i 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



istrative ability, but in his being sooner fitted for actual duty. Un- 

 doubtedly, if two men go out to Calcutta so unequal in their knowl- 

 edge of native languages, or in the preparation for that knowledge, 

 that one can begin work in six months, while the other takes nine, 

 there is an important difference between them. But what is the ob- 

 vious mode of rewarding the differences? Not, I should think, by 

 pronouncing one a higher man in the scale of the competition, but by 

 giving him some money-prize in proportion to the redemption of his 

 time for official work. 



Now, as regards the second kind of languages, those that are sup- 

 posed to carry with them all the valuable indirect consequences that 

 we have just reviewed. There are in the Civil Service scheme five 

 such languages the two ancient, and three modern. They are kept 

 there, not because they are ever to be read or spoken in the service, 

 but because they exercise some magical efficacy in elevating the 

 whole tone of the human intellect. 



If I were discussing the Indian Civil Service in its own special- 

 ties, I would deprecate the introduction of extraneous languages into 

 the competition for this reason, that the service itself taxes the verbal 

 powers more than any other service. I do not think that Lord Ma- 

 caulay and his colleagues had this circumstance fully in view. Ma- 

 caulay was himself a glutton for language ; and, while in India, read a 

 great quantity of Latin and Greek. But he was exempted from the 

 ordinary lot of the Indian civil servant ; he had no native languages 

 to acquire and to use. If a man both speaks and writes in good Eng- 

 lish, and converses familiarly in several Oriental dialects, his lan- 

 guage-memory is sufficiently well taxed, and if he carries with him 

 one European language besides, it is as much as belongs to the fitness 

 of things in that department. 



My proposal, then, goes the length of excluding all these five cul- 

 tivated languages from the competition, notwithstanding the influence 

 that they may be supposed to have as general culture. In supporting 

 it, I shall assume that everything that can be said in their favor is 

 true to the letter; that they assist us in our language, that they cul- 

 tivate logic and taste, that they exemplify universal grammar, and so 

 on. All that my purpose requires is to affirm that the same good 

 ends may be attained in other ways ; that Latin, Greek, etc., are but 

 one of several instruments for instructing us in English composition, 

 reasoning, taste, and so on. My contention, then, is that the ends 

 themselves are to be looked to,- and not the means or instruments, 

 since these are very various. English composition is, of course, a 

 valuable end, whether got through the study of Latin, or through the 

 study of English authors themselves, or through the inspiration of 

 natural genius. "Whatever amount of skill and attainment a candi- 

 date can show in this department should be valued in the examina- 

 tion for English : and all the good that Latin has done for him would 



