Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/124

110 to be able to acquire every sort of information by means of it. The Sanskrit is altogether a dead language. The Arabic is not spoken in India. The English is both a living and a spoken language. The Brahminical and Moslem systems belong to bygone days; a large portion of them has become obsolete; a still larger is only faintly reflected in the habits of the people. The associations connected with the new learning, on the other hand, are gaining ground every day. The English government is established; English principles and institutions are becoming familiarized to the native mind; English words are extensively adopted into the native languages; teachers, books, and schools are rapidly multiplied; the improvements in the art of education, the result of the extraordinary degree of attention which the subject has received of late years in England, are all applied to facilitate the study of English in India. Infant schools, which have lately been introduced, will enable native children to acquire our language, without any loss of time, as they learn to speak. Nine years ago, when the first English