witness a very material alteration in the notions and feelings of the educated classes of the Hindu community of Calcutta.”
Meanwhile the progress of events was leading to the necessity of adopting a more decided course. The taste for English became more and more “widely disseminated.” A loud call arose for the means of instruction in it, and the subject was pressed on the committee from various quarters. English books only were in any demand: upwards of thirty-one thousand English books were sold by the school-book society in the course of two years, while the education committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months[1], to say nothing of the printing expenses. Among other signs of the times, a petition was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long and
b 5
- ↑ The committee’s book depository cost 638 rupees a month, or about 765l. 12s. a year, of which 300l. a year was the salary of the European superintendent. The sum realized by the sale of the books during the three last years of the establishment was less than 100l. On the change of the committee’s operations the whole of this expense was saved, some of the books being transferred to the Asiatic Society, and the rest placed under the charge of the secretary to the committee.
