Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/359

354 the domestic roof; and, unless under peculiar circumstances, it is not extended to accounts, which are deemed the ultimate object of vernacular school instruction.” And the total disconnection farther appears from the fact, that, in some divisions of districts, there are vernacular schools with no institution of learning; and, in certain divisions of other districts, the learned institutions abound most where there are no vernacular schools at all!

While Mr. Adam testifies that, as a class, he found the learned Brahmans, “in general, shrewd, discriminating, and mild in their demeanour,” he also strongly avers that, beyond the narrow limits of their own immediate circle, “none of the humanizing influences of learning are seen in the improved moral and intellectual character or physical condition of the surrounding humbler classes of society. It seems never to have entered into the conceptions of the learned that it was their duty to do something for the instruction of those classes, who are as ignorant and degraded where learning abounds as where it does not exist; nor has learning any practical influence upon the physical comforts even of its professors, for their houses are as rude, confined, and inconvenient as those of the more ignorant, and the path-ways of Brahman villages are as narrow, dirty, and irregular as those inhabited by the humblest and most despised Chasas and Chandalas.” Or, as Mr. A. has elsewhere expressed it;—

"“I saw men not only unpretending, but plain and simple, in their manners—and although seldom if ever offensively coarse, yet reminding me of the very humblest classes of English and Scottish peasantry—living constantly half-naked, and realizing in this respect the descriptions of savage life; inhabiting huts which, if we connect moral consequences with physical causes, might be supposed to have the effect of stunting the growth of their minds, or in which only the most contracted minds might be supposed to have room to dwell; and yet several of those men are adepts in the subtleties of the profoundest grammar of what is probable the most philosophical language in existence,—not only practically skilled in the niceties of its usage, but also in the principles of its structure; familiar with all the varieties and applications of their national laws and literature; and indulging in the abstrusest and most interesting disquisitions in logical and ethical philosophy.”"

This latter clause is the glowing generalization of an indiscriminating panegyrist rather than the measured and qualified conclusion of a sober judge. And it is but justice to Mr. Adam, whose candour of mind and honesty of purpose are beyond all suspicion, to say, that at a later period, with a more enlarged experience and a maturer judgment, he was led to indite and put on record the following more accurate and truthful estimate:—

“The native mind of the present day, although it is asleep, is not dead. It has a dreamy sort of existence, in separating, combining, and recasting,