With cheerful but ruthless lucidity he pointed out that the first lesson in physics must satisfy the Bengalí student that his sacred cosmogony was a childish myth. The hopes of missionaries rose high. Their language was confident and courageous. Some of their manifestoes sounded like invitations to general apostacy. Their influence on legislation was unmistakeable. The Hindu system visits apostacy with tremendous penalties, and declares the renegade to have forfeited, not merely the social communion of his fellow-men, but his share of the inheritance. An Act of the Governor-General's Council had swept away these penalties, and allowed the deserter from his creed to share with believers in the property and privileges of the family estate. A strong sentiment, embodied in a sacred text and a widely-spread custom, prohibited the Hindu widow from a second marriage. A British enactment — declaring that this was not the Hindu law, and that the widow was free to marry again — had been prepared in Lord Dalhousie's time, and was passed by his successor. Another measure of the legislature, promoted in the early days of Lord Canning's reign, under the patronage of influential members of the Government, for the purpose of restraining certain odious forms of polygamy, was resented by Bráhmans, whose privileges it curtailed, and dreaded by Hindu conservatives, who saw in it only another blow at existing institutions. When the legislature was thus courageous, it was not likely that the zeal of indi-
