Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/74

60 who has sometimes been called, though I fear without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against this system last year in a paper which he sent me to be put into Lord hands, and which, for its good English, good sense, and forcible arguments, is a real curiosity, as coming from an Asiatic. I have not since been in Calcutta, and know not whether any improvement has occurred in consequence; but from the unbounded attachment to Sanskrit literature displayed by some of those who chiefly manage those affairs, I have no great expectation of the kind. Of the value of the acquirements which so much is sacrificed to retain I can only judge from translations, and they certainly do not seem to me worth picking out of the rubbish under which they were sinking. Some of the poetry of the I am told is good, and I think a good deal of the  pretty. But no work has yet been produced which even pretends to be authentic history. No useful discoveries in science are, I believe, so much as expected; and I have no great sympathy with those students who value a worthless tract merely because it calls itself old, or a language which teaches nothing, for the sake of its copiousness and intricacy. If I were to run wild after oriental learning I should certainly follow that of