Alandi, in the Poona district, where his tomb 
 and temple still exist, and attract some 50,000 persons at an annual 
 fair. The great veneration in which he is held is due more to the 
 miracles he is believed to have performed than to his poetical com- 
 positions. On one occasion he desired a buflfalo to repeat the Yedas, 
 and the animal complied, though we know no more what its voice 
 was like than we do in the case of Balaam's ass or the horses of 
 Achilles. But the fact is attested by the poet Mahipati. On 
 another occasion the poet-saint bestrode a masonry wall which 
 moved with him at the speed of a horse. A remnant of this wall 
 is still shown by the Brahmans of xllandi, and worshipped by the 
 pilgrims, and the fact is not much more improbable than some of 
 the phenomena which we are called on to believe in the year 1891, 
 by the followers of one or other of the fire-new creeds which are 
 current. 
 
 The most celebrated of Dnyanadev's works is his learned com- 
 mentary on the " Bhagwat Gita," or " Divine HyniTi." It is called 
 after the poet Dnyaneshwari, and contains somo 10,000 verses in 
 the Ovi metre. As an explanatory work for the Prakrat reader it 
 is not of much use, as it is so full of obscure words and phrases that 
 even good Maratha scholars who are acquainted with Sanskrit find 
 it more difficult of comprehension than the original work in San- 
 skrit. To the archseologian and the enquirer after the usages of the 
 Marathas, however, the book has a high value. At the end of it 
 the poet says that while King Eamdev of the famous Jadhav dynas- 
 ty was ruling the country of Maharashtra a vernacular version of 
 the " Bhagwat Gita " was prepared by Dnyauadev in the year of 
 Shaliwahan 1212, i.e., 1290 of the Christian era. Dnyanadev had 
 two brothers, named Nivrithi and Sopandev, and one sister named 
 Muktabai, all of whom composed verses like himself, and all of 
 whom have been deified by the Marathas, the three brothers being 
 regarded as incarnations of the Hindoo Trinity and the sister as 
 an incarnation of the goddess of learning. 
 
 For about three centuries after Dnyanadev and Namdev no great 
 poet appears to hare arisen in Maharashtra. Early in the Four- 
 
95 
 
 teentli Century, or late in the Thirteenth, the Mahomedans burst 
 over the Deccan, swept away the ruling dynasty, took and occupied 
 Dewgiri, and the country of the Marathas passed under a foreign 
 yoke. The kindly patronage of the native prince was lost, the- 
 stimulus of free native life was taken away, and the spirit of the 
 bard was dormant, his voice was mute. In the Sixteenth Century 
 they stirred again with the murmur of renewed national life which 
 began to be heard around them. There lived then at Paithan, the 
 old centre of Maratha glory, an exceedingly remarkable man, re- 
 markable not only as a poet but as a reformer — a real reformer, — 
 who had to dare greatly before he could preach, and who saw no 
 decoration beginning with " C." or " K." at the end of the vista of 
 his ambition. Many stories are told of the ridicule and persecution 
 which he underwent at the hands of the Brahmans of Paithan and 
 Benares, On several occasions he was put out of caste, and onc©^ 
 his poems were publicly sunk in the river Godavari. But he was 
 proof against all these things, Eknath, son of Sooryajee, a Deshasta 
 Brahman, took up his parable against the caste system and similar 
 social disabilities, which have not the sanction of the Shastras, and 
 he boldly carried his precepts into practice. One of his audience 
 on one occasion, a pious and intelligent Mahar, asked Eknath, 
 while he was urging his usual theme, whether he would himself 
 be an exemplar of his principle that in the house of God a Brahman 
 and a Mahar are one, by dining at his, the Mahar's house. The 
 poet was not unequal to the occasion. He consented, and next day 
 he went to his interrogator's house, and there publicly partook of 
 the food prepared by the Mahar's wife. More than three hundred 
 years have passed away, and the question of equality as a human 
 being between the Mahar and Brahman is as far from settlement as 
 ever, as far as the Hindoos are concerned. It is a curious fact that 
 the incident above related has been partly reproduced in the cur- 
 rent year. In the Dinbandhu papers of the 22nd and 29th ult, 
 one Gopal Bawa Walamkar publishes a curious dialogue which took 
 place between him and a Chitpawan Brahman of the Kolaba 
 district, in which this modern Mahar reformer alludes with 
 
96 
 
 feelings of reverence to the poet Eknath, and refers to the famous 
 challenge by Ranya Mahar and its acceptance by Eknath. 
 
 Eknath wrote chiefly in the Ovi metre, and his most popular 
 work is his metrical translation of the " Bhagawat," generally called 
 ''Eknathi Bhagawat," He died in the year 1608-09. Just about this 
 time were born two of the most distinguished of the Maratha 
 poete, one a Wanya, one a Brahman. Both were god-fearing and 
 holy men, and both have enriched their national literature 
 with works which are not surpassed by those of any other poet 
 in the language. One of these was Tukaram, whose name has 
 been made familiar to English reader by the tvritings of Sir Alexan- 
 der Grant, and the Rev. Murray Mitchell. The other was Ramdas, 
 the celebrated preceptor of the great Shivajee, whose name is not 
 unknown to readers of Grant Duff's History. Tukaram was the 
 son of a Wani or Waishya, named Walhoba, and was born at 
 Dehoo, a village about eighteen miles from Poona. He was a great 
 devotee of the God Vithoba of Pandharpur, and most of his poems 
 are in honour of that deity. His poems are always in Abhang 
 (^Wr) metre, and are simple, sweet, and often full of pathos. He 
 is the most original thinker of all the Maratha poets. He was not 
 a servile copyist of the Sanskrit, or a mere translator like Moropant 
 or Waman. His work is his own, not reflected. There is nothing 
 rhetorical, nothing pedantic, nothing vulgar, no obscurity aping 
 profundity or indecency aping humour. Of the two classes into 
 which all Sanskrit and Maratha poems are supposed to group 
 themselves, viands of grapes (^T^r Ml=fj) viands of cocoanuts ('TTK^oi 
 ^TT^), Tukaram's fall into the former, easy to gather, sweet to 
 the palate. They are remarkable for a high and sustained level of 
 religious exaltation. He was once asked how it was that he was 
 able to overcome sleep so as to pray continuously night and day 
 together. He replied, and his reply shows that he took practical 
 means to achieve a practical end. " Fasten a rope to your sliendi 
 (topknot) and tie the other end of it high. The strong and sudden 
 pall you will gQt will drive sleep away." No student of this 
 
97 
 
 college, of course, ever thinks of being drowsy during the hours of 
 study, but if he has any apprehension of it, I would commend 
 Tukaram's method as a cure. lie died in 1 649 A.D. Tukaram is 
 said to have composed more than 8,000 abhangs or 32,000 lines. 
 Ramdas was less voluminous, as well as less fluent ; he was less 
 pathetic than Tukaram, but more shrewd. He appeals to the head 
 rather than the heart, and his works are remarkable for their insight 
 into human nature and the practical wisdom they display. He 
 wrote in the Shloka as well as the Ovi metre. His principal work, 
 theDasbodh, is in the latter. "His stray verses," called ** Admo- 
 nition to the mind," which were written for Shivaji, the founder of 
 the Mahratha Empire, deserve to be ranked for their acuteness with 
 Solomon's proverbs. Shivaji had the highest reverence for this poet 
 who was his guru, and whom he invariably invoked before every 
 great undertaking. This monarch is said to have shown his respect 
 by making over to Ramdas the whole of his dominions in free gift, 
 in token of which he adopted as his royal standard the poet's reli- 
 gious flag or Bhugwa Zenda. The story goes that Shivaji from 
 the Fort of Satara saw Ramdas begging in the town. The king 
 came to his chitnis, Balaji Abaji, dictated an order, sealed it with 
 the royal signet, and when Ramdas came to the palace to beg, 
 placed it in his wallet. Ramdas opened and read the paper, 
 and found that it contained a gift of Shivaji's whole kingdom. 
 He asked the king what he proposed to do after ho was dispossessed 
 of his dominions, and Shivaji replied that he would pass his life in 
 the service of his preceptor. " Very well," said Ramdas, " follow 
 me now," and so saying he threw his wallet over the king's shoulder 
 and ordered him to follow him and ask alms. They went from 
 house to house and when they had collected grain enough they 
 went to the river^ Avhere Ramdas baked two cakes, one of which 
 was eaten by himself and the other by Shivaji. He then enquired 
 how the latter liked his new calling, to which the reply was that 
 he was perfectly satisfied with it. Having then enquired whether 
 Shivaji would obey his commands, and being answered in the 
 
98 
 
 affirmative, he bade him go back to his palace and rule his kingdom 
 for his preceptor. Shivaji obeyed, and from that day as a sign that 
 the kingdom belonged to an ascetic he adopted the ascetic's orange 
 banner. Ramdas died in 1681 at the age of 73. Two years before 
 his death was born at Nazre, near the holy city of Pandharpur, one 
 who may claim to be the most nniversally popular of all Maratha 
 poets, viz.f Shridhur, the son of a pious Desha sta Brahman. There 
 is no Maratha poet who equals Shridhur in the acceptance he obtains 
 from all classes. The Brahman may prefer Moropant, the Kunbi 
 may prefer Tukaram, but both will put Shridhur next to them, and 
 each will prefer Shridhur to the poet most acceptable to the other. 
 Go to any town or village in the Deccan or in the Konkan, especially 
 during the rainy season, and you will everywhere find the pious 
 Maratha enjoying with his family and friends, the recitation of the 
 Pothi of Shridhur — and enjoying it indeed. Except an occasional 
 gentle laugh, a sign, or a tear, not a sound disturbs the raptsilence 
 of the audience, unless when some one or other of those passages of 
 supreme pathos are reached which afiect the whole of the listeners 
 simultaneously with an outbusrt of emotion which drowns the voice 
 of the reader. Such is the current testimony which may be now 
 obtained every day to the power of this great poet, and before such 
 evidence as this, the voice of criticism must die away. Shridhur 
 tells us that he wrote his poems for the benefit of the weaker sex^ 
 *'that sex sensine," as the king who has been indifferently called 
 the British Solomon and the wisest fool in Christendom described 
 them, who were uneducated and ignorant of Sanskrit. Up to the 
 time of Shridhur the Pandits were the sole repositories of learning 
 and knowledge so called, and the privileged expounders of the 
 Puranic legends. But when Shridhur gave to the people to their 
 intense delight, in the popular Marathi, the stories of the great 
 Eamayana and the Mahabharat, the monopoly of the Pandit dis- 
 appeared. The epoch is worth noticing, but Shridhur cannot be 
 mentioned as an original writer with Tnkaram and Ramdas. At 
 the end of the first chapter or canto of his most popular poem 
 
99 
 
 " Rama Vijaya" Shridliur makes a few useful observations on the 
 value of the Marathi tongue. They furnish a good illustration of 
 his pleasing style, the force of his reasoning, the sweetness of his 
 diction, picturesqueness of his ideas and images, and the multi- 
 plicity of his similes and metaphors. The remarks are, no doubt, 
 particularly addressed to the attention of the Pandit, and I Tvill 
 give a few quotations from them : — '* The Pandits should not neg- 
 lect this poem because it is written in Prakrit (people's) language. 
 Where the subject trt^ated of is the same whether written ia 
 Marathi or Sanskrit, the meaning must be the same, as a river 
 which is on one bank called the Krishna, and on the other the 
 Yena has, nevertheless, the same water flowing against both banks. 
 ***** 
 
 " And women do not understand Sanskrit, and in this respect 
 their helplessness may be likened to that of a weak person distressed 
 with thirst, standing at the mouth of a deep well. Now if that 
 person has not a rope and pot, how will he draw water to quench 
 his thirst ? Whereas, if he comes to a tank he can quench his 
 thirst at once. In the same way to quench the thirst of the weaker 
 sex and lead them on to the path of salvation, the Almighty has 
 ordained that works should be composed in the Prakrit tongue. 
 It is true that the original story of Ptama being in Sanskrit, it is . 
 better to peruse it in Sanskrit. But the weaker sex cannot master 
 that language any more than an elephant can be restrained by a . 
 rope made out of the fibres of a lotus. The old language is revered 
 by all, but it is so diflBoult that those only who are fortunate 
 enough to be specially gifted can thoroughly understand it ; and if 
 the weaker sex cannot understand it, how will they be saved ? 
 The rich dress in costly raiment. The poor cover their bodies- 
 with blankets and thus protect themselves from heat and cold. 
 Such is the case of Sanskrit and Prakrit. Sanskrit may be 
 compared to the woadrous orb of the moon, and Prakrit to its 
 light ; for though the Pandits praise the Sanskrit to the skies they 
 are obliged to expound it in the popular vernacular to the people."' 
 
100 
 
 Shridhur's work is not like that of Waman and Moropant, whicli 
 was almost solely translation. Shridhur reproduced rather than 
 translated, though his books are based on the Puranic legends. 
 Tukaram's work is wholly original. He knew no Sanskrit, but 
 though therefore he excels Shridhur in originality he perhaps does 
 not surpass him in expression ; and in my judgment Moropant is 
 distinctly inferior to both, relying as he does on artificiality and 
 trickeryof language and rhythm to embellish a much poorer soil. 
 Shridhur has appended dates to his different poems, from which it 
 appears that he composed the " Triumph of Rama" (jVR f^^) and 
 the "Triumph of Hari" (fft r%3T?l) ia the year 1703 A.D,, the 
 exploits^ of tlie Pandavs (TI^^ STfTT'T) in 1712, and the wonders of 
 Shiv (m^R5r^) in 1718. He died in 1728 at the age of 50, He 
 is probably the best writer in the Ovi metre, though popular voice 
 gives the palm to Mukteshwar as the following Arya verse shows, 
 
 ^rqt JT5?:Tfn^ \i *i 11 
 
 *' The best Shloka is Waman's, the best Abhang Tukaram's, 
 the best Ovi Mukhtesh war's, and the best Arya Moropant's." 
 
 Mukhteshwar and Waman flourished in the 17th century, and 
 Moropant in the 18th. They have all written voluminously in the 
 Marathi language, but mostly by way of translation from Bhagawat, 
 3harat, or Ramayana. Moropant's writings are held in high esteem. 
 Most of them are in the Arya metre, and he is said to have written 
 more than 130,000 lines. One of the most remarkable of his poems 
 is his Kekavvali (%^^^r) or " Peacock's Cry," an original pro- 
 duction which shows that he could use an effective pen for other 
 purposes than translation. The greater part of his writings is 
 •disfigured by pedantry and over-loaded with pure Sanskrit ^\ords 
 so that they afford less pleasant reading than the simpler and more 
 natural verse of Tukaram and Shridhur. With the exception of 
 Moropant most of the more famous Maratha poets are Deshasta 
 Brahmans. He was a Karhada Brahman, and a Purauik, i.e., an 
 expounder of the Marathi legends, and decidedly belonged to the 
 Kjlass of pedantic Pandits referred to by Shridhur. He was born in 
 1729, one year after the death of the latter, and died in 1794. 
 
101 
 
 Amriiaraya, Mahipati, and Ragunath Pandit are the remaining 
 conspicuous poets of this century. Amritaraya has written strays 
 rerses in the Katav or Katibandha metre, in which some of the 
 Pawadas or historical ballads of the Marathas are composed. I may 
 instance the first two ballads in my recently published collection of 
 pawadas, and venture to quote from my translation of the ballad 
 on the escalade of Singhar the following lines I — 
 
 My Page array 
 
 Thy steed, to Poona haste away ; 
 
 There near the Mandir seek and bring 
 
 Tulshidas Shahir to the King. 
 
 Puntoji swift his steed array'd 
 
 With speed the royal hest obey'd, 
 
 Tulshidas Shahir found and brought 
 
 The poet to the Princes court ; 
 
 There to his tambourine and lyre 
 
 Sweetly he sung and did not tire 
 
 In Katibandha rhythm pure 
 
 The hero's feats shall long endure. 
 
 With tears the Raja heard the bard 
 
 And dower'd him with a rich reward. 
 Unfortunately Amritaraya was not inspired by the muse of history,. 
 Mahipati has written several bioofraphical works- The most impor- 
 tant are the Bhakti Vijaya (^frfT J^^) and (^ ^^^) Santa 
 Yijaya. They celebrate the deeds of the Bhaktas or devotees 
 and Santasor saints and the stories are very interesting. He also-^ 
 wrote a short life of Tukaram called Tukaram Charitra. Ragunath 
 Pandit has written as Scott said of Coleridge " but too little," His 
 one poem recounts the Siviiyumiuur or marriage by selection of 
 King Nulla with Dumuyunti. The episode is taken from the 
 Sanskrit, but the composition shows great original pov^er. There 
 are numerous minor poets who have written " padas" (Tf ) on 
 various subjects, but they cannot be referred to within the limits 
 addressed to me. I have mentioned, I think, the names of the 
 chief classical poets in the Marathi language, and of their principal- 
 works. 
 
102 
 
 But there are two classes of poems to which I have made no 
 ^reference. These are the lavnis or love songs and the pawadas or 
 historic ballads. With regard to the former there is the great 
 objection that they are both very licentious and very coarse. I 
 cannot but regret that while the important and interesting songs 
 of the Gondhalis are completely neglected at great centres like 
 Bombay and Poona, the authors of these lavnis are patronized and 
 encouraged. It would be far better to summon Gondhalis to 
 marriage and other ceremonies and listen to their fascinating 
 songs than to gloat over the persons and utterances of dancino- 
 girls with their so-called love songs, though it is a prostitution of 
 the -word love to associate it with the bestial sensuality which their 
 songs expatiate on. I will say no more as to the Gondhalis ballads 
 as I have already before the Anthropological Society or elsewhere 
 spoken and written upon them at some length. I must not omit 
 however, to mention here the name of one writer of lavnis who is 
 exempt from the above accusation ; I mean Ram Joshi, who was 
 the son of a well-to-do Deshasta Brahman of Sholapur, was born 
 in the year 1762 and died in 1812 A.D. He has written hundreds 
 of lavnis and these, with scarcely an exception, are free from all 
 impurity either of idea or language. He is said to have travelled 
 from place to place expounding sacred tales from the Purans and 
 •reciting his own verses and those of Moropant whom he held in 
 high esteem. He has also written several very interesting ** Padas" 
 and some descriptive ballads in lavni style, one of which gives a 
 beautiful and touching narrative of the great famine of 1603, and 
 I have included it in my recent collection of Pawadas. 
 
 And now does anything remain to be said on the subject of 
 current Maratha poetry ? Heartily do I hope that the movement 
 which is now aiming to introduce the vernaculars among the higher 
 University tests may prove a success. The past half a century 
 has produced no name which may rank with those of Tukaram or 
 Shridhur, The modern tendency has been to irnitate Moropant, 
 but like all imitation it is a failure. There have been attempts to 
 write according to the models set by Takara-n and Shridhur, bat 
 
103 
 
 they Lave been laughed at, and 1 think, unjustly. The late Mr. 
 Mahadev Kunte, a scholar of European renown, wrote his poem 
 ** Shiwaji" in simple and flowing Marathi verse, and was jeered at 
 for his pains. He cannot be said to have copied any predecessor, 
 but the simplicity of his style resembles that of Kamdas, whose 
 metre also (Shloka) he adopted. 
 
 I have recently seen a book of selections from 22 Marathi poets 
 of the present century, beginning with the name of Parashram 
 Tatya Godbole, and ending with that of my friend Purshotam 
 Balkrishna Joshi, who, if his genius was better recognised, and his 
 opportunities enlarged, might surpass them all and give the world 
 assurance of a poet. The famous professor Damstetter has noticed 
 in his work " Lottres Sur I'lnde" Mr. Joshi's poem Bharatwurshini 
 as an example of the direction which modern refined thought is 
 taking among the Marathas. These selections show also that the lite- 
 rary spirit still lives, but they show also that it will not live worthily 
 until mere imitativeness is exchanged for assimilation and produc- 
 tion. The poet is the man who makes, the " Maker" as the Scandi- 
 navians called him, not the man who copies. It seems to me that 
 the Maratha aspirant thinks too much of his style and too little of 
 ideas. I remember a great satirist and critic who remarked that a 
 poet ought in the first instance to be perfectly clear as to what he 
 meant to say, and then to say it in the simplest language possible. 
 Think more of quality and less of quantity. Ragunath Pandit 
 wrote only one poem, but that one is the admiration of all Mahara- 
 shtra. Language is a means or medium to an end, not the end 
 itself, and remember this straining after fine words implies that 
 jou are thinking more of your reader than your subject, and this 
 is fatal to all genuine poetic feeling. Of all occupations the literary, 
 and in particular the poetic branch of literatare, is that in which it 
 is most fatal to the performer to " address the gallery." It seems 
 to me — I am speaking to the younger of you — that while you 
 should not shut your ears to criticism it is a mistake to think much 
 of it or to fear it. No man was ever written down except by 
 himself, as has often been said by great writers. You must make 
 
104 
 
 up your own mind that you are exercising your energies in the 
 direction which is right for you and doing the best that you can ; 
 and then if your own conscience and your own faculties commend 
 themselves to you, you need not care much though others dis* 
 approve. You do not write for reward^ poetry is itself its own 
 exceeding great reward- For myself, individually, who am just 
 enough of a poet to know that I am none, I could not easily express 
 the feelings with which, leaving behind me for a time that sphere, 
 not ignoble though harsh in its conditions, in which the dissonance 
 of strife so incessantly clangs around me, the harsh discords of 
 debate, the dull denunciations of what is truly an " unlicensed 
 printing," the elaborate misconceptions, the false, sordid, malignant 
 misconstructions, the creeping search for foul motives, the vultu- 
 rine incapacity of scent for anything that is pure, leaving this 
 sphere where no one fully trusts and all are eager to condemn, I 
 can breathe the unenvenomed air of that purer and higher world 
 in which if criticism be present, it at least spares me the imputation 
 of base motives, and in which I or you can mingle with the- 
 thought, 
 
 Of the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again, 
 In minds made better by their presence, 
 
 and find peace, consolation, freedom, and vigour in the beautjf 
 "which the eye cannot see and the music only heard in silence. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF NATURE ON LITERATURE 
 AND POLITICS.* 
 
 Lecturer ; W. Lee- Warner Esq., M.A., C.S.I. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 I can hardly expect in the few words which I shall address to 
 you this evening to do more than attempt to arouse an interest in 
 a subject which is worthy of your further study and which you 
 will find full of practical usefulness. In December last Mr, Selby 
 drew your attention to the link which unites the classic authors of 
 Athens with the statesmen of to-day, and with modern writers on 
 Ethics and Politics. Mr. Ac worth, a few days later, deplored the 
 poverty of your literature and your neglect of Maratha ballads and 
 poetry. I shall endeavour to-day to show you that nature supplies 
 ^he web that runs through the page of human literature, uniting 
 the men of old with the events and literature of to-day, and that she 
 still enriches the poet with her inspiration, and the statesman with 
 the most necessary and practical of all knowledge, namely, that of 
 the ground on which we stand. My subject, therefore, bears some 
 relation to the addresses which have preceded it, and it is, I think, 
 appropriate to an audience which includes not merely those gradu- 
 ates of our University, who have already made the Elphinstone 
 College famous, but also a rising generation to whom will be com- 
 mitted the grave responsibility and high honour of directing the 
 ODward progress of Western India in moral and social development. 
 As a great German writer has remarked, the destiny of any nation 
 at any given moment depends on its young men. Above all, it 
 seems to me that few cities in the world are so favoured by nature, 
 as this our city of Bombay, with sights that dehght the eye and 
 bid us read aright the pages unfolded to our view. If Wordsworth 
 
 * An address deUvered on March 12, 1892, Principal R. G. Oxenham 
 in the chair. 
 
 8 
 
106 
 
 looking upon London, with its one river flowing through the busy 
 haunts of men, was forced to exclaim — 
 
 Dull would he be of soul, who could pass by 
 
 A sight so touching in its majesty. 
 
 This city now doth like a garment wear 
 
 The beauty of the morning : silent, bare, 
 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 
 Open unto the fields, and to the sky — 
 what a wealth of soul-stirring song would he have poured forth at 
 the scenes which are so familiar to us ! The grand ocean here " bares 
 her bosom to the moon " in the double bay of our exquisite island, 
 crowded as it is with the mighty hearts of a varied and vast popu- 
 lation. Even your unlettered visitors pay their tribute of homage 
 to its silent power. I recollect that, when the Maliks of the Khyber 
 levies passed through Bombay after visiting all the cities of India 
 on their way back to their mountain passes, I asked what sight of 
 all had most impressed them. The reply was instant — " The sea in 
 your harbour," and the reason was added that there was ** water 
 there enough for all time and all nations." Grand as is the picture 
 of ocean before us, the effect is heightened by the lavish hand of 
 nature in the setting of it. You look across the harbour and see 
 mountains built for the human race, whose worn peaks have borne 
 the shock of monsoon- tempest, and the stress of wandering storms* 
 There they stand eternal testimonies, cathedrals of nature, with 
 their minarets pointing up to heaven, and their massive sides 
 penetrated by gloomy silent caverns, whose loneliness has attracted 
 ^nd sheltered the persecuted worshippers of former centuries. 
 What transformations of scene do we daily, and yet so often 
 unmoved, witness in Bombay ! At noon the serene blue arch of 
 sky hangs over all : as the sun sets, watch-fires are lit up on the 
 crest of Bhowmullen and his brother giants by its departing rays: 
 and when the moon throws her mantle over the city and the sea, 
 what soft restfulness is shed on wearied man ! Once more the scene 
 is changed, and as the stars come out and pierce the bay with 
 silver shafts, the imagination of man is powerless to count these 
 
107 
 
 messengers of liglifc from the gate of Leaven. I need not remind 
 jou of the ^ild flashes of lightning and the furious onrush of the 
 monsoon, blending sea, air, and mountain in a common fury. To 
 me it seems that voices of the sea and of the mountains, of peace 
 and of storm, speak to every one of us in this city, a city from 
 which even the pleasures of country are not withheld owing to the 
 rich varieties of trees and flowers which adorn it ; and that here 
 Of this fair volume which we world do name, 
 If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care, 
 Of Him, who it corrects and did it frame, 
 We clear might read the art and wisdom rare. 
 You cannot fail to be proud of your city and its natural surround- 
 ings, and it is upon the pages of this book of nature which lies 
 ever unfolded before you, that I shall venture to offer some remarks 
 this evening. I shall first endeavour to claim your attention on 
 the ground of the paramount importance to all men of genius of a 
 close study of nature- I shall urge that it is nature which inspires 
 all works of art, and it is nature which enables future generations 
 and men of other nations and other continents to understand and 
 appreciate those chips from the human workshop which, although 
 they are hewn or shaped by a single citizen of one country, are 
 preserved and honoured by one generation after another of the 
 human race in all parts of the inhabited world. Having shown the 
 sovereignty of nature over all constructions of man's creative 
 faculty, I shall glance at the course of British literature through its 
 three best known eras, trying to convince you of the broadening, 
 liberalising influence of nature's teaching. It seems to me that in 
 the Elizabethan period our literature was saved from jingoism and 
 insularity : after the age of Queen Anne it was rescued from affec- 
 tation and formality : while in the nineteenth century our arch- 
 enemy materialism, and the particular personalities or idiosyncrasies 
 of individual poets, as of atheism in Shelley or egotism in Byron, 
 Jiave been corrected by a study of the " fair volume which we 
 world do name." I shall then select three from the many lessons 
 which nature has taught to the British statesman, first, the progres- 
 
108 
 
 sive capacity of man and the claims of humanity as superior to those 
 of the family or to those of the nation ; secondly, the law of gradual 
 and unceasing progress ; and, lastly, the principle of natural growth 
 suited to the particular environment of each race or country. 
 
 With this outline of my argument I can at once clear the 
 ground by reminding you of the sovereignty of nature over all 
 constructions of man's creative faculty. You will then realise that 
 our subject is not a mere fancy of the imagination, but a practical 
 and a productive study. What do we understand by a work of 
 art ? and where, except in nature, is to be found the common meet- 
 ing-ground of the great men, who have taught us in stone, on 
 canvas, in tones of harmony, or in words of undying power that 
 speak down the ages straight to our hearts as they will to those of 
 generations unborn ? A work of art is less a creation, than a 
 revelation or translation to his fellowmen of an idea conceived by a 
 man of genius. The gifted man inspired by nature forthwith 
 embodies his thought with the united effort of his heart, hand, and 
 head, in a production of perfect shape or harmony. Yon some- 
 times hear that Walter Scott created or made Scotland; I would 
 rather say that he revealed it. How can you of Asia admire 
 Shakespeare or Wordsworth, unless his truth to your nature makes 
 his words intelligible to your human heart ? The Taj at Agra 
 expresses the language of human sorrow and consolation as elo- 
 quently to the French visitor as to the Saiad from Mecca. Although 
 expressed in stone its words are as eloquent as the lament for 
 Lycidas or that for Adonais. The same is true of the Elgin marbles, 
 the stones of Venice, the paintings of Raphael, the oratorios of 
 Handel, or the songs of the world's poets. Man speaks to man 
 down the ages and across the continents, if he commits the inspira- 
 tion of nature breathed into his gifted mind to a work of art, 
 because we stand on the same ground on which he stood. We are 
 not all blessed with a deep sensibility to nature, nor can we all 
 plough its subsoil, but a touch of nature makes the whole world 
 kin, and truth to nature is the infallible test of and requisite to a. 
 
109 
 
 work for all ages, T might press home this argument by showing 
 the converse and proving to you that in proportion as literature* 
 architecture, or painting retires from the companionship of nature, 
 its power over mankind wanes. We have a striking instance of 
 this in the literature of Queen Anne's period, and the same principle 
 operates in architecture. Ruskin attributes the decay of Venetian 
 architecture to the lapse of the Renaissance builder from nature, 
 and the pride of heart and the desire of the euccespor of the Gothic 
 architect to display his own knowledge. He thought less of what 
 he said or worked in stones and marbles, and more of his indivi- 
 dual scholarship : less of truth than of phrases. The secret of his 
 predecessor's power is thus described : "The Gothic architect had 
 fellowship with all hearts, and was universal like nature." The 
 fact is that he saw and felt, and in his lines and curves he translat- 
 ■ed his vision of nature. Hence it is that Ruskin offers this 
 prescription for the failings of the modern architect, that he 
 should leave the town and betake himself to the country and the 
 hills that he may learn what nature understands by a buttress or a 
 dome. We shall presently see that the Ayrshire ploughman caught 
 again in his fields the healthy tones and spirit of poetry which 
 the classical poets of Queen Anne's time had lost in the fashionable 
 villas and towns of England. 
 
 I must, however, pass on from this general view of the meeting 
 ground in nature of all works of art, and of the practical and 
 sovereign importance of a study of nature's pages, to the illustra* 
 tion of my argument, which is afforded by a rapid glance at the 
 history of British literature through its three principal eras. 
 Beginning with the age of Queen Elizabeth and selecting its giant 
 Shakespeare I would draw your attention to the corrective which his 
 appreciation of nature supplied to the tendency to self-glorification 
 and Philistinism, which was a marked feature of those spacious and 
 prosperous years of British history. We can then observe how a 
 subsequent period of artificialism was redeemed by a return to 
 nature : and once again in the present century the besetting sins 
 
110 
 
 of materialism and atheism have been corrected by the same healthy 
 principle. 
 
 In dealing with the first of these periods I want you now to recall 
 to mind how mnch there was to justify in the Avon bard a tone of 
 glorification of Englishmen in the events of contemporary history* 
 and yet you will observe that Shakespeare dwells on the nobility 
 of man and not merely of the Englishman, and on the debt which 
 British institutions and the Englishman's spirit of co-operation and 
 obedience owed to the inspiration of nature. The Britisher might 
 indeed be proud of his country and its form of government, but he 
 was reminded that the source of his strength lay in the powers of 
 the human race, and that the capacities which he turned to such 
 good account are capacities inherent in the men of Asia or Europe 
 and in all the sons of men who choose to learn the lessons of 
 nature. The secret of Shakespeare's power lies in this, as Ruskin 
 has truly said, that *' he painted honestly and completely from the 
 men about him, and so painted that human nature which is indeed 
 constant enough. " You will appreciate the better this wider view 
 if you think for an instant of the temptations which surrounded 
 the immortal Will, "•The spacious times of great Elizabeth '^ 
 might well have intoxicated the English nation with self-pride and 
 philistinism. Chaucer had taught them the capacity of the English 
 language. Great difficulties had been overcome, the wars of the 
 Roses, the death-scenes of feudalism, and the birth-throes of the 
 Reformation : and Englishmen were conquering new seas and 
 continents, and winning the not less renowned victories of peace in 
 the fields of speculation and human thought. Self-applause could 
 not be too exaggerated : but the dramatist at once brushed aside 
 such exaggeration in his injunction '* that you overstep not the 
 modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the purpose of 
 playing, whose end is to hold as ' t were the mirror up to nature : to 
 show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image : and the very 
 age and body of the time his form and pressure. " The influence 
 
Ill 
 
 which Puritanism was yet to exert, and the spiritual and popular 
 tendencies of succeeding reigns were indeed not fully grasped by 
 the aristocratic dramatist, but he realised that the Englishman's 
 greatest title to honour was as a man, and therefore men of all ages 
 have rendered him homage as the immortal Will. " What a piece 
 of work is man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty 
 In form and moving how express and admirable ! In action how 
 like an angel ! In apprehension how like a god ! The beauty of 
 the world, the paragon of animals ! " And man, with all these 
 inherent qualities, the attributes of the race, and not of the 
 Englishman only, learnt his greatest lesson from nature. You all 
 know the famous passage on obedience in the second scene of the 
 first act of Henry V., and it is well to recall the historic setting in 
 which the appeal to nature was uttered. Social and political dis- 
 content had threatened the very existence of the Monarchy* When 
 Henry IV., had succeeded the deposed Richard he was obliged to 
 ratify in solemn terms the compact between himself and the people. 
 The nation had asserted itself by securing the recognition of the 
 authority of Parliament, and by forcing on its king the resumption 
 of hostilities with France. Its leaders might boast, as they looked 
 around on other countries, or back upon former times, that the 
 English nation had a special capacity for inventing political organi- 
 sations. The victors of Cressy were on the eve of the victory of 
 Agincourt, when the poet reminds them that the law of obedience 
 is the inexorable law of nature, and that their institutions, of which 
 they are so proud, are only a reproduction of nature's teachings. 
 So work the honey bees, 
 Creatures that by a rule in nature teach 
 The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 
 They have a king and ofl&cers of sorts ; 
 Where some like magistrates correct at home, 
 Others like merchants venture trade abroad, 
 Others like soldiers armed in their stings 
 Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds, 
 Which pillage they with merry march bring home- 
 To the tent royal of their emperor. 
 
112 
 
 The moral of the whole is, 
 
 That many things, having full reference 
 To one consent, may work contrariously. 
 The law of obedience and the law of unity lose nothing by being 
 referred to as laws of nature. The law of obedience is the law of 
 the universe. Some people talk as if nature were made the slave of 
 man, but she is only man's instrument when he obeys her. The 
 electric instrument will carry man's message only if he obeys her 
 laws. Let him disobey and he is struck dead. How many empires 
 and dynasties in this country have crumbled to dust for lack of 
 obedience to the common end ! Ruskin in his ' Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture ' writes in the same spirit when he observes *' that 
 principle to which polity owes its stability, life its happiness, faith 
 its acceptance, and creation its continuance, is obedience. Most 
 treacherous of all phantoms is that which men call Liberty. There 
 is no such thing in the universe, there can never be. The stars 
 have it not, the earth has it not, the sea has it not, and we men 
 have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest pun- 
 ishment." He then goes on to praise the law of liberty, that 
 perfect freedom which knows the truth, and the truth makes it 
 free ; and claims for it its best and truest name of obedience, with 
 freedom granted that obedience may be more perfect. " You honour 
 the bee more than the butterfly, because it is subject to certain laws 
 which fit it for orderly function in bee society. From the minis- 
 tering of the archangel to the labour of the insect ; from the poi- 
 sing of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust, the power 
 and glory of all creatures and all matter consist in their obedience^ 
 not in their freedom." 
 
 I can pass more rapidly through the next era of our literature, 
 but the effect which a study of nature produced on it is even more 
 marked, owing to the severe contrast presented, than in the 
 previous era. The broad teaching of nature corrected philistinism 
 in the sixteenth century, but in the eighteenth century the foe it 
 vanquished was affectation, just as in our own century it has 
 
113 
 
 -wrestled with materialism. The age of Queen Anne was in marked 
 contrast with that of Queen Elizabeth. Freedom of style and pro- 
 digality of thoaght were replaced by a slavish, if pretty, submission 
 to a critical conventionalism. It was an age of allegories, anti- 
 theses, and barren rhymes. Satire replaced the drama, and social 
 manners were considered the proper subject for the poetic art, 
 John Bull was even ashamed of his English surroundings ; Hume 
 and Johnson were avowedly bored with the country ; and the dear 
 face of English scenery, nature's most favoured book, was peopled 
 by our poets with dryads, naiads, and classic ghosts. The poets 
 of this age would have classed Wordsworth's * Brook ' as unworthy 
 of the name of poetry. He would not give to his idealised brook 
 ** human cheeks, channels for tears." — 
 No Naiad shouldst thou be. 
 It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee 
 With purer robes than those of flesh and blood. 
 Titania's fairies, courtly costumes, the dressed walks of suburban 
 villas, artificial manners, and the outside aspects of men pleased the 
 early part of the eighteenth century more than the human heart ; 
 and so succeeding generations turn from such conceits with a sense 
 of weariness to the time when once more nature breathed her 
 fresher air upon our literature, and the Ayrshire farra-labourer, 
 Robert Bums, and the invalid William Cowper found in the fields 
 and in the domestic circle healthier inspirations for their art, and 
 heralded the new birth of imagination. Poetry was brought back 
 from the town to the country. The contrast between the age of 
 Queen Anne and the years which succeeded Burns marks in the 
 clearest light the value of the book of nature to literature, and 
 need occupy our attention no further than as a passage from the 
 darkness to the glorious daylight of Wordsworth^ Byron, Coleridge» 
 Shelley, Scott, and Keats, which makes our own century one of 
 the most wonderful eras in the history of literature. 
 
 It is impossible in the short time at our disposal to do justice to 
 the present century, or more than endeavour to support the chain 
 of my argument by showing how powerful nature has been, in thg 
 
114 
 
 nineteenth century, in correcting not merely the failings of the age, 
 but also the personal defects of each individual poet. Aa to the 
 age, I shall content myself with one quotation from Wordsworth to 
 show how resolutely he resisted the materialism and self-indulgence 
 of the present century — 
 
 The world is too much with us : late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours : 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ? 
 The sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
 The winds that wiU be howling at all hours. 
 And are up -gathered now like sleeping flowers, 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
 It moves us not. 
 We are familiar with the contemptuous and superficial sneer of 
 the man of science, ready with Jeffrey's remark, " This will never 
 do, " who thinks he can understand with the head, but cannot see 
 with the eye of feeling, who found fault with the Gothic architec- 
 ture as incorrect, and laughed at the idea of ** a light that never 
 was on sea or land." There is too much of the same scorn of 
 sentiment and imagination, I fear, in our young Indian society, 
 which discards what " will not pay " and begins too early to 
 **spend and get " or to calculate and not to enjoy the higher 
 pleasures of life. But Wordsworth's was, T think " the better 
 part " :— 
 
 Contented if he might enjoy 
 The things which others understand. 
 In the third period of English literature which we are now 
 considering the power of nature has been acknowledged by all 
 writers ; but the exact point on which I desire to insist is the 
 healthy and correcting influence, which this power has exerted 
 upon our literature. You can take any of the poets who have 
 adorned the century and study the effect for yourselves. I will 
 select Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge as an illustration of my 
 contention. Shelley and Byron were both men of very marked 
 characters, who viewed nature from a different standpoint from 
 that of Wordsworth. Wordsworth sought the sweet companion- 
 
115 
 
 ship and the consolations of nature. Shelley and Byron rejoiced in 
 her tumult and power. The former was attracted to the mys- 
 terious forces of nature, and in his supposed mission of emancipa- 
 ting men from tyranny looked to nature as an ally. Had he made 
 the acquaintance of dynamite in his early manhood, his career 
 might have been shorter than it was ; for, as it was, he nearly blew 
 himself up in his college rooms, Byron, the self-indulgent critic, 
 was perhaps too little inclined to trouble himself with an offensive 
 and defensive alliance with nature's storms, but he also relied on 
 her as a supreme vindicator and leveller of the proud. Yet, on a 
 tour to Switzerland, when nature's spirit took a deeper hold on 
 these two men, who sought her power rather than her sweet 
 communion, it wrung out of Shelley the ' Hymn on Intellectual 
 Beauty, ' and of Byron, the least affected and most human of all 
 his poems, the third canto of ' Childe Harold,' and the * Prisoner 
 of Chillon.' Most of Shelley's poetry is what you might expect of 
 his strange life and training. Fed on Godwin's * Political Justice,' 
 and the atheistic materialism of the ' Systeme de la Nature,' expel- 
 led from Oxford for writing a book on the * Necessity of Atheism,' 
 running a tilt through life at the most sacred relations of domestic 
 life and Christian society, it was nature herself which disclosed to 
 him her serene and calm aspect as well as her storms and revolts. 
 In company with Byron the author of ' Qaeen Mab ' visited 
 Switzerland, and no one who compares Wordsworth's ' Ode on 
 Intimations of Immortality ' with the grand outburst of song 
 beginning, " The awful shadow of some unseen power," can fail to 
 observe how the saving health of nature influenced the rebellious 
 heart of Shelley, as it had attracted the devotion of its prophet 
 Wordsworth. Atheism and tumult were at last hushed in the 
 presence of nature's loveliness, when the poet felt and translated 
 to mankind his revelation in these words : 
 
 The day becomes more solemn and serene, 
 
 When noon is past : there is a harmony, 
 In autumn, and a lustre in the sky, 
 
 "Which through the Summer is not heard or seen 
 As if it could not be, as if it had not been. 
 
116 
 
 Thus let thy power which like the truth 
 Of Nature on my passive Youth 
 
 Descended, to my onward life supply 
 Its calm to one who worships thee, 
 
 And every formVcontaining thee, 
 Whom spirit fair thy spells did bind 
 
 To fear himself, and love all human kind. 
 
 I can only quote one more instance of the path by which sove- 
 Teign nature led the unfortunate Shelley to the very gate of 
 eternity through all the tumults of his earlier years. 
 
 The one remains, the many change and pass, 
 
 Heaven's light for ever shines : earth's shadows fly, 
 Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, 
 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity 
 
 Until death tramples it to fragments. 
 
 I have mentioned how Byron's half affected spleen, as witnessed in 
 
 his 'Scotch Reviewers/ and his egotism were checked by the very 
 
 same Swiss scenery, which inspired the 'Hymn to Intellectual Beau* 
 
 tys' and how, when detained in the inn in 1816 by stress of weather, 
 
 he forgot ennui in sympathy with human suffering in the person 
 
 of the martyr Bonnivard. I would ask you also to contrast for 
 
 yourselves the third canto of ' Childe Harold * with the rest of 
 
 that poem. Here I can only refer to those poems in proof of the 
 
 wonderful effect which a view of nature produced upon Byron ; and 
 
 the same result will be observed in the case of Coleridge, who was 
 
 recalled from his trances and visions by the toach of nature. The 
 
 contrast between the martyr soul of pure Christabel and the evil 
 
 that held her spell-bound, ends in the conviction, taught by the 
 
 blue arch of the sky, which is ever open to all of us when we want 
 
 to seek release from any temptation or chains of our own forging . 
 
 But this she knows, in joys or woes, 
 
 That saints will aid if men will call : 
 
 For the blue sky bends over all. 
 
 Coleridge loved to linger over the supernatural and invisible, and 
 to transfer to them from the natural and visible world a human 
 interest and a semblance of truth, so that the shadows of his 
 imagination might seem realities. In the * Ancient Mariner,' I am 
 
117 
 
 always reminded of that architectural device which unites one 
 colbnr with another by reciprocal interference carrying a piece of 
 one colour into the other, so that the change shall not be too 
 abrupt. The transition of tho Mariner's ship from the storm and 
 the rotting bulwarks, or from the magically becalmed sea to the 
 known and visible world, is powerfully drawn, until the simplicity 
 of the final lines leaves the reader at rest on the solid earth. 
 
 He prayeth best, who loveth best 
 •AH things both great and small; 
 
 For the dear God who loveth us 
 He made and loveth all. 
 
 I can only throw out these hints and quotations ; but I have no 
 doubt that you will follow my point of view for yourselves, and 
 with one more illustration I will pass on. One might have expected 
 that the French Revolution would have shaken Wordsworth's 
 confidence in nature's lessons of consolation and order : and indeed 
 he confesses that, when England joined the alliance, he began to 
 doubt his reading of nature's book, but then once more 
 
 Nature's self 
 By all varieties of human love 
 Assisted, led me back, through opening day, 
 To those sweet counsels between head and heart ; 
 Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, 
 Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, 
 Has still upheld me, and upholds me now. 
 
 The sum then of the whole matter is this, that, however fanciful 
 you may think the claim of nature as the great inspirer and foun- 
 tain of British literature, Shakespeare has retained his influence 
 because he painted the men about him, as men were, are, and may 
 be ; the Queen Anne's poets sacrificed matter to manner, and their 
 works, if they please do not instruct. Again the nature-loving 
 bards of the nineteenth century have helped to save a money-getting 
 and money-spending age from gross materialism and belief in no- 
 thing but self-indulgence* Many-sided generous nature has inspir- 
 ed songs which have given liberal aims to our administrators, 
 widened our sympathies, corrected pride and self-glory, and taught 
 the British nation as -a Greater than they did, to consider the lilies 
 
118 
 
 of the field acd their lesson, to mark the blue sky that bends over 
 rulers and their subjects, to " love all human kind, " and to note 
 that " Heaven's light for ever shines." 
 
 And now I pass to the second part of my address. Britishers 
 must be men of action as well as men of thought. Great Britain 
 has to govern, as well as to create and study literature. A sove- 
 reign power which could teach " the spacious times of great 
 Elizabeth " that the British nation and its "jewel set in the silver 
 sea " was only a part of mankind and of inhabited space, which 
 could bid the conceited poet of Queen Anne's time turn to the 
 fresher air of the country or the garden lawn, and which could send 
 Shelley, the atheist, on to his knees in adoration of the spirit 
 of nature, and convince the most materialistic age that the world 
 might be too much with us, has its message and its lessons of huma- 
 nity for the governing classes. On the all important question of 
 the duties of authority and responsibilities of empire, nature has a 
 word to say in favour of the progressive capacity and the claims of 
 humanity, as against mere national interests, and still more as 
 against the still narrower interest of the family or caste. What 
 are the physical facts ? Nature breathes her grandeur and opens 
 her book to all mankind. The sorrows and joys of humanity know 
 no distinction of race, caste, or clime. A touch of nature makes 
 the whole world kin — of one blood are all the nations of the earth 
 made. One flower will, indeed, grow only in one country, but 
 another, not less beautiful fostered by the same influence, will 
 grow in another. The same rain supplies man with water, irrespec- 
 tive of caste or nationality. The sun's rays going forth from the 
 east to the west are not difierential, but are the birth -right of all 
 mankind, " They consecrate with their own hues whatever they 
 shine upon." From the companionship of nature, from the satis- 
 faction of good conscience, the most cruel autocrat, or most proten- 
 tious class cannot exclude those whom God has made, and he or it 
 may disfavour. Those are the facts in the book of nature, And 
 how does the literary Britisher read it ? Wordsworth says against 
 the proud in heart, or in purse, or in birth-right : — 
 
119 
 
 There is 
 
 One great society alone on earth, 
 The noble living and the noble dead, 
 
 Arnold, one of the sweeteflfc and latest of onr lyrical poets, sang : — 
 What still of strength is left, employ 
 
 That end to help attain ; 
 One common wave of thought and joy, 
 Lifting mankind again 
 
 De Tocqueville writes : — ** He who despises man will never get 
 the best out of himself or others" : and Mill in his Essays writes : — 
 *' Whatever man has been> man may be," Our Poet Laureate > 
 catching the inspiration of Shakespeare on that " wonderful piece 
 of work, man, " sees in the far future a *' federation of the 
 world " and a '* parliament of men". Here then in the book of 
 nature, and our literature founded on it, is the source and inspi- 
 ration of the British conception of rules. It is no narrow principle 
 of a paternal Government, or a rule for the benefit of the ruler 
 which sent forth the Roman with his poet's sailing orders, 
 
 Tu regere im'perio populos, ^Eomane,' memento* 
 
 or which fostered differences as aiding the central authority 
 Divide 6t impera. Its aim is less to govern than to call forth the 
 progressive capacity and to teach self-government. It desires to 
 lift up the lower ranks of society and the subject to the pedestal 
 of the ruler. " Humanity," and " Heaven's light our Guide"" are 
 its watch. words, and they are embodied in your Magna Charta, 
 the Queen's Proclamation, issued by the ruler whose authority had 
 just been defied and restored by the sword. But it was not heJ 
 own might that prevailed, but His right hand that gave one race 
 victory that it might be used for the good of many races. There 
 are three supreme ideas of mankind, the family, the nation, and 
 humanity. The Hindoo and the Greek ruler thought of the first ; 
 the Roman empire of the second ; but the British nation accepts 
 the last and highest as its ruling idea. I will not pause to dwell 
 on what international law has owed to the theory of a Law of 
 Nature, nor do I mean to assert that the Britisher, or any other 
 
126 
 
 ruling race, has been trae at all times to his high principle ;. 
 bat I venture to point out to you that from God's nature the 
 British nation has learnt the grand idea of humanity, and that the 
 legislation and administration of India under the Queen bears 
 testimony to her Majesty's desire to recognise a progressive future 
 as before all those committed to her care. The protection of the 
 ■weak, equality in the eye of the law, justice, and a common 
 participation in the benefits, and, when the time comes, in the task 
 of good government, are at least the aims which the British Govern- 
 ment sets before it. 
 
 Nature does not stop short at inculcating the progressive capa- 
 city of mankind : in her next chapter she teaches that progress is a 
 necessity of life. ** Life means growth." We witness on all sides 
 the progress from seed to blade, from blade to ear, and from ear to 
 corn. Except for brief interludes, and in reality there is in them 
 some advance, all healthy animals and plants are renewing or 
 increasing growth. In nature there is no standing still. There is 
 either life and progress, or decline and death. So with human 
 institutions, they must be renewed like the Sacred Ship of Athens, 
 plank by plank it may be, but still so completely as to leave no 
 part untouched. The British statesman recognises that reform 
 must be gradual, but he is convinced that the task of the reformer, 
 is unending, and looking at the interwoven network of life, he 
 knows that reform cannot be confined to one part of human 
 administration. In whatever direction the afiairs of man penetrate, 
 in all those must the spirit of change and growth penetrate. You 
 cannot say to the spirit of reform, as Canute is reported to have 
 said to the sea, " Thus far and no farther.*' Politics cannot be 
 marked ofi" for separate development and treated by themselves, 
 and moral, religious, and social concerns left unaffected by the 
 leaven put into the political lump. Doubtless, the legislator alone 
 need not undertake the whole task of reform. Society and the 
 individual unit must perform their several parts, but if there is to 
 be life, and if man is to develop his progressive capacity or else rot, 
 then there must be growth and signs of progress in every depart- 
 
121 
 
 ment of human endeavour and interesi. Any tree in our jungles 
 will tell us the story of connected life and growth to the very 
 extremities. The peepul tree outside this hall whose roots are 
 drawing moisture and life from the ground communicates the sap 
 through its trunk to the branches, the branches in their turn carry 
 their vivifying influence to the twigs, and the outer loaves have a 
 fibre which connects them directly with the stem, and so with the 
 root. Thus nature does her work thoroughly, and he is no friend 
 of India who, for fear of adverse or immature criticism, leads you 
 to believe that social and moral growth can be dissevered from the 
 thread of political reform or constitutional development. The sap 
 must be carried to every part of the tree if the tree is to live. 
 
 Finally, nature carries us forward to its next law, that growth 
 must be natural and suited to the environment, and imforms the 
 statesman that if constitutions must necessarily change, they " are 
 not made but grow." Mr. John Morley has wisely remarked that 
 " the problem of the statesman is individual, " and that a analo- 
 gies are misleading. Few of you will deny the law of sequence, or 
 the proposition that the best hopes for the future must be linked 
 to a wise reverence for the traditions and history of the past. The 
 application of this principle to India under the Queen-Empress 
 must be a matter for your own thought. I belong to neither of 
 the extreme parties on this question. One party holds that the 
 Christian institutions of England cannot be made applicable to 
 India, the most conservative and theocratic of countries. But this 
 view loses sight of the fact that British rule constitutes a Chapter 
 already written by history in the life of India, and one whose 
 influence must be calculated by the historian and statesman. That 
 such a factor must bo potential is self-evident. Another critic tells 
 you that the Christian institutions of England are eternally true 
 and applicable, like the laws of nature, to all sorts and conditions 
 of men. But nature's laws are general, and their operation is 
 diverse in as much as the soil and climate of continents differ, and 
 their products must conform to the environment. With what 
 variations the British constitution and its institutions may be adapted 
 
 9 
 
132 
 
 to the -wants of the multiform societies of that geographical expres- 
 sion which we label Icdia, I dare not prophecy. The adaptation 
 rests primarily with the peoples of India and not with the Govern- 
 ment ; but it may help you to appreciate the truth of my present 
 proposition as to natural growth if I take an object lesson from 
 British history, and show you how representative government has 
 I'esulted from the interwoven life of Great Britain, or how, to fall 
 back on Shakespeare — 
 
 Here many things, having full reference 
 To one consent, have worked contrarioiisly. 
 The seeds of representative government were sown and fructified 
 in a common vernacular, a brotherhood of literature, a national 
 faith, and a united society of the British nation. The quickened 
 life of the nation could never have found a national utterance if a 
 vernacular literature had not been created by Chaucer, and the 
 2^orman language only used so far as to supply its wants. Unless 
 knight and churl, baron and peasant, high and low, Scotsman and 
 Englishman adopted a common vernacular, the masses never could 
 have been reached by the pens of nature's nobility. The English 
 language thus created has been enriched by the genius of British 
 men and British women — English, Scotch and Irish — and by men of 
 society and the children of the poorest ranks of life contributing 
 their ideas as well as their expressions to our national literature. 
 If you look no further back than the present century, you will 
 recall the names of Maria Edgeworth, Moore's country-woman, 
 along with those of Miss Austen, George Eliot, and others, the 
 representatives of British authoresses from each of the three king. 
 doms. No history of the literary efforts of this century is complete 
 T^rithout a chapter devoted to what Southey called, " The Cockney 
 Writers." In the ranks of those who have instructed the nation 
 walk not only Byron, the peer, and Shelley the country-squire's 
 son, but the humble Keats, Coleridge and Lamb, the blue-coat 
 boys, and sons of hoziers, shoemakers, and other workers at trades, 
 besides Burns, the Ayrshire labourer. Dissenting ministers have 
 sent many into the field of our literature to make a name with the 
 Catholic Lingard, the Protesfcan Hallam, Bishop Hebcr, and the 
 
123 
 
 free-thinking Gibbon and Mill. The leaven of brotherhood in 
 literary pursuits has thus worked through the whole mass of the 
 nation, one common wave of thought and joys lifting it. Of the 
 influence of a common religion and the undying work of the 
 Reformation, or of the ever-seething cauldron of social reform, I 
 need not speak. You know well the series of revolutions — peaceful 
 and turbulent — which have reduced in turn the pretensions of 
 monarchy, the privileges of the nobles, or the violence of the mob. 
 Common dangers In war and the pursuit of common aims in politics 
 have compelled all classes and ranks of society to lend a hand to 
 each other. Such are the conditions of national brotherhood in 
 which the germ of representation in the small area of the United 
 Kingdom has taken root ; and what the fruits are you can see in 
 the legislative measures of any single session of Parliament. Ko 
 permanent settlement justifies the possessors of property in refusing 
 allotments to the labourer. Factory legislation for the protection 
 of the workman, sanitary measures, disestablishment of Churches, 
 compulsory education at the cost of the rich, and municipal or 
 rural self-government at the heavy cost of property-owners are the 
 fruits. The necessary sacrifices are borne by the possessors of 
 wealth in the interest 'of the nation. No representative assem- 
 bly, whether of the nation or of the country, is complete without 
 the presence of those whom in India you would describe as the 
 low castes. I cannot fill in the description in greater detail ; but, 
 I think, you will admit that the healthy growth of the represen- 
 tative system implies a ground prepared by not merely phrases, 
 but'by the constant action and reaction of equality, fraternity, and 
 self-sacrifice, welding together a nation before a council to 
 represent a nation can be thought of. 
 
 Besides these three lessons which the book of nature offers for 
 the guidance of the statesman, there are others which may occur to 
 you, but I feel that I ought not any longer to trespass upon your 
 patience. I would, therefore, only beg to tender to you my 
 thanks for the courtesy and attention with which you have listened 
 to me, and offer my congratulations to your Principal on the 
 
124 
 
 plan which he has pursued in encouraging you to organise this 
 system of lectures. When I served as Director of Public Instruc- 
 tion, I offered to assist in a series of similar lectures which I pro- 
 posed for the Deccan College, but it was considered a premature 
 movement, I am, therefore, very gratified to find that the El- 
 phinstone College is more advanced, and that you have secured 
 so many helpers. I would beg of you, in conclusion, to think out 
 the matter discussed for yourselves, and not to judge hastily, if 
 you cannot occommodate my spectacles to your own view of the 
 world. One word I may say with confidence-^that nature will 
 honour any bills which you draw on her. Fill up the cheque for 
 yourselves — and never doubt that Shelley was right in viewing 
 her as a power, — 
 
 WMch wields the world with never-ending love, 
 Sustains it from beneath and kindles it above. 
 
 EXAMINATIONS AND HOW TO DEAL 
 WITH THEM.^ 
 Lecturer; Dr. L. G. Mylne, 
 Bishop of Bombay, 
 
 Dr. Mylne said, the subject was a very unambitious one to bring 
 before them that evening, but one which, he thought might claim 
 the title of being practical. In fact, he might tell them one of the 
 reasons why he chose it was that, being a piactical subject, he hoped 
 it would fill the room, and his expectations had not been disappoint- 
 ed. He said he would treat the subject before them in two large 
 divisions. He first intended to deal with the subjects of examina- 
 tions in general, and secondly with the practical part namely, how 
 to work up books and subjects for an examination, and how to 
 deal with a paper when they had got it on the table before them. 
 
 ♦ Delivered on Tuesday the 15th March 1892. Prof. W. H. Sharp in 
 the chair. 
 
125 
 
 Examinations were looked npon in different lights by different 
 people and those lights had suggested different headings 
 by which he (the speaker) might treat them. A year or two 
 ago a controversy was held in the Nineteenth Century on the whole 
 subject of examinations and their relation to education, and he be- 
 lieved that those who first started the subject regarded examinations 
 as a premium upon cram and a hindrance to all real education ; 
 that they tied the hands of professors and encouraged a much less 
 desirable class of teachers. That view had suggested to him the 
 subject of abuses of examinations. On the other hand, he found 
 they were regarded by some as a scourge for the backs of un- 
 willing and uninterested students, and, be it said with bated 
 breath in that room, for the backs of inefficient teachers and 
 again as being a protection to Government and all employers of 
 intellectual labour against jobbery and inefficiency, and in that light 
 comparing those views with those he mentioned before, he would 
 have a few words to say about the necessary evils ef examinations* 
 There was another light in which examinations were sometimes re- 
 garded, namely, of being a trial, he would not say of brains, but of 
 acnteness between those who exacted a certain standard for them- 
 selves on one side and those who had not much thought of coming 
 up to it on the other side, but thought anything was fair by which 
 the desired certificate might be obtained. That suggested the 
 morality of examinations. Lastly, in the light which he regarded 
 it himself in a properly organised scheme of education, they filled 
 a place, a most important place, and served both the teachers and 
 the learners as the most efficient means of ascertaining what was the 
 practical value of their worth, and enabled people to bring their 
 knowledge into form in the way in which it would probably be most 
 useful in after life and to learn that first lesson of the really educat- 
 ed man, 'Hhe difference between the things I know, the things I 
 have a smattering of, and the things I am ignorant of." That was 
 the highest use of examinations. Speaking on the heads ho had in- 
 dicated, the Lord Bishop said, first of all, examinations were regard- 
 
126 
 
 ed as a hindrance to legitimate education and a premium to cram 
 and shallowness. He supposed that in a perfectly ideal state of 
 things, where every professor was interested in his student, aud 
 every student in his work, there would be no need of examinations 
 of any kind, for students would throw themselves into the subject 
 simply according to the measure, the importance and the interest of 
 the subject, and the degree to which he suited their own powers, 
 their great object being to turn themselves out at the end of their 
 school and university life really well-trained men, and more than 
 well-trained men, men with well-furnished minds. He thought it 
 therefore perfectly true that for the very best men who had to go 
 through a university course, examinations were to a very great 
 extent an evil, because they lead to the working up of subjects, with 
 some other end in view than the sheer interest and the sheer culti- 
 vating power of the subject itself ; and take a man from many lines 
 of reading which might suit his power better, simply because those 
 lines, would not pay, and thus they turn out a man a good deal more 
 one-sided than he need have been. They would find him as fully 
 and accurately informed about a certain period of history as could 
 be, but that he knew very little about the period which led up to the 
 one he had studied, or the period afterwards, which was most pro- 
 foundly influenced by the one he had paid attention to. It was 
 therefore true that education might be sacrificed to examinations 
 and that men might, be reduced to mechanical grinders out of 
 answers rather than trained aud educated men. Speaking of exami- 
 nations being a necessary evil, the lecturer said unhappily in their 
 schools and colleges they were not dealing with ideal states of things, 
 for every professor knew that he had not before him a class of stu- 
 dents of every one of whom was, solely for the sake of the subject 
 itself interested in acquiring it in the broadest and most thoroughly 
 systematic way. The professor knew that a considerable number of 
 students were simply present because their fathers rightly consider, 
 ed that a liberal education was the best thing to give to their sons, 
 whilst if it had been left to the latter, no doubt they would not have 
 been in the lecture-room at all. It was, therefore, desirable that a , 
 
127 
 
 certain stimulus should be applied to their study and some essential 
 power brought te bear on them, !N"ot only were the students some 
 times a little short of the ideal, but even professors and universities 
 had been known at some period of their career to have ceased to 
 set any ideal before them at all. Examinations were certainly an 
 evil ; but they were a necessary evil. He thought for the protec- 
 tion of the interests of education in the universities, it was neces- 
 sary that the work should be put to some real test. The morality 
 of examinations was his third point. There was a good deal of 
 temptation where examination was the only avenue for employment 
 to regard an examination just in the same way as a Neapolitan re- 
 garded a business transaction, as a fair competition between one 
 side and the other, which of them could exhibit the largest amount 
 of acateness without the smallest scruple as to whether the means 
 employed were fair or unfair. He supposed there never was a 
 system of examination in which evils did not creep in ; but what he 
 did believe was that it lay with the young men themselves, and 
 not with examiners' professors, or lecturers, or Government to put 
 an end to evils of that kind. Those students who were still at the 
 university had it in their power, if they made it felt around them 
 that they regarded unfairness as not only lying but a specially 
 mean form of lying, and if they set before them the conviction that 
 a man must keep a conscience in his dealings with Government or 
 any public body, just as much as he was bound to keep a conscience 
 in his dealings with his own friends, and if they set their face 
 against everything which was of the nature of unfairness, they 
 would secure a high standard of honour in these things. He was 
 glad to find those sentiments approved by the students. The Lord 
 Bishop then went on to deal with that portion of his lecture 
 which would be of practical value to students. He indicated to 
 them the way in which they should deal with examination papers 
 when they had them before them, and the best means by which a 
 thorough and reliable knowledge of what they had attempted to 
 learn might be obtained. If they marshalled up their knowledge 
 
138 
 
 they would quickly find out its weak and its strong points, and get 
 it into a throughly systematic form. The best method of marshal- 
 ling their knowledge, so that it would be of use to them at the time 
 of the examination, was not to begin by learning the " crib " by 
 heart. They must not simply have in their heads somebody else's 
 words, but must have grappled with the subject and tried to make 
 it their own, and he knew only one way, and that was to test them- 
 selves at every step by getting their knowledge into words and 
 forms of their own. They should never work without a note-book 
 and a pencil beside them. If they had to read a large book, of 
 course the work of analysing would be formidable, but he did not 
 know a better way of getting the contents of a book into the head 
 than to make copious notes in their own forms of words, and not 
 those of the professor or author. If they had it only in the pro- 
 fessor or author's form, it might be in extremely good shape 
 in their notebook, but they would find it was not in a much more 
 important place— their heads. In dealing with examination papers 
 the lecturer advised the students to spend ten minutes or a quarter 
 of an hour in looking over the questions, and thus to get accustom- 
 ed to them, and find out those they would attempt to answer 
 and those they would not attempt. They could not have a 
 better grasp of knowledge than that. They should then divide 
 the remaining time among those questions they could answer and 
 not attempt to answer one or two qu*festions with great prolixity 
 and have to write at the end of their paper *'no more time." 
 He also impressed upon the students the necessity of compre* 
 bending the method of the questions, and how they played into 
 each other, for nothing, he said appealed to an examiner's sym- 
 pathies more than the fact that he discovered the student knew what 
 he was writing about, that he dealt with his answers systematically, 
 and had not got only a notion of answering the questions, but 
 a scheme in his mind. He also advised his students to be concise 
 in their answers, and not use reams of foolscap when a piece of note 
 paper would do, to be careful in their selection of words and not put 
 
129 
 
 down the first thing that rushed into their minds. In summing up 
 the practical advice he had given them how to deal with the work 
 before entering and when in the examination-room, he concluded by 
 advising students to work for the subject and not for the examina- 
 tion, to get their knowledge in their own form, and to constantly 
 bring their notes and analysis back to the author and see if they 
 expressed his meaning. When in the examination-room they must 
 spend some little time in mastering the questions, marshalling them 
 to see how one question suggested another, in order to eliminate 
 what they did not intend to attempt, to get some idea of what ave 
 rage kngth of time they could give to each question which they 
 intended to attempt, to pick out those questions into which they 
 could throw their whole strength, and above all things, to make 
 quite sure that they were not putting down what was not expected 
 of them. If they worked on those lines, and did not succeed in the 
 examination, it would not be because of luckj but if they had it in 
 them they would succeed. 
 
130 
 
 " MIGRATION, AND THE GROWTH 
 OF CITIES*" 
 
 Lecturer: — 8. Tomlinson Esq, M. Inst. C.E.jM. Am, Soc, G,E, 
 
 The lecturer who was received with applause, in beginning his 
 lecture said that in upcountrj places and also at no great distance 
 from Bombay the only conveyance available ior travelling is a 
 country cart without springs drawn by bullocks and that the roads 
 are also in a bad state. Two hundred years ago the means of 
 travelling were in a similar state in almost all the countries of the 
 world but the means of communication have gradually improved 
 until they have reached the standard we find to obtain to-day. 
 
 But if they would glance at the history of this progress they would 
 find that opposition was oflfered against every kind of improvement. 
 When travelling on horse- back was substituted by travelling in a 
 carriage; when the latter was substituted by the stage coach and 
 when the stage coach was supplanted by the railway, opposition was 
 offered at every one of those stages of improvement and obstacles 
 were thrown in the way of those who suggested the introduction of 
 these improvements. One hundred and fifty years ago the best kind 
 of vehicle that was available for travelling was one similar to those 
 country, made vehicles without springs which may be seen at present 
 in Bombay. Spring vehicles were not in existence then. Even Queen 
 Elizabeth used to complain of the hardships and inconvenience she 
 experienced while travelling over rough roads in a stage coach 
 which had no springs. At this time the necessity of improving the 
 roads became imperative and it was proposed to levy a tax for im- 
 proving and maintaining the roads. This was adopted but not with- 
 out opposition. Coaches were then invented by means of which the 
 journey between London and Edinburgh could be performed in seven 
 
 '-' Delivered at the Framji Kawasji institute on Wednesday the 
 12th April 1893, Ervad Jiwanji J. Mody B. A. in the chair. 
 
131 
 
 days which was considered at that time a most wonderful feat. The 
 journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh was performed in two days, a 
 distance which can now be travelled in one hour by means of Kail, 
 way. In course of time carriages with springs came into more 
 general use and subsequently attention was directed towards tram- 
 ways and railways the introduction of which was also opposed in 
 the beginning. Between 1820 and 1830 evidence for and against was 
 recorded in Parliament in respect of all public works projects- In 
 1830 Mr. George Stephenson was bold enough to construct a Rail- 
 way between Manchester and Liverpool in opposition to public 
 opinion and he predicted that if steam power were properly utilized 
 on railways, carriages could be run at a speed of 12 miles an 
 hour — a speed which was considered dangerous and the voice of 
 Parliament was raised against it. When the first railway was laid 
 from New castle to Carlisle it was sanctioned on one condition only 
 that horses were io be used instead of steam power, but later on 
 steam power was used for conveying goods and when this proved 
 successful the use of horses was dispensed witlu When the railway 
 between Manchester and Liverpool was first opened the names of 
 the passengers were entered in a register. Very soon the number of 
 passengers so increased that this system was quite impracticable. 
 Fifteen years afterwards railway enterprise developed rapidly and 
 people began to invest millions of pounds in railway projects. 
 
 Referring to the diagrams shewing the spread of railways in the 
 different parts of the world (which were distributed among the au- 
 dience) Mr. Tomlinson remarked that railway communication was 
 most extensive in the United States of America; more so than in any 
 of the countries of Europe. Similarly steam navigation was opened 
 and the public voice was also raised against steamers. In course 
 of time steamers increased and also competition among different 
 companies; and by means of railways and steam navigation the 
 mporb and export trades of different countries began to expand 
 and with it also voyages and travels. This led to greater 
 intercourse between different countries. In 1790 the population 
 of the United states was 4,000,000 which has increased to 
 
132 
 
 62,622,250 in 1890; this iacrease is dae to rapid communication 
 between different countries. Owing to this rapid communication 
 people of one country migrate and take up their permanent resi- 
 dence in another country. For instance two thirds of the present 
 population of New York are Germans or Irishmen. In this way cities 
 have enormously expanded in the course of the the last fifty years. 
 Facility in import and export and in travel are the principal causes' 
 of the present growth of cities. The quantity of wheat and rice 
 I'equired by England is imported by it from India and America. In 
 1,801 the population of London was 958,863, in 1841 it grew to 
 1,948,417 whilst in 1891 it was 4,211,056— This growth was simul- 
 taneous with the extention of railways. The growth of the population 
 of Paris is not so rapid and great; but that of Berlin is worthy of 
 note. In 1650 its population numbered only 6,100 which increased 
 to 90,000 in the course of 40 years while in 1890 it has reached the 
 stupendous figure of 1,574,465. The populaton of New York in 1823 
 was 150,000 in 1880 it grew to 1,207,299 and in 1890 it was 1,515» 
 301. Chicago was in 1840 a small town of 4500 inhabitants, in 1892, 
 its population was 1,428,328. Chicago is a wonderful city. Its popu- 
 lation, buildings and intercourse are on a most extensive scale. The 
 visitors at the exhibition to be held there would find Chicago itself to 
 be an exhibition. Some of its buildings are as high as 220 feet and 
 often contain 16 stories. The Exhibition to be opened there would be 
 the wonder of the world. Gigantic buildings had been erected at the 
 enormous expense of 7,250,000 pounds sterling simply for different 
 articles &c. to be exhibited there for six months only. Having given 
 further particulars about the Exhibition the lecturer referred to the 
 desirability of all races of mankind living in common brother-hood 
 which alone, said he, will enable them to live in peace and happiness. 
 The Lecturer acknowledged the assistance he had received in prepa- 
 ring materials for the lecture from Smile's Lives of the Engineers 
 and Longstaff's Studies in Statistics. 
 
FIG I DIAGRAW SHOWING COMPARATIVE RAIL- 
 WAY MILEAGE OF THE DIFFERENT COUN- 
 TRIES OF THE WORLD 
 
 (FfGS. /.2&S / eprodiHX'd from 
 Erufineeruig News- 
 
 UNlTtD STATES 
 
 6ERMANV 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 OREAT BRITAIN ft IRELANt}- 
 
 RUSSIA 
 
 AUSTRIA»H0NOARY 
 
 QRITISK INDIA — 
 
 CANADA 
 
 ITALY 
 
 S PA I H 
 
 B R AZ I L— 
 
 M tX I CO : 
 
 ARGENTINE REPURLIC- 
 
 SWEDEN ■ 
 
 BELGIUM — — 
 
 VICTORIA 
 
 NEW SOUTH WALE©— 
 
 ALGIEII»»TUHia 
 
 QWKKNS LAND 
 
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Table No. 1. 
 
 Particulars of Steamship Tonnage and Steamships. 
 
 Steamship Companies. 
 
 North German Lloyd 
 
 British Indian 
 
 Messageries Maritimes 
 
 P.«SiO 
 
 Compagnie Generale Transatlantique 
 
 J'lorio-Rubattino 
 
 Wilson Line 
 
 Hamburg- American 
 
 Allan Line 
 
 Austro-Lloyd's ,. 
 
 No. 
 
 66 
 91 
 62 
 48 
 64 
 105 
 84 
 44 
 42 
 76 
 
 Tonnage. 
 
 221,603 
 199,090 
 192,631 
 187,684 
 166,635 
 161,687 
 147,162 
 136,669 
 130,156 
 123,365 
 
 Steamships. 
 
 
 Length. 
 
 Beam, 
 
 Depth. 
 
 Tonnage. 
 
 I. H. P. 
 
 
 
 Feet, 
 
 Feet. 
 
 Feet. 
 
 
 
 
 c. " Campania " & " Lucania" . 
 
 600 
 
 65 
 
 43 
 
 13,000 
 
 25,000 
 
 
 (Launched) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f Aug. 1892. 
 
 c. « Umbria " & " Etruria" ... 
 
 500 
 
 57 
 
 40 
 
 7,720 
 
 14,500 
 
 < D. H. M. 
 
 (. 5 22 5 UMBRIA 
 
 f July 27, 1892. 
 
 i. «City of New York" & 
 <« City of Paris" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 D. H.M. 
 
 560 
 
 03 
 
 42 
 
 10,500 
 
 18,000 
 
 J 6 15 58 PARIS. 
 ^ Aug. 10, 1889. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 D. H,. M. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 19 18 p. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f Aug. 19, 1891. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 D. H. M. 
 
 W.8. '< Majestic" & "Teutonic".. 
 
 582 
 
 571 
 
 S9| 
 
 10,000 
 
 17,000 
 
 ^ 5 16 31 TEU. 
 Aug. 5, 1891. 
 
 D. H. M. 
 
 L 5 18 08 MAj. 
 
 a. " City of Rome" 
 
 560 
 
 52 
 
 37 
 
 8,144 
 
 10,100 
 
 
 "LaTouraine" 
 
 
 
 ... 
 
 •.. 
 
 
 
 
 
 528-25 hrs. about. 
 ( 528 miles 
 
 "Teutonic" 
 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 t.i... 
 
 ...... 
 
 { Aug. 3, 1892. 
 124-93 hours. 
 
 « Gigantic " (Building) 
 
 700 
 
 65' 72" 
 
 ••• 
 
 •t...* 
 
 45,000 
 
 22 average. 
 27 max. speed. 
 3 screws. 
 
Table Mo. 2. 
 
 Increase of Population of Western Europe in 30 years. 
 (Three 000s omitted.) 
 
 Country. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Population 
 
 Date. 
 
 Population 
 
 Increase in 
 30 years. 
 
 Absolute 
 
 Per 
 
 cent. 
 
 Uniteil Kingdom... 
 
 Franco 
 
 Belgium 
 
 Holland 
 
 Germany 
 
 Denmark 
 
 Sweden 
 
 Norway 
 
 Austro-Hungary ... 
 Switzerland 
 
 Italy , 
 
 Spain 
 
 Portucral 
 
 Total .. 
 
 1851 
 1851 
 1816 
 1849 
 1850 
 1850 
 1850 
 1845 
 1850 
 1850 
 1851 
 1857 
 1848 
 
 27,391 
 
 34,592 
 
 4,337 
 
 3,247 
 
 35,231 
 
 1,408 
 
 3,483 
 
 1,328 
 
 30,727 
 
 2,393 
 
 24,138 
 
 15,220 
 
 3,462 
 
 186,947 
 
 1881 
 
 34,885 
 
 7,494 
 
 1881 
 
 37,672 
 
 3,080 
 
 1876 
 
 5,336 
 
 999 
 
 1879 
 
 4,223 
 
 976 
 
 1880 
 
 45,234 
 
 10,003 
 
 1880 
 
 1,969 
 
 561 
 
 1880 
 
 4,566 
 
 1,083 
 
 1875 
 
 1,807 
 
 479 
 
 1880 
 
 37,786 
 
 7,059 
 
 1880 
 
 2,846 
 
 453 
 
 1881 
 
 28,460 
 
 4,322 
 
 1887 
 
 17,257 
 
 2,037 
 
 1878 
 
 4,160 
 
 708 
 
 
 226,^01 
 
 39,254 
 
 27-4 
 89 
 23-0 
 30' 1 
 28-4 
 39-8 
 311 
 36-1 
 23-0 
 18-9 
 17-9 
 13-4 
 20-5 
 
 21-0 
 
 CTnited States of America 
 
 Canada 
 
 Australia and New Zealand 
 
 1790 
 
 4,000,000 
 
 1840 
 
 17,000,000 
 
 1880 
 
 50,000,000 
 
 1890 
 
 62,622,250 
 
 1665 
 
 3,215 
 
 1765 
 
 69,810 
 
 1790 
 
 161,311 
 
 1841 
 
 1,538,500 
 
 1851 
 
 2,380,988 
 
 1861 
 
 3,182,418 
 
 1871 
 
 3,635,024 
 
 1881 
 
 4,324,810 
 
 1891 
 
 4,829,411 
 
 1831 
 
 78,316 
 
 1881 
 
 2,740,127 
 
 1891 
 
 3858,078 
 
Table No. 3. 
 
 Immigration to tho United States from the principal Europeiui 
 countries, during ten years ending Juno 30th, 1880, compared 
 with nine years ending June 30th, 1889. ^ 
 
 From 
 
 Ten years, 
 1871-80. 
 
 Nine years, 
 1881-89. 
 
 Increase. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Absolute, 
 
 Percent. 
 
 England and Wales... 
 
 460,458 
 
 599,797 
 
 139,339 
 
 30 
 
 Scotland 
 
 87,564 
 
 137,828 
 
 50,264 
 
 57 
 
 Ireland ... 
 
 436,871 
 
 602,458 
 
 165,587 
 
 38 
 
 Germany 
 
 718,182 
 
 1,360,543 
 
 642,361 
 
 89 
 
 Norway and Sweden 
 
 211,245 
 
 527,360 
 
 316,115 
 
 150 
 
 Denmark 
 
 31,771 
 
 78,766 
 
 46,995 
 
 148 
 
 Austro-Hungary 
 
 72,969 
 
 297,520 
 
 224,551 
 
 308 
 
 Kussia 
 
 39,135 
 
 168,227 
 
 129,092 
 
 330 
 
 Finland 
 
 444 
 
 9,458 
 
 9,014 
 
 ... 
 
 Poland 
 
 12,675 
 
 40,733 
 
 28,058 
 
 221 
 
 Holland 
 
 16,541 
 
 49,375 
 
 32,834 
 
 199 
 
 Switzerland 
 
 28,293 
 
 74,995 
 
 46,702 
 
 165 
 
 Italy 
 
 56,762 
 
 255,309 
 
 199,547 
 
 358 
 
 Franco 
 
 72,201 
 
 43,870 
 
 28,325 ^ 
 
 39^ 
 
 Belgium 
 
 7,221 
 
 17,506 
 
 10,285 
 
 142 
 
 Spain and Portugal 
 
 9,893 
 
 5,563 
 
 4,330/' 
 
 44 ^ 
 
 Total, principal European countries... 
 
 2,261,225 
 
 4,269,314 
 
 2,008,089 
 
 89 
 
 1. United States Census, 1880, Vol. 1, pages 538-541. 
 
 2. Reports of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of tho United States- 
 
 3. Decrease, 
 
Table No. 4. 
 
 Racial Components of Population of United States, America. 
 
 True Americans, whites, native bom of native parents 
 
 British 
 
 British Canadians 
 
 28,500,000 
 
 2,000,000 
 
 500,000 
 
 Total more or less of British Stock 
 
 31,000,000 
 
 Irish 
 
 French and French Canadians 
 
 Germans 
 
 Scandinavians 
 
 Other European races 
 
 4,800,000 
 600,000 
 
 5,000,000 
 600,000 
 
 1,300,000 
 
 Total Europeans other than British 
 
 Men of colour 
 
 Chinese and Indians 
 
 12,300,000 
 
 6,600,000 
 200,000 
 
 
 50,100,000 
 
 Table No. 5. 
 
 Population of Australasia (excluding Aborigines) at various periods, 
 
 (The figures, unless otherwise stated, are taken from the various 
 
 Census Reports.) 
 
 
 1821. 
 
 1831. 
 
 1841. 
 
 1851. 
 
 1861. 
 
 1871. 
 
 1881. 
 
 1891. 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 Queensland 'j 
 
 
 
 r 130,856 
 
 8,575 
 
 30,059 
 
 120,104 
 
 213,525 
 
 393,863 
 
 New South Wales J. 
 
 29,783 
 
 00,861 
 
 178,668 
 
 350,860 
 
 502,998 
 
 749,825 
 
 1,134,207 
 
 Victoria ... J 
 
 
 
 L 11,738 
 
 77,345 
 
 538,628 
 
 730,198 
 
 861,566 
 
 1,140,405 
 
 South Australia ... 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 17,366 
 
 63,700 
 
 126,830 
 
 185,626 
 
 279,865 
 
 315,048 
 
 ■Western Australia 
 
 ... 
 
 (?) 500 
 
 (?) 2,000 
 
 4,622 
 
 14,837 
 
 24,785 
 
 29,708 
 
 53,285 
 
 Tasmania 
 
 6,480 
 
 16,954 
 
 50,216 
 
 70,130 
 
 89,977 
 
 99,328 
 
 115,705 
 
 152,619 
 
 New Zealand 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 (?) 1,000 
 
 26,707 
 
 99,021 
 
 256,393 
 
 489,933 
 
 668,651 
 
 Total 
 
 36,263 
 
 78,316 
 
 213,176 
 
 429,747 
 
 1,250,212 
 
 1,919,432 
 
 2,740,127 
 
 3,858,078 
 
 
 
 1. Notes on this table, mainly from the Statesman's Year Book, 188^, 
 
Table No. 6. 
 
 Increase in Population of London, Paris, Berlin, Now York 
 and Chicago. 
 
 Years. 
 
 London. 
 
 Paris, 
 
 Berlin. 
 
 New York. 
 
 Chicago . 
 
 1553... 
 
 
 260,000 
 
 
 
 
 1650 
 
 
 6,100 
 
 
 
 1774 
 
 
 22,000 
 
 
 1784 
 
 
 660,000 
 
 
 
 1790 
 
 
 90,000 
 
 
 1799 
 
 
 547,756 
 
 60,000 
 
 
 1800. 
 
 
 
 
 1801 
 
 958,863 
 
 
 
 1823 
 
 
 
 150,000 
 202,589 
 
 
 1830 
 
 
 
 147,000 
 
 
 1831 
 
 
 
 785,862 
 .* 
 
 935,261 
 
 
 1840 
 
 810,000 
 
 312,710 
 
 375,000 
 515,547 
 
 4 fiOO 
 
 1841 
 
 1,948,417 
 
 
 1842 
 
 
 
 1850 
 
 
 1,053,262 
 
 
 
 29,963 
 
 1851 
 
 2,862,284 
 
 I860 
 
 813,669 
 942,292 
 
 109,260 
 
 1861 
 
 2,804,037 
 
 1,696,741 
 
 528,000 
 826,341 
 
 1870 
 
 298,977 
 
 1871 
 
 8,254,260 
 
 
 1872 
 
 1,851,792 
 2,269,032 
 
 
 
 1880 
 
 
 1,206,299 
 
 503,185 
 
 1881 
 
 3,816,483 
 
 1,122,000 
 1,315,000 
 
 1885, 
 
 
 1886 
 
 
 2,344,550 
 
 
 1890 
 
 1,574,485 
 
 1,515,301 
 
 1,099,850 
 
 1891 
 
 4,211,056 
 
 
 
 1892 
 
 <•••••••• 
 
 1,428,318 
 
 
 
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