natives of India by their foreign rulers, we may fairly state that education and literature were hardly ever patronised by the native rulers, in the time of their greatest glory, to such an extent as we find to-day under the foreign Christian conqueror. The Mohammedans may well boast that their prophet said: 'Indulge in learning from the cradle to the grave," or, "Go after science, be it even at the frontier of China;" but I can assure my readers that learning and science never enjoyed at the hands of Mohammedan princes that extraordinary care our theoretical students, buried in their libraries, are so anxious to discover in some of the great princes of the Mohammedan world. Their learning and science chiefly consisted of theology, grammar, and scholastic speculation, and was the common property of a very restricted number of men; whilst the learning and science patronised by the representatives of our culture in India, aims at the diffusion of light amongst the larger masses, prints books and tracts for the people, and, by raising the standard of intelligence, strikes a deadly blow at the distinctions of caste and rank.

The educational system carried on through primary and normal schools, and the three universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, costs the Government of India annually the sum of £800,000,

or about one-fortieth part of the net available revenue. There are 65,500 institutions, including schools and colleges of all sorts, and the number of students amounts to nearly two millions, out of which 72,200 are girls, at schools maintained for them especially. This number of school-attending children is certainly not very large, for it shows only nine scholars to a thousand of the population; but where do we find, in the Mohammedan world, a similar average percentage, and what is the number of Bashkir, Kazan-Tartar, and Tschuvashian students, supported by Russia, when compared with the above percentage? Observe, besides, that out of these colleges and universities supported by the British Government issues annually a large number of natives, conversant not only with English literature, but also with various branches of the modern sciences and to find a swarthy-looking Asiatic quoting Shakespeare, Virgil, and Homer, is an extraordinary but not unusual spectacle. With regard to literature, we must mention that many valuable works, on History, Belles-Lettres, nay, even on Mohammedan and Brahminic theology, have been published at the expense of the Government in the native languages. In the course of only one year 4,900 have been published, of which 550 are in English, 3,050 in the vernacular, 7,730 in the classical langages of India, and 570 in more than one

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language. Finally, let us add that vernacular newspapers, freely discussing and criticising the governmental and political affairs of the country, are increasing and spreading from day to day, and almost begin to vie, in their free and unrestrained language, with the press of the English mother-country. Their number amounts to several hundreds, and their circulation to several hundred thousand copies.

We shall conclude the comparison between the Russian and English civilising efforts, by alluding to the great facilities and rapidity afforded in locomotion through the construction of railways in India. The total length of the lines amounted in 1873 to 5,671, in 1880 to 8,611, and in 1883 to 10,317 miles, an immense net of railways spanning the Peninsula in

every direction, the capital expended upon which amounts to beyond two hundred millions sterling, part of it belonging to the guaranteed companies, part to the Government, and one part to the native States. It is true the English themselves profit most by the railways, inasmuch as they can use the various lines for strategical purposes, and in developing the trade of India; but there accrues no less benefit to the natives themselves, enabled as they are to travel at fares that I may say are the cheapest in the whole world.

Considering the vast amount of comforts given to

the natives for the taxes they have to pay to the Government, we must say that the idea prevailing throughout all Europe that Great Britain is impoverishing India, and getting rich by it, is preposterous from beginning to end. If we take, for example, the data furnished by Sir Richard Temple, we shall find that the ordinary revenue and receipts amounted in 1880 to something like sixty-seven millions, whilst the ordinary expenditure has risen to sixty-seven and a half and sixty-six and three-quarter millions during the years 1879-80 and 1880–81. It is therefore ridiculous to surmise, as the enemies of England do, that the exchequer of the State gets annually a large surplus from the Indian finances. What England gets from India we shall speak of in the next chapter; but here we have only intended to draw a comparison between the ways and means the two representatives of our western culture in Asia have hitherto employed to spread the era of a better civilisation, and to diffuse amongst Orientals the idea that the result of our conquests, though based upon the superiority of material strength, is to confer upon mankind in the distant East the true blessings of our better civilisation, which we are so justly proud of. In Russia the people, also subdued by the superiority of strength, are either disappearing entirely, or linger in a miserable existence under the horrid

abuses, tyranny, and disorder of utterly corrupt Russian officials, and the dawn of a better era is still hidden in the far future; whilst "the mass of the teeming Indian population desire nothing so much as that sort of repose which they enjoy under the strong, mild, and just rule of England, where every man gathers in quiet the fruits of his toil, is not forced to render up his good against his will, sleeps without fear of violence, has redress for wrongs done to him by his neighbour, performs his religious rites, and follows his caste observances undisturbed, and lifts his eyes towards the State as to a father."

I ask, therefore, can any sober-minded, honest European still doubt as to whom he ought to give preference in the work of civilising Asia? and is it not a shame that the various nations of Europe, influenced by petty rivalries and national vanities, are often blinded to such an extent as to extol Russia at the expense of England?

Where the sacred cause of humanity is involved, there one's views ought not to be confined to national limits; they ought to soar beyond, and honestly try to lift themselves up to the mental and moral attitude which ensures the largest and broadest look-out. As long as the national idea is most forward in the struggle for civilisation, which I consider identical with humanity, it is worthy of the devotion of every