Page:Advice to the Indian Aristocracy.djvu/146

108 misery, you cannot share any of the enjoyments which God has provided for us in our daily life.

There is a great deal of enjoyment in reading books. This enjoyment is very little known to the natives of this country. Western people enjoy this pleasure a great deal. There was a reasonable excuse for the natives of this land in former days, but now it is their own fault if they lose the enjoyment. The literature of this land is very hard to be understood, for it chiefly deals with abstruse subjects, such as Vedantism. There were no accurate descriptions of countries, or histories of great nations. The books upon various sciences are also unintelligible to the ordinary reader, and, what is still worse, they are only useful to professional men. Again, unfortunately for our people, those who were acquainted with the works were so selfish and envious that they never taught