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use improved. A more universal education would impart to a greater number of individuals an elementary knowledge of science and art, and induce in them a taste for particular study. A larger number of individuals than at present betaking themselves to a particular application must necessarily bring to light a larger number of facts; and these may be so generalised and classified by the greater precision of the age, as to be perfectly within the comprehension of the meanest capacity. The increased number of students, and their increased observations and experiments, with the increased precision of instruments and analysis, necessarily inspire the best hopes of progress in every science and art, even though prejudice may absurdly represent some as being all exhausted. "And thus the methods that led to new combinations be exhausted, should their applications to questions, still unresolved, demand exertions greater than the time or the powers of the learned can bestow, more general methods, means more simple, would soon come to their aid, and open a farther career to genius. The energy, the real extent of the human intellect, may remain the same; but the instruments which it can employ will be multiplied and

improved; but the language which fixes and determines the ideas will acquire more precision and compass; and it will not be here, as in the science of mechanics, where to increase the force we must diminish the velocity; on the contrary, the methods by which genius will arrive at the discovery of new truths, augment at once both the force and the rapidity of its operations."

Without conceiving, then, the capabilities of the human mind being at all increased, we can well conceive every possible advance in science and art. Our advance will be the result of greater skill and precision, by means of a more extended practice and better instruments. A smaller portion of ground will, when we are all advanced, be made to yield larger crops than at present; and the danger that Malthus pointed out to the future prospects of the world in the increase of the human species being in the geometrical progression, while that of the productiveness of the earth delaying in the arithmetical, completely obviated; a less expense of consumption will suffice to procure a greater quantity of enjoyment, and therein will be supplied all the necessaries of life to a progeny of the human race that will be more numerous,

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more enlightened and liberal, and enjoying a fairer distribution of wealth, labour, and instruction, than the present order of things admits.

Our faith, however, is more sublime, and our hopes more sanguine yet. This is an eternally progressive world, though each stage may be millions of years in length. There may be faculties and capabilities of the human mind to be yet developed, and the tide of civilisation returning to the land of its birth is not there to be eventually arrested. From this land, it may again set itself in motion, and resume its natural tendency westwards; and the world may in the successive epochs of progress be the cradle of successive races of moral beings, angelic in prescience, skill, and character. Who knows but that what we call the spirits of heaven are but poetic creatures, without "a local habitation and a name," who are none others but the inhabitants of some other planet, who have attained to a progress two or three epochs in advance of mankind? And what is there to prevent us to be like them?

It may be that our speculations deceive us, but the day of effort and endeavour never dies out; and there is perpetually some future before

man, to which he aspires, and some present which he contrives to remedy. We have long passed the idea that we are stationary, unmoving, and unmoved; and there are no signs in the heavens or the earth to declare that we are retrograding. Society is ever pressing onwards, and it is indeed not chimerical when we say that we look forward to a time as to an era attainable, and within our reach, "when all our more glaring and pervading social anomalies shall be amended, when the general aspect of the world shall be that of a contented, virtuous, and progressive state, when of the passions that now run riot in every form of vice no more shall remain than those frailties which are inseparable from human imperfection, and when pain, disease, and destitution shall be reduced to that narrow modicum which science cannot cure, which temperance and forethought cannot escape, and which are inherent in the conditions of a perishable nature-our visions will not be deemed wholly wild or baseless by those who reflect that we are anticipating, not a creation of that which is not, but simply a selection and extension of that which is."*

* Greg.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

END of the Work.-The Author plainly perceives its defects.— But a first essay is always defective. The two parts of the Work. The lessons of both.-India's time for regeneration. -Every individual has a share in the work of regeneration. -It must be fulfilled in spite of all opposition and slander.

AND here ends our task. We do not claim much, or even aught, for it, save that of fulfilling the only object of describing the Indian nation with a Native pen,

"And read their history in the nation's eyes"; without which there is much undeserved praise of virtues, and much undue censure for vices. Our effort is feeble and defective to a fault; and while, after travelling so far as to a conclusion, we cast a retrospective glance over the field we have just left behind us, we find many an error of progress, which, were we to commence again, at this stage we feel we could easily avoid and improve upon. Like a young and inexperienced general, marching in foreign