§ 691 .] 
145 
HINDUSTAN UNDER THE QUEEN. [ 1857 — 1887 .] 
CHAPTER XI. 
HINDUSTAN UNDEE THE QUEEN. [1857—1887.] 
The present chapter concludes the proper historical portion of 
this work. It deals entirely with the “ India of the Queen,”_with a 
period free from internal commotion, and in which every inducement 
and encouragement has been offered for the spread and for the acqui¬ 
sition of knowledge. One consequence of this has been the wide 
extension of the art of printing. Large Native publishing-houses 
have risen in Lakh’nau, Banaras, and Pat’na, from which have issued 
floods of printed works, old and new, good, bad, and indifferent. 
At the same time a mushroom growth of smaller establishments has 
sprung up all over Hindustan, and there is now scarcely a town of 
importance which does not possess its printing-press or two. Every 
scribbler can now see his writings in type or lithographed for a few 
rupees, and too often he avails himself of the power and the opportunity. 
The rise of the Yernacular Press has been a prominent feature 
of the period under review. Hundreds of sheets have sprung into 
an ephemeral existence and have died in turn, while a few have lived 
through their childhood and deservedly survive as exceptions to the 
general fate. This is not the place to allude to the tone of the Indian 
Yernacular Press, and I purposely avoid doing so, beyond calling 
attention to the fact that as a rule the Hindi newspapers offer a 
favourable comparison with the more disloyal and scurrilous con¬ 
temporaries which disgrace Baijgali journalism. 
It has been impossible for me, face to face with such a mass 
of literature, to attempt to describe it with anything like complete¬ 
ness. I have only selected a few names which appeared to me worthy 
of notice, and even this selection I cannot pretend to be satisfactory. 
Hindustan at present is practically without any independent review 
which I could take as a guide, and I have been compelled to trust 
to my own, necessarily limited, reading, aided by the lists of names 
given in the Sib Siggh Saroj. For earlier periods I have had the 
winnowing basket of time, which has dissipated the chaff and collected 
the grains ready for examination ; but for the present not only is 
the proportion of chaff to grain infinitely greater, but the two are as 
yet unseparated. 
K 
