of their early reputation for eastern learning. But this availed nothing. The blow had gone straight to the sources of their habitual feelings, and the effect which followed was highly remarkable.
The motive which led the oriental literary societies to take up the cause of that section of the committee which supported the interests of oriental literature is still more obvious. The object of the Asiatic societies is to investigate the history and antiquities of the East; to lay open to the European world whatever the records of Asia contain to illustrate and aid the progress of mind, of morals, and of natural history. The object of the education committee is to instruct the people of India in sound knowledge and true morality. The Asiatic societies are organs for making known the arts and sciences of Asia to Europe. The education committee is an organ for making known the arts and sciences of Europe to Asia. Yet different, and, to a great extent, incompatible, as these objects are, the education committee had acted, in the main, as if it had been only a subordinate branch of the Bengal Asiatic Society. The same gentleman was long secretary to both. Ancient learning of a kind which every body must admit
d 3
