Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/34

Rh I have ventured to glean these facts from Mr. Subal Chandra’s “Life”, in the hope that the entire book may be studied by our young countrymen with the care and attention it deserves. To assign to Vidyasagar his true place in history, to trace the influences which shaped his character, and the influences which he himself created and left behind him; to delineate the true nature of his work and the endeavours of those who lived and worked around him,—in one word to point out how the times called forth the man, and the man fulfilled the mission entrusted to him,—all this requires a longer preparation and a work of larger proportions. Mr. Subal Chandra has not attempted such a task. His simpler object is to collect in a readable form the main facts of Vidyasagar’s life, and to place before his readers some important documents which ought to be preserved.

Among these documents the portion of Vidyasagar’s autobiography which has been quoted in the opening chapter is deeply interesting. Other men anxiously trace their descent from ancestors of rank and wealth; it is characteristic of Vidyasagar that he proudly traced his descent from men who were poor, beyond our modern conceptions of poverty. There is nothing more touching in the autobiography of any man that I have ever read than Vidyasagar’s simple account of the almost