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an occasion insulted some stray lads of his class, Master Harris felt extremely indignant, and resolved upon revenge. A Lilliputian army was immediately assembled in Bhowaneepore, armed with rulers, and, with young Harris commanding, marched on with measured steps, "breathing revenge." The warrior, who had vainly thought to annihilate entire armies, like Samson, single-handed, was at once brought to a sense of his vincibility. He received a severe blow, and was put to flight! This was the intrepid victory of Master Harris, barely ten years old. But how often at this age are Native boys lost amidst pigeons and play, and alarmed into instinctive shiverings at the very sight of a sailor or soldier !

CHAPTER IV.

CAUSES OF A WANT OF THE MAINSPRINGS OF SUCCESS IN THE CHARACTER OF "YOUNG INDIA."

UTTER want of early domestic training in India.—Instances of Indian Women figuring as Authors and Poetesses of eminence. -The doctrine of Female Depravity, as propounded by the Rishees. By Menu.-Woman's occupation in India.—Her daily round of labours described. Her extreme fondness for begetting Children.-Puranas quoted.-Present Female Education in India.-Absence of all elementary information on it. An observation of no spirit of a change being wrought over the Girls by the present system of education stated.A scheme for the higher training of Females.-Englishmen's aversion for familiarity with the Natives in private life.— It is just and merited.--Clever Women are of greater importance to the world than clever Men.--Absence of BoardingSchools in India.-Its pernicious effects.-Physical hardihood of an Indian more of a forced character than otherwise. Strength and spirit required to uphold National Rights.

PERHAPS the deficiency, or even perfect want of the mainsprings of all successes in life, in the character of Young India, as recited in the last chapter, can be traced more to their unfortunate position in the very nature of things, as they obtain in India, than their own neglect.

Since with the domestic life is connected the promotion of the best interests of man, both in this world and the next; since it is within the little circle of the walls of "home, sweet home," that the best affections are implanted and rooted; and since it is there that the elements of infant humanity are developed, bearing an influence on the principles and conduct in future life: it is no less palliative of the defects in the general character of Young India, than it is melancholy, to say that their homes are a wretched scene of ignorance, indifference, and misery. It is the mother that reigns paramount at home; our blood comes from the mother; our bones are our mothers' bones-we are all our mothers'; and it is the mother that gives us life-first animal life, then spiritual life; for it is the mother that teaches us to walk, and talk, and think, and lays within us the whole future man. Yet how do we behold the mother in her

own house? Can she not justly complain, in the words of Tennyson's Lilia

"But convention beats us down:

It is but bringing up, no more than that;
You men have done it; how I hate you all!
Ah! were I something great: I would I were
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then,
That love to keep us children. O! I wish

INDIAN MOTHERS.

That I were some great princess: I would

Build far off from men a college like a man's,
And I would teach them all that men are taught.
We are twice as quick."

77

Yes, they are twice as quick; for wherever they have appeared to public notice, they have shown a degree of intelligence and learning truly remarkable. India herself is not wanting in her examples. The names of Atreyi, Maitreyi, and Gargi are handed down in traditional succession as eminently distinguished for their knowledge of Vedantic philosophy, at which so many of our learned European scholars yet rack their brains. Bhamiat is the author of a work to expound the same subject, and her learning and depth of thought may put to the blush the intelligence of Madame de Stael. Shila, Vija, Mechika, were poetesses, of whom it is not too much to say that they wrote the most difficult and philosophic Sanskrit, and may properly cast into the shade the genius of Mrs. Hemans. A writer of considerable keenness on logic, the author of Tarkaprakash, pays a high compliment to the literary acquirements of his mother, to which he ascribes his successes, more vehemently and forcibly than Mill does to those of his learned wife.

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Taramati, Damaynti, and Rukhmani are names · familiar to every one even very superficially acquainted with Indian literature. These instances may be multiplied to the number of learned females of all the European countries put together, did we of necessity require it, which we do not. But yet the later rishees have, by a system of false and contemptible theology, degraded woman . in India even more than the ancient Greeks and Romans" Falsehood, cruelty, bewitchery, folly, impurity, and unmercifulness are woman's inseparable faults."-" Woman's sin is greater than that of man, and unatonable by any process of expiation."-" Women are they who "Women have an aversion to good works.".

have hunger two-fold more than men; cunning, four-fold; violence, six-fold; and evil desires, eight-fold." Even Manu, by a pitiable shortsightedness, allotted to women "a love of the bed, of their seat, and of ornaments, impure appetites, wrath, weak flexibility, desire of mischief, and bad conduct";* and a system of this mawkish sentimentality, of a hypocritical and renegade philosophy, has degraded woman

*For further information on the condition of woman in India, see "The Evangelisation of India," by John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S., Discourse x., pp. 407–463.

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