420 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. xv. 



to me or to others." In consequence of these words the man 

 was not put to death. 



Our conversation subsequently turned upon the enlighten- 

 ment of the people, and I spoke of the high estimation in 

 which education was held by all civilised nations ; that even 

 in England, notwithstanding all its attainments, there was 

 no question on which men's minds were at the present time 

 more anxiously exercised than on the education of the people, 

 to which all classes gave the greatest encouragement. The 

 queen's secretary fully confirmed my statements, and referred 

 with evident satisfaction to the silver medal which he had 

 before exhibited, and which his brother had received at one 

 of the public examinations at the school in which he had 

 been educated in England. We afterwards adverted to the 

 possibility that the time might yet come when there should 

 be not only schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, 

 but a college at Antananarivo, where the youth of the higher 

 classes and the most intelligent in the nation, should be more 

 fully taught, and that the prince might perhaps preside at an 

 annual examination, and distribute the prizes ; while the 

 princess, and the ladies her companions, might be spectators. 

 The princess smiled with evident pleasure at this allusion. 



I added that, from many things I had witnessed, the intel- 

 ligent youth of the nation appeared to me to be eager after 

 knowledge ; and amongst other illustrations, I mentioned that 

 on my first arrival I had suspended a thermometer in my 

 sitting-room, but that so many young chiefs had noticed it 

 when they came, and not satisfied with being told that it 

 exhibited the temperature of the atmosphere, asked so many 

 questions about the properties of the mercury, the causes of 

 the variations in the temperature of the atmosphere, and the 

 manner in which one affected the other, that I began to fear 

 I should be obliged to remove it for want of time to answer 

 all the questions it suggested to their minds. This desire 



