which may be compendiously denominated Orientalism and Anglicism. Brief, summary, decisive answers were returned by the latter; while the former sent in whole volumes of profound discussion to overwhelm or carry by main force the judgment of the Governor-General. But he was not to be so overcome. He calmly looked at this side and at that. With his practised, experienced eye, he soon pierced through and through the entire host of inflated pedantries and inveterate prejudices which had been marshalled in battle array against him. And, as with the club of Hercules, he speedily dashed them all away—there to lie in scattered fragments and relics, scarcely able articulately to point to the well nigh forgotten story of their once flourishing reign. The oriental Medical College—with its Sanskrit and Arabic phantasmagoria, and wooden, waxen, and other artificial anatomical substitutes—was torn up by the roots, like an old sapless oak before the blast of the north wind. And, in its stead, fresh with the dews of morning promise and buoyant with the spring of dawning hope, the present Medical College—the virtual canonization of Occidentalism in the calendar of Indian amelioration—started into being, rejoicing to enter on its glorious career of indefinite usefulness.
But Lord William’s attention was not directed merely to the immediate physical sufferings and wants of the people. His soul was deeply moved and affected at the spectacle of their intellectual and moral degradation. He saw that the administration of justice was corrupt, and the system of police one of revolting cruelty and oppression; and he fully acknowledged that these must be reformed. But he also had the perspicacity to see and to acknowledge that all remedial measures whatsoever, in these departments, must prove comparatively abortive without antecedent or concurrent measures for the intellectual and moral elevation of the people themselves. In short, his whole head and heart were eventually bent on the establishment of an improved and comprehensive system of national education. In order, however, to compass this great end, with any intelligible prospect of success, he felt, with his accustomed shrewdness and good sense, that the very first step must be, “to know, with all attainable accuracy, the present state of instruction in native institutions and in native society.” Again, then, was his resolution firmly taken. To accomplish this specific object, he determined that a Government Commissioner of Education should be duly chosen and appointed. And, in order still farther to ensure the services of a really fit agent for the execution of a task of so delicate, arduous, and responsible a nature, he resolved, with characteristic liberality, that the
