sides the school at Poona, the Central English school of the Native Education Society has 100 students, and to this number the school is limited. (The missionaries, with the assistance of the government, have recently established one English school, and the government are about instituting another.) There are, however, numerous private schools on the island, in which the total number of youths learning English, will be found to be several hundreds.

Another journal subsequently observes—' We learn that his Majesty of Oude has recently established an English school at Lucknow, and placed it under the controul of Major Low; the number of scholars that now attend daily, amounts to from thirty to forty, the majority of whom are the descendants of Christians, the rest Hindoos and Mahomedans.'

It rests not on my individual testimony, but it is in evidence before Parliament, that the natives have not only shown a great anxiety to obtain a knowledge of the English language, but that they have also evinced considerable proficiency in the same; the truth of the following extract from the recent Parliamentary Committee on the East India affairs, can be attested by hundreds of persons now in Europe.

Some of the students, who have completed their education in the Hindoo College and other institutions, are in the habit of holding debating societies, where they discuss topics of considerable importance in the English language, and read lectures and essays of their own composition, upon various literary and scientific subjects. At one of the meetings above mentioned, the question for discussion was, Whe

ther posthumous fame be a rational principle of human action or not.' It is true that the debate soon branched off into a consideration of the possibility and probability of human perfection; but the orators spoke with remarkable fluency, quoting Gibbon, Hume, Reid, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Shakspeare, Milton, &c. The forms of similar meetings in England were imitated; and the chairman having inquired the reason of the secretary's absence, a loud cry of Persecution!' was raised, and it was explained that he was prevented from attending by his father, who was afraid that his principles of paganism should be corrupted, in consequence of the other members being deists.

In corroboration of the foregoing, I may mention that I have found many of the Hindoo youths more accurately acquainted with English standard authors than is readily to be met with in England; they have now got up English playhouses, in which Shakspeare and the productions of the best British dramatists are acted with astonishing spirit. A Literary Society has been recently organized by the learned Hindoos at Madras, and placed in communication with the Royal Asiatic Society of London; by late arrivals I am informed that an Horticultural Society has been formed at Agra ;-other institutions will doubtless spring up rapidly.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE HINDOO RELIGION-ITS ATTRIBUTES,

&c.-MAHOME

DANS, PARSEES, JEWS, &c.- STATE OF CHRISTIANITY, &c.

THE government of British India possesses a feature which has rarely or never been found in any nation or in any age, I allude to its toleration of every mode or form of religion in which different sects may choose to adore the Creator; to its protection against hostility, forcible opposition or oppression by one rival sect against another, and to its auxiliary pecuniary aid when solicited by any congregation or community.

The Hindoo religion is of course the creed of the vast majority of the people; although now a gross system of polytheism adapted to the rudest capacities and appealing to or exciting merely sensual passions, there are various evidences in proof that it was once an almost pure system of monotheism, on which was subsequently engrafted the Hindoo trimurti or Triad. Thus BRAHM, (God), is among almost innumerable definitions acknowledged in the vedas, or sacred writings of the Hindoos, as the Almighty, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent Being: He who sees every thing, though never seen: He who is not to be compassed by description: who is beyond the limit of human conception, and from whom the universal world proceeds: whose 'work is the universe, and who is the Lord of the universe: He who is the Light of all lights, whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too infinite to be

imagined the one unknown, true Being, the Creator, the Preserver, the Destroyer of the universe!'

These sublime ideas of the Deity (Brahm!) who amidst the multitudinous worship of 330,000,000 of gods, has never been desecrated by an image or even temple, and whom the Hindoos dare not even name;) have been often mentioned to me by the late distinguished Rammohun Roy, who in conjunction with a few of his brethren in Calcutta, endeavoured to restore the pure and ancient form of Hindoo monotheism, by the establishment of an institution devoted to the simplest worship of the one, indivisible, invisible, omnipotent, and omnipresent God; the regulations for the conducting of this worship the writer of this work drew up, and the following is part of the trust deed prepared at the suggestion of Rammohun Roy, in Calcutta, in 1829'; it is a singular instance of a desire to discard the gross idolatry of a once primitive form of religion.

Trust Deed. Upon trust and in confidence that they the said [here follow the names of the trustees] or the survivors or survivor of them, shall, at all times, permit the said building, land, tenements, hereditaments, and premises, with their appurtenances, to be used, occupied, enjoyed, applied, and

1 The institution was opened by the late Rajah Rammohun Roy, accompanied by the writer (the only European present), in 1830. There were about 500 Hindoos present, and among them many Brahmins, who after the prayers and singing of hymns had been concluded, received gifts in money to a considerable extent.-R. M. M.

appropriated, as, and for a place of public meeting, of all sorts and descriptions of people without distinction, as shall behave and conduct themselves in an orderly, sober, religious, and devout manner, for the worship, and adoration of the Eternal, Unsearchable, and Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the universe, but not under, or by any other name, designation, or title, peculiarly used for and applied to any particular being or beings, by any man or set of men whatsoever; and that no graven image, statue, or sculpture, carving, painting, picture, portrait, or the likeness of any thing, shall be admitted within the messuage, building, &c., and that no sacrifice, offering, or oblation of any kind or thing shall ever be permitted therein; and that no animal or living creature shall, within or on the said messuage, building, land, tenements, hereditaments, and premises, be deprived of life, either for religious purposes, or for food; and that no eating or drinking (except such as shall be necessary by any accident for the present preservation of life), feasting or rioting, be permitted therein or thereon; and that in conducting the said worship or adoration, no object animate or inanimate that has been, or is, or shall hereafter become, or be recognized as an object of worship by any man or set of men, shall be reviled, or slightingly or contemptuously spoken of, or alluded to, either in preaching, praying, or in the hymns, or other mode of worship that may be delivered, or used in the said messuage or building; and that no sermon preaching, discourse, prayer, or hymn be delivered, made, or used in such worship, but such as