nose on the ground, and stand on one leg with his shoes in his hand, whenever he meets an English officer or a native of rank.

Bombay, with a population of less than thirteen millions, spread over an area of one hundred and forty-three thousand square miles, yields a land revenue of more than three millions and a half, and a total revenue of nearly nine millions. The golden prime of her cotton industry passed away with the great crash of 1865, but her cotton exports still amount to more than a million and a quarter bales. Her foreign trade is worth at this moment about forty millions a-year, or about two millions over that of Bengal. In plain truth, the commercial sceptre is already falling away from the capital on the Hooghly to the crowded marts and spacious harbour of Bombay City. The opening of the Suez Canal, the completion of the railway lines that link Bombay with Central and Northern India, the recent discovery of great coal-beds in the valley of the Wurdah, and the possession of a convenient harbour-one of the finest in the worldall tend to assure the future pre-eminence of a city long renowned for the wealth, intelligence, and public spirit of its merchant princes, the Sassoons, the Jeejeebhoys, and the Roychunds. The rivalry of Kurrachee is still to come, and, as a natural outlet for the trade of the Punjab and Sindh, that still neglected port may yet reckon upon a future answering to its great deserts. But nothing, apparently, can dethrone Bombay from its commercial leadership, even if the seat of Government were still assured to its old rival on the Hooghly. The great bulk of India's trade with Europe must inevitably pass through Bombay, whereas Calcutta will some day encounter, in Rangoon and Maulmain, two formidable rivals for the trade of China and Japan. Nor can any other Indian city quite come up to the Western capital in the zeal of its citizens for mental culture, in their readiness to profit by the thought, the learning, and the science of the West. Benares may still be the sacred stronghold of Brahmin philosophy; Calcutta may have its Baboos, who lead or uphold the march of free thought and modern culture in Bengal; Madras can boast of one nobleman, the Maharajah of Vizianagram, whose high breeding is wedded to the tastes and habits of an accomplished English gentleman; and all over India may be found nobles, statesmen, landowners, merchants, scholars, whose lives attest, in one way or another, the moulding influence of European ideas. Bombay alone combines with other elements of native progress a large infusion of Parsee energy and Parsee enlightenment. Descended from those Persian Ghebirs who fled, like the Huguenots of modern France, from the flames of religious persecution, the Parsees are the very salt of Western India. In commercial enterprise, in political capacity, in philanthropic zeal, in openness to new ideas, and in breadth of

general culture, they seem to take the lead of their fellow-citizens— come nearer, in short, to our European standards of character and accomplishments than any other of what may be called the native races of India.

The spread of popular education during the last ten or twelve years has been very remarkable. During that time the public outlay on schools and colleges has risen from a hundred thousand to more than eight hundred thousand a year, the number of pupils from forty thousand to seven hundred thousand, and the number of schools and colleges supported wholly or in part by State funds from a few hundred to nearly nineteen thousand. Bombay, the Punjab, and the Central Provinces contribute the largest number of pupils in proportion to population, the North-West Provinces the largest number of pupils in any province. Madras, which ranks low in the comparison of numbers, takes the first place in respect of outlay from private funds. Bengal shows only about three pupils for every seven educated in Bombay. In these State-aided schools the low-caste Chamar and the high-caste Brahmin learn their lessons side by side. Mission and private schools add their thousands of scholars to the general sum. In many parts of the country natives of rank and wealth have come forward with large subscriptions for the diffusion of knowledge among their countrymen. Allahabad and Lahore will soon have universities of their own, in which the learning and literature of the East will find the encouragement elsewhere mainly devoted to English and other kindred tongues. In some of the native states English example, aided by the good sense of their own rulers, has already done great things for the education of the people. If all our native feudatories were as enlightened as the sovereigns of Jeypore, Kolapore, and Travancore, there would be little reason to wish for a more high-handed policy than that which now marks the relations of the Indian Government with the princes outside the British pale.

The old demand for instruction in English still finds a willing echo in the minds of natives of every class. English will always continue to form a leading element in the higher education of the country, and no one who remembers how very few, if any, of the former pupils in our government schools took part against us during the mutiny, would wish to see any wide departure from the principles applied by Lord William Bentinck under the inspiration of Messrs. Trevelyan and Macaulay. But for some time past Anglo-Indian statesmanship has followed the track once vainly indicated by Mr. Adam, and afterwards successfully trodden by Mr. Thomason and Lord Dalhousie.* In 1854 the Court of * See some interesting letters from General Brigge, in Allen's Indian Mail for 1869, Nos. 889, &c.; also Mr. Howell's "Note" on Education, in 1866—7.

Directors formally accepted Mr. Adam's principle of teaching the many rather than the few, and of using the vernacular tongues as the first and chief means of imbuing the people with English principles and English ideas. Thenceforth the teaching of English was limited to the higher schools and colleges, except in places where the popular feeling ran in favour of English schools. A scheme of education "far wider and more comprehensive than the local or the supreme Governments could ever have ventured to suggest," was already bearing good fruit when Lord Dalhousie. thus described it in his farewell Minute. Since then it has steadily made its way into all parts of British India. Every province has now its staff of paid teachers, from the chief director down to the humblest of village schoolmasters. Every district has its due gradation of vernacular, middle, and high schools, linked together by means of scholarships which enable the best pupils to work their way up from the village school to the local college. To each class of schools the Government awards a share of the public money in return for the payment of school-fees. Normal schools are training the youth of one generation to become the teachers of the next. For the higher education India will soon have five universities at full work, besides about forty government colleges. Two thousand girls' schools already contain an aggregate of nearly fifty-four thousand pupils. Normal schools for the training of womenteachers have lately been established here and there, thanks to the persevering zeal of our brave countrywoman, Miss Carpenter, acting on the newly-awakened patriotism of enlightened natives in Bombay and Calcutta. Through the development of these, and what are called Zenana schools, we may look to see the mental growth of Indian women ere long keeping pace with that of their husbands, sons, and brothers. It would of course be foolish to expect miracles of good from the most perfect scheme of education, and unfair to talk as if village schools had not existed in India from all time. But the Indian Government is entitled to the praise of having in this, as in many other fields, laboured of late years with an honest zeal to advance the welfare and stimulate the just ambition of its subjects.*

In the sphere of morals also there is real progress to report. Ever since the mutiny, partly, no doubt, in consequence of its prompt and utter suppression, the tide of social and religious change has risen higher and higher against the strongholds of ancient creeds and customs. In Southern India, and among the rude aboriginal races elsewhere, the Christianity of the missions has made an increasing number of converts; and two princes of some repute, Dhuleep Singh

*It now proposes gradually to reduce its grants to the higher and increase them to the vernacular schools, which are still far too few for the popular need.

and the Rajah of Kapurthalla, who died the other day on his way to England, as well as a princess or two, have been added to the roll of professing Christians. In many parts of the country people willingly send their children to mission-schools, and not a few of the leading gentry have learned to look with favour on those missionaries who think more of practising their Master's precepts than of preaching dogmas which He never sanctioned. But it would be false to say that doctrinal Christianity has hitherto gained much ground among the most civilised races of India. Western example has seldom been found in perfect harmony with Western creeds, and the very rebound from an old and intricate Polytheism would preclude a ready hearing for the mysteries of the popular Christianity. Hence it happens that among educated Hindoos the current of religious reform has long set towards some kind of eclectic Theism, branching off at one end into the rarefied scepticism of the old English freethinkers, at the other into the warmer aspirations of Theodore Parker and Mr. James Martineau. For some years past the latter movement seems to have made most way, under the leadership of the young and gifted Baboo, Keshub Chunder Sen, fit heir to the mantle worn forty years ago by Rammohun Roy. Step by step the original revolt against the corrupt Brahmanism of the Puranas has led up to a religious system in which the Christ of the Gospels and the ethics of St. Paul play a prominent part. The last rag of old use and wont was flung aside by Keshub Chunder's followers when a few years ago they forswore all observance of caste rules. His lectures in India and his recent utterances in this country show how thoroughly he has steeped himself in the spirit of the Christian Scriptures, while steadily rejecting the main dogmas of Christian theology.

The Brahmoists of both sections may already be numbered by thousands. At least as many more conform only in outward seeming to the faith of their Brahman forefathers. A spirit of inquiry, of growing deference to modern needs, has begun to reign among the priests themselves of the old religion. Reverend pundits have lately discovered that a Hindoo may cross the seas without losing caste, that Hindoo widows may marry again without deadly sin, and that the eating of flesh is not forbidden by the Vedas. Leading Hindoos have thrown themselves into the movement against polygamy. In these and other directions the tyranny of caste, a tyranny which has had and may still have its uses, is gradually yielding to the demands of common sense and general expediency. In many parts of India the march of new ideas has shewn itself in the readiness of natives to form societies and hold public meetings for the discussion of social and political questions. All this, of course, may count for little beside the dense array of

ignorance, bigotry, and superstition that still challenges attack and defies suppression. But the new leaven has begun to work, and in the course of years that work, for good or evil, will surely be accomplished. Hinduism, in the words of Max Müller, "is a decrepit religion, and has not many years to live;" but to hasten its downfall, as a religion, by other than moral means, would be a gross offence against sound statesmanship and Christian morality.

In reviewing India's recent progress, no candid observer can help seeing what a debt she owes to the greatest and nearly the worst abused of our Indian viceroys. The name of Lord Dalhousie is inseparably linked with the whole history of that progress. "To his genius," as Mr. Marshman has rightly declared, "is to be ascribed the grateful fact that the India of 1867 presents so preeminent a contrast to the India of 1847." It was his strong, bold, forecasting statesmanship that set India's feet firmly on the path she has since pursued. He it was who gave her a cheap uniform postage, and four thousand miles of cheaply-worked telegraph; who planned and started the railway system that now joins Bombay to Madras, Calcutta, and Lahore; who helped on to an early completion the works of that unrivalled achievement and immeasurable blessing, the Ganges Canal. To him, also, is India indebted for her present system of popular instruction, for important reforms in prisondiscipline, for a special department of public works, for the removal of old clogs on trade and industry, for the useful reports now yearly. forwarded from every province on all things connected with its administration, for almost everything, in short, which has lent new force and larger purpose to the national life of India in these latter days. It was Dalhousie who cleared the way for the milder policy of his successors; it was he who made them strong enough to employ their strength in new directions, to substitute right for might, justice for expediency, in their dealings with the subject peoples, to make large concessions to native feeling without risk of being charged with conscious weakness; to devote all their time, in short, to bettering the physical conditions and quickening the moral energies of the millions committed to their charge. If the people of India are in any way better off than they were twelve years ago, the difference is mainly owing to the work done or prepared by Lord Dalhousie during the eight years of his strong but beneficent rule.

L. J. TROTTER.