Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked
the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to
preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept
the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their
birth-right, suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands.

Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the younger
brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in
these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with nothing but his
good heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now has come to all
honour and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over the world. He went
out and _did_. Let us see now what became of the elder brother,
who stayed at home some time after his brother went out, and then
only made a short journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal
inhabitants of India with little effort, and following the course of
the great rivers, the Eastern Aryans gradually established themselves
all over the peninsula; and then, in calm possession of a world of
their own, undisturbed by conquest from without, and accepting with
apathy any change of dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past
and careless of the future, they sat down once for all and
_thought_--thought not of what they had to do here, that stern
lesson of every-day life which neither men nor nations can escape if
they are to live with their fellows, but how they could abstract
themselves entirely from their present existence, and immerse
themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future. Whatever they
may have been during their short migration and subsequent settlement,
it is certain that they appear in the Vedas--perhaps the earliest
collection which the world possesses--as a nation of philosophers.
Well may Professor Mueller compare the Indian mind to a plant reared
in a hot-house, gorgeous in colour, rich in perfume, precocious and