Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/172

148 acquaintance not only with Shakespeare but with English literature generally was surprising, and he soon inspired the members of his Society and Evening school with his own love of it.

Greater, however, than his desire for intellectual improvement was his desire for moral and religious advancement. Pre-eminently of a religious turn of mind, he had from the first attempted to combine secular education with the maintenance of religious beliefs. Of the defficultiesdifficulties [sic] that beset him he was fully aware. To reconcile the old traditions and superstitions with modern education was impossible. Education, as he himself admitted had unsettled his mind. He had given up the old faith but he had gained no positive system of belief to replace it. Towards that end, however, he devoted the most anxious and searching enquiries. By continual study and contemplation he sought to acquire the truth. Stern and austere at this time, he lived the life almost of an ascetic. Eating neither flesh nor fish, he gave up card playing and novel reading and all the theatrical and conjuring performances that he had previously so much loved. Beyond the friends associated with him in the Literary Society and the Evening school that he had founded, he saw scarcely any one, his chief friends being the Rev. James Long, Norendra Nath Sen and Devendra Nath Tagore. Buried in his books or sunk in thought he spent long hours alone, turning his back