Page:The empire and the century.djvu/741

 it is one long pæan upon liberty and patriotism, and young Indians learn to glow with genuine sympathy when they read how the little island kingdom struck for liberty against the might of Spain; they kindle at the stern excitation of the regicide Milton or the revolutionary raptures of Shelley, and find in Adam Smith, Mill, and Herbert Spencer the loftiest reaches of modern English thought. When once they have drunk of English literature they see the world from a new stand-point, their intellectual centre of gravity is permanently changed, and they judge every question by reference to their new standard of the duty of independent private judgment. Some English writers have imagined that the European culture which Indians acquire is never more than a veneer, and they have drawn fanciful pictures of the way in which the Indian reverts under the stress of excitement to the ways and feelings of his forefathers. This is singularly unjust both to the convincing power of English thought and the sincerity of Indian nature. The Indian does not, of course, become an Anglo-Saxon because he is a disciple of John Stuart Mill, but he ceases to be the intellectual child of the Maulvis and Pandits; a new compound is formed, from which the English element can never again be separated. Proof of this may be found in the almost daily experience that English education estranges men from sympathy with uneducated or only slightly educated wives. When once the husband has learned to look with European eyes, he finds it difficult to exchange ideas with his Indian wife, and she, in spite of her docile wish to admire and obey, no doubt finds him incomprehensible. That is the reason why the young men are insisting so passionately on female education, and why so many of them actually teach their wives English after marriage. Even mothers, in arranging matches, have been known to say, 'Now that the boy is educated, we must find a wife for him who knows English, otherwise they will never get on together.'

The new spirit which has been generated in the Indian