CH. VII.]

GENERAL VIEW OF HIS WORK.

197

To Professor Conington.

Palace, Calcutta, October 1861.

Your letters are always very interesting, and I can say without flattering that I never receive one without great pleasure. The last reached me as I was voyaging up the Brahmaputra on a two months' visitation of the remote and somewhat uninteresting province of Assam, and most agreeably recalled my thoughts from its opium-eating inhabitants to Oxford and English interests. I confess that such matters still occupy a very foremost place in my mind, more so perhaps than they ought to do, considering the work assigned to me here. But I cannot help it, and it would be affectation to say that I view India with the absorbing interest felt in it by Martyn or Corrie or my immediate predecessor. Not that I at all dislike my work, or that I am not interested in it. On the contrary, the work itself I like very much: it is not oppressive, it gives me plenty to think about, I throw into it willingly such energies as I have, and as long as God mercifully preserves our health, I have no cause for regret except the want of Edward and some English friends. But then, when it comes to India, I feel certain drawbacks. Thus, as to the missionary work, I am only concerned in it occasionally, and as it were indirectly, while the evangelisation of the country to such an extent as to bring me into more constant connexion with it is very distant, hardly reserved for my episcopate unless there were to be some special interposition of God's providence. Again, the politics of India are not of a kind to interest, but rather to disgust me. At present, the great subject of newspaper controversy is the rivalry between the governmental or official classes, and the mercantile community of settlers, planters, and other persons who come here to make their fortunes. I do not deny that there are excellent men among them, some who are true Christians and would gladly make the natives Christians also. But even these come here simply for purposes of trade, and undoubtedly their views for the future of India are largely coloured, not merely by commercial but by personal considerations. . . . Among civilians, I see often a real interest in the natives, and a desire to improve them for their own sake. But then the civilians, like all the rest of the Anglo-Indian world, are always looking for

...

ward to going home, and regard England as their country, so that the utmost that one ever sees, excepting in a few devoted missionaries, is a readiness, perhaps an earnest desire, to do good to India during the time of sojourn in it. Thirdly, constitutional changes, such as those lately announced, are only alterations in the way of nominating counsellors and disposing of patronage or working the details of Government, and these are certainly not matters of high interest. The change which is likely ultimately to lead to the most important results is Lord Canning's last order, which permits the sale of waste land and the redemption of the land tax, so as to introduce into the country a class of real landlords, holding the fee simple of their estates. . . On one part of my duties of life, I have come, I think, to a pretty clear opinion-the nature of my reading. I do not consider that I should be doing my best for the Indian Church in its present aspect, so much more European than native, by spending my time in trying to make myself an Oriental scholar. Two living languages, Hindustani and Bengali, of which I already know something, I wish to keep always on hand, alternately, as work calls me to the NW. Provinces or keeps me in Bengal. For I think it desirable to be able to ordain, confirm, and perform other services in the native congregations in their own tongues, and to be able to talk a little to them. And I always hope to keep up and improve my acquaintance with Indian history and such studies as will enable me to feel an interest in the people. But to learn Sanscrit or Arabic, and to read Vedas and Upanishads or Koran and Mahometan literature in the original languages, would consume immense time without corresponding fruit. My business is to influence and help the clergy, to be a Christian theologian, to do my best to spread in the country true views of Christianity, to interest people by freshness and sound matter in my sermons. Hence I hope to make Divinity my chief study, and therefore I have resumed Hebrew and read divers books of Scriptural criticism: the last being Elliott's 'Hora Apocalyptica,' by which, however, I remain unconvinced, though the learning of the book is great, and it is written by a good man. . . .

CH. VII.]

EFFECTS OF FAMINE.

199

To the Bishop of Adelaide, South Australia.

Palace, Calcutta, October 28, 1861.

I was absent from Calcutta on my first visitation of Assam when your letter arrived with the kind contributions of your diocese to the Famine Relief Fund, for which I return my best thanks. The famine is, by God's mercy, over, and has been succeeded by a bountiful harvest. But its effects of course remain, and among these there is none more melancholy than the great number of orphan children. Orphanages have been set up by both of our missionary societies, where these children will be trained up as Christians under the care of clergymen. The most important is that of the Christian Missionary Society at Agra, but that has been so largely aided by the committee of the Famine Relief Fund that I have thought it needless to help it further with the Australian money. I have therefore divided this between two other orphanages of more recent origin, which are more dependent on private contributions: that of the Society for Propagating the Gospel at Cawnpore, and that of the Christian Missionary Society at Umritsur in the Punjab, and I trust that this appropriation of the money will meet the wishes of yourself and of those who have kindly given it. It may add some interest to the appropriation of the money sent from Adelaide, if you know that at my first Ordination I admitted to deacon's orders two Hindustanis who had been saved from the last great famine (1837–8) and trained up in a missionary orphanage.

To the Rev. J. D. Glennie, Secretary, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Palace, Calcutta, November 2, 1861. Many thanks for your letters, announcing the consent of the committee to my proposals about the hymn book (already hastily acknowledged), and about the formation of a vernacular committee. This has been done, and will, I hope, be fruitful in results. In its name I have already to ask one favour, than which I think none can more lawfully fall under the Society's rules and operations. A new edition is wanted of the Urdu Prayer Book both in Arabic and Roman character. Some

time ago I appointed a committee, consisting of persons eminent for Urdu scholarship, both clerical and lay, to revise the existing translation, which had been censured as unidiomatic and difficult. It was also necessary to translate the Ordination Services. A new edition is now ready for the press, which will for the first time contain these, together with the Psalms and Epistles and Gospels, to which hitherto mere references have been given, and the rubrics in red letters. The last improvement perhaps you will think rather premature in the present state of Hindustani churchmanship, but it is really most expedient, to enable the ignorant to see clearly that these rubrics are directions, and not prayers or otherwise parts of the service. The book, which has my full sanction, is to be printed at Bishop's College press. . . . I now turn to another subject. A year ago the committee liberally voted me 500l. for my projected school at Simla for the children of Europeans and Eurasians. In order to secure the Government grant in aid, I am required to certify how much has been actually paid to me, the Government being ready to contribute a like amount. May I therefore ask you to pay me the 500l. as soon as convenient, in order that I may secure the insertion of the grant in the budget of 1862–3 ?

CH. VIII.]

ANGLO-INDIAN EDUCATION.

201

CHAPTER VIII.

ANGLO-INDIAN EDUCATION-SCHOOLS IN CALCUTTA-EURASIANS-DEFICIENCY OF MEANS OF EDUCATION IN NORTH INDIA-THE BISHOP'S EFFORTS TO INCREASE IT-CONNEXION OF THE MOVEMENT WITH THE DAY OF THANKSGIVING-GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION SUBMITTED ΤΟ THE GOVERNMENT-MINUTE OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL-MEMORIAL SCHOOL AT SIMLA-SELECTION AND POSITION OF THE HEAD MASTER-SCHOOL PAYMENTS-CREATION OF A DIOCESAN BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Ir may be well at this point to suspend the chronological order of events in order to narrate with continuity the earlier steps in that development of Anglo-Indian education which distinguished the sixth Episcopate of Calcutta. The time was not unfavourable for the attempt. The subject had attracted some attention before the mutiny; its revival on the restoration of peace was likely to command sympathy and support, apart from the special interest which it derived from the proposal to connect the first fresh steps in the movement with the day of public thanksgiving. To the Bishop, personally, the work was congenial. It was the first that he made entirely his own, it was a link between his past life and the present, and supplied in a distant land an outward expression to that spirit of loyalty to the memory of his life's chief teacher, which prompted him on one occasion to write, Whenever a large school is governed on enlightened Christian principles, its masters will reverence the great man who in our day first showed such government to be possible. In whatever part of the world Englishmen are thinking, planning, working, struggling, conquering, there some of Arnold's pupils, and the pupils of schools carried on in