Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/113

 clerks, or in technique, if they would become intelligent artisans. The actual results of the system of low fees and profuse scholarships are the reverse of the above, and the whole framework of society is in consequence disorganized. The poor learn absolutely too much; the rich, too little; while the middle classes waste their time over what is relatively useless, being incongruous with their special role in life.

The mention of stone-traceried windows may have been noticed in the above description of the new school buildings, and the introduction of such a feature may possibly strike some people as an unnecessary extravagance. But the use of glass in a school-room is, to my mind, an example of the unthinking prejudice against oriental fashions which characterizes the whole action of the Public Works Department. Nothing could be more unsuitable with English boys running in and out, the window-doors of the regulation pattern would not have a whole pane left in one of them by the end of the first week after the holidays. Hindu lads are much quieter and more sedate, but—even so—breakages are frequent, and to obviate the cost of repairs the Superintending Engineer, in his inspection reports, always recommends that whenever glass is broken, it should be replaced with tin. A more clumsy expedient it would be difficult to conceive. The patch-work has a most beggarly appearance, and the tin of course is not transparent. The more sensible plan, and the one entirely in accord with eastern ideas, is that which I have adopted, in making the doors of solid carpentry and introducing light by means of windows set higher in the walls and fitted with ornamental tracery. In the Tahsili school, where the old windows were of large dimensions and reached to the ground, I have filled them in with wooden lattice-work as being cheaper than stone. They give free admission to the air and subdue without materially obstructing the light, while they are further provided with inside shutters, which can be closed in case of a storm. The initial cost is rather heavier, but it is eventually recovered by the saving on repairs. The artistic effect will probably be regarded as another objection by the typical engineer, who is possessed with the lamentable delusion, that nothing can be good unless it is also ugly, and who treats a school as a purely utilitarian building. It appears to me, on the contrary, that the cultivation of the taste is an important element in any system of mental training, and that it is a matter for unqualified regret that the natives of the country, from their earliest child-