HOPES FOR THE FUTURE. 369 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 regions, extending " far and wide,” and finding, only after reaching his destination, that he could have avoided many a deviation and forced march, which weighed heavily upon his troops, that could otherwise have made a deeper impression upon the enemy; we find, only when coming to the end, after a considerable time, that has gained us much better taste and more pertinent knowledge and information, that we could have attempted to make a far better impression upon the critic and the public. But experience is always later, and knowledge and information gained only with age; and with this plea in our defence, we have ventured to launch forth our little work with all its defects. Something more, and we are done. The work may seem a medley of thoughts and observations; but to us it appears a consistent whole. In the first part, we have held up a bright character for imitation; in the second, depicted It rests with a bright future awaiting us. Young India to copy the one and realise the other. The lessons we have attempted to inculcate are lessons of hope; the path we have directed to be pursued is the path of success; reliance, activity, determination, perseverance, and earnestness are the guides to lead to this path. The time is passed for India to lie torpid it requires a thorough regeneration; and our countrymen have now more than ever to gird up their loins for a battle mightier than they have hitherto fought with the Mahomedans or the Europeans-for a nobler independence than the political, for which their forefathers shed their blood-the independence of the intellect and the soul. This battle may be baffled oft; but to those who fight well it is ever won: honour, advancement, and success may not come to-day or tomorrow; there are chances that disappointment may come oftener, and opposition and slander depress, rather than success buoy up, the heart. There are persecutions to earnestness, checks to progress, and slanders to fame in this world; every one has to pass through this ordeal, and the writer of these pages has not himself been spared the opposition of pretension and hypocrisy even in his first faint cry. But our countrymen need not, as they now do, lose their breath, and cower to savageness of stupidity, superstition, and bigotry; they should rather, in the consciousness of doing right, bid fair to contemn it all. In the contemplation of a future such as awaits India and the world, the thorough-going Indian |