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Notices of Books. 



[Oct. 



attractive charms, the literature of Europe, as soon as it emerges from 

 the darkness of the fabulous ages, supplies a separate stream of histo- 

 rical narration, distinctly traced, and precisely graduated, by the scale 

 of chronology. On the events recorded and timed in the pages of that 

 well attested history, a philosophical mind dwells with intense interest. 

 The rise and fall of empires ; the origin, growth, and decay of human 

 institutions ; the arrest or advancement of civilization ; and every event 

 which can instruct or influence practical men, in every station of life, 

 are there developed, with the fullest authenticity. Whichever of these 

 two departments of literature — fiction or fact — the European student 

 may find most congenial to his taste, early associations and prepos- 

 sessions have equally familiarized either to his mind. 



" As regards oriental literature, the impressions of early associa- 

 tions never can, nor is it to be wished that they ever should, operate on 

 the European mind. Even in Europe, where the advantage of the 

 spread of education, and of the diffusion of useful knowledge, are the 

 least disputed of the great principles which agitate the public mind, 

 there are manifest indications that it is the predominant opinion of the 

 age, that into the scheme of that extended education— more of fact 

 and less of fiction — more of practical mathematics and less of classics 

 — should be infused, than have hitherto been adopted in public institu- 

 tions. Mutatis mutandis, I regard the recent Indian fiat " that the 

 funds which have hitherto been in part applied to the revival and 

 improvement of the literature, and the encouragement of the learned 

 natives of India, shall be exclusively appropriated to purposes of 

 English education," to be conceived in the same spirit. 



" These early associations, then, being thus unavailing and unavail- 

 able, (if the foregoing remarks are entitled to any weight) the creation 

 of a general interest towards, or the realization of the subsiding expect- 

 ations, produced at the formation of the Bengal Asiatic Society, in 

 regard to, oriental literature, seems to depend on this single question ; 

 namely, 



" Does there exist now, or is there a prospect of an authentic history 

 of India being developed hereafter, by the researches of orientalists ? 



" On the solution of this question, as it appears to me, depends 

 entirely, whether the study of oriental literature (with reference not 

 to languages, but the information those languages contain) shall con- 

 tinue, like the study of any of the sciences, to be confined to the few 

 whose taste or profession has devoted them to it ; or whether it shall 

 some day exercise an influence over that more extended sphere, which 

 belongs to general history alone to exert. 



" This is an important, though not, perhaps, altogether a vital, ques- 

 tion : — important, more especially at the present moment, as regards 

 the interest it can create, and the resources it can thence derive, for the 

 purpose of extending the basis of research j but not vital, inasmuch 



