abundant in fruit; it may be all this, 'but will never be like the
oak, growing in wind and weather, striking its roots into real earth,
and stretching its branches into real air, beneath the stars and sun
of Heaven'; and well does he also remark, that a people of this
peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the
history of the world; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of
transcendental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence
on the active and moral character of the Hindoos. [3]

In this passive, abstract, unprogressive state, they have remained
ever since. Stiffened into castes, and tongue-tied and hand-tied by
absurd rites and ceremonies, they were heard of in dim legends by
Herodotus; they were seen by Alexander when that bold spirit pushed
his phalanx beyond the limits of the known world; they trafficked
with imperial Rome, and the later empire; they were again almost lost
sight of, and became fabulous in the Middle Age; they were
rediscovered by the Portuguese; they have been alternately peaceful
subjects and desperate rebels to us English; but they have been still
the same immovable and unprogressive philosophers, though akin to
Europe all the while; and though the Highlander, who drives his
bayonet through the heart of a high-caste Sepoy mutineer, little
knows that his pale features and sandy hair, and that dusk face with
its raven locks, both come from a common ancestor away in Central
Asia, many, many centuries ago.

But here arises the question, what interest can we, the descendants
of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical renown,
possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless,
and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? The answer is easy. Those
records are written in a language closely allied to the primaeval