214 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [June, 



land fifty of licr greatest mathematicians, fifty of her highest astro- 

 nomers, fifty of her ablest chemists, fifty of her most distinguished 

 geologists, fifty of her foremost physicists, fifty of her profoundest 

 statesmen, fifty of her best writers, fifty of her wisest doctors, 

 and fifty of her most proficient engineers, and to compensate the 

 loss by a small modicum of reading, writing and cyphering in 

 every man, woman and child, and that such a thing as a cross mark 

 in the marriage register, of which we have now near thirty per cent, 

 was never to be. The loss in such a case would not amount to five 

 hundred persons, — mere u tulips and exotics" as they have been poe- 

 tically described by the gentleman whom I have just alluded to, of 

 no essential value to English society, — and the gain would be educa- 

 tion in five millions of sturdy corn-growers. Would not England 

 nevertheless be two centuries behind hand of France ? England 

 would still retain many of her third class astronomers, mathemati- 

 cians and scientific men, but they would not suffice to uphold her 

 prestige as an intellectual nation. In Orissa there is no man learned 

 in the sciences, and the doctrine of mass education to the exclusion 

 or supersession of higher education,would remove the chance of her 

 ever getting one. It would chain her down to one dead level of 

 intellectual poverty from which she will have no prospect of rising. 

 It may convert her sons into indifferent copyists, or bad substitutes v 

 of Babbage's calculating machines ; but not into intellectual, 

 sturdy, self-reliant men. May the wisdom of our rulers avert from 

 her so dire a calamity ! 



