48 Address. [Feb. 



Government School of Art are a great improvement on the painting 

 practised 20 years ago. The maps of various countries recently published 

 show a great improvement in artistic skill. 



Biography. — The biographical literature of India is rich and useful. 

 The people are learning to study man as he is, and are leaving off the 

 old way of deifying and worshipping every great man of their nation. 

 The list of biographies, which, it will be seen, is by no means confined 

 to India, contains the following names : — The late Dewan Peshkar of 

 Pudu Cota, in English ; Shah Latif, the greatest poet of Sindh, in 

 Arabic-Sindhi ; Socrates in Gujarati; Richard Cobden in Marathi ; Tantia 

 Bhil in Bengali, English and Marathi ; Bachcharaja, a Jaina saint, in 

 Gujarati; Bagbhata, a great medical writer, and Kalyana Deva, a Rajput 

 hero, in Marathi; Ballabhacharya, the great Vaishnava reformer of 

 Western India, in Gujarati, and in Sanskrit and Gujarati ; Udar Lai, a 

 great Hindu saint of Sindh, who saved many lives from Muhammadgfl 

 persecution, in Ai'abic-Sindhi ; Bhanu Das, a great worshipper of Bitln jj 

 in Pandarpur, in Marathi ; Bapu Gokla, the last of the great Marhat. 

 generals, who died manfully fighting in the defence of Marhatta in- 

 dependence, in Marathi; Chaitanya, the great Bengal reformer, in 

 Canarese ; Kuhwar Fathlalji Mahata, in Urdu; Henry Lawrence in 

 Urdu ; Edward Gibbon in Hindi ; Abraham Lincoln in Marathi ; Brad- 

 laugh in English and in Marathi; Bholanath Sarabhai, the well-known 

 theistic Reformer of the Western Presidency, in Gujarati; Pandit 

 I'svarachandra Vidyasagara, Narottama Das, Prabodhananda Saras vati, 

 and Dr. Duff, in Bengali. 



Drama and Fiction. — Prose works of imagination, namely, dramas 

 and works of fiction, are many and various, but they do not show much 

 originality or boldness of conception. They treal mostly of the quarrels 

 of the daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law ; of educated ladies mar- 

 ried to uneducated men of equal family rank ; of learned Babiis married 

 to illiterate wives ; of the miseries of married widows, written by the 

 orthodox classes; and of the miseries of girl widows, by the friends of 

 progress. For instance. Tndulikha in Malayalam is a tale of a girl's 

 marriage against her wishes ; Bhulbhulamdri in Gujarati and Saniayi 

 Stri in Marathi, are stories of jealous wives; Shirin Mid, an in Gujarati 

 is a lifelike picture of Parsi life in Bombay. 



The writers often desert India and travel to European countries in 

 qnest of their heroes and heroines. For instance, the Ohaste Jewess in 

 Gujarati » - ives a description of the persecutions of the Jews by the Eng- 

 lish In the Pith century. A'iche MdMni, In the same language, is a Chris- 

 tian tale. Ohhdyi in Bengali is a picture of a- joint family just before 

 its decline under the altered circum.stanees in which India is now placed. 



