1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 105 



pite the sovereignty of the Romans in Britain for centuries. But 

 admitting that the means and appliances of modern civilization, the 

 printing press, the electric telegraph, the railroad, and steam vessels, 

 would effect what the conquering Romans and the Moslems failed to 

 achieve, still it would be a work of time which must be represented 

 by centuries, and not by years, and all that time the work of educat- 

 ing the masses must be allowed to stand still, and the gloom of igno- 

 rance to pervade the land. The people had not the necessary 

 leisure, first to learn a difficult and foreign language, and then the 

 sciences, and consequently the sciences and intellectual enlightenment 

 had to be left to take care of themselves. Such was the case in 

 Europe as long as the vernaculars were neglected, and so must it be 

 in this country. In India, men had to begin life — to buffet the world 

 for existence — at a very early age. Even in Europe, the average period 

 devoted to education was limited to between five and six years ; in India 

 it was considerably less, and it was impossible to devote ten years out of 

 it for the acquisition of a foreign tongue, which was not knowledge itself, 

 but merely a key to open the storehouse of knowledge. It would be 

 generally admitted that in European universities more time was devoted 

 to the classical languages than to any other branches of study, and 

 yet he thought he could assert, without any fear of contradiction, that 

 were the classics this day made the only vehicle of science, its progress 

 would at once be thrown back a century, and our scientific men would 

 number by dozens instead of thousands. Hence it was that the dark- 

 ness of the middle ages prevailed over England until the Norman 

 French of the conquerers was replaced by the Anglo-Saxon, and the 

 same veil of ignorance covered the human mind in France, Italy and 

 Germany as long as the Latin of the schoolmen was not superseded 

 by the vernaculars of those countries. In Russia the first dawn 

 of civilization dated with the use of the Russian as the vehicle of 

 education. In making these remarks, it was not at all his wish 

 to deprecate the study of the classics arid foreign languages, but to 

 point out the superior adaptability of the vernaculars as a medium 

 of scientific education for the people at large, and scientific educa- 

 tion was of greater importance than the most copious or the most 

 perfect language that was ever devised by the ingenuity of man, or 

 produced by nature. Let those who have the leisure and the oppor- 



