Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/228

214 written in a Hottentot dialect; and at this moment there are three newspapers in Calcutta printed in the English language, and yet edited by natives. Why should not other native students be equally successful with those alluded to? We readily grant that much is to be yet done to render the English language more popular in India; but assuredly the most likely way of effecting this very desirable end, is not to bestow a premium upon the study of the Arabic, Sanscrit, and Persian, and to close the portal of employment to the English student.

According to Mr. Tytler, it is not only the difficulty of acquiring the English, which is such a formidable obstacle in the way of the learner, but the almost insurmountable one of finding properly qualified English teachers. We beg to refer your lordship to his observations on this head, contenting ourselves with the remark, that if English is not to be taught to native medical students, until such an utopian selection of schoolmasters as Mr. Tytler indicates be made, then must the English language, and the treasures of scientific knowledge it contains, belong to them a fountain sealed.

Mr. Tytler has several elaborate comments on the study of Greek and Latin, the scope of which is to show, that these languages have a greater affinity to the English language, than English has to Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. The argument is ingenious, but far from conclusive. Latin and Greek, indeed, were the languages of the learned in Europe, as Arabic and Sanscrit are of the learned in India. There the parallel ends. English, however, enjoys an advantage that Latin did not at the epoch alluded to by Mr. Tytler. It is a living language; it is the language of a great people, many of whom, it may now be expected, will settle in this country; it is also the language of the governing power. It is not too much to expect that the time is not far distant when English will become much more popular than it is, and