DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.34827#0388
372 Z?/? Z^^/77VZ77^. cn, xix.
Theseus and the populace of Sarra in the land of Tartary are
all Englishmen of Chaucer's age. I cannot guess where such
scraps are likely to be found, because I cannot read even the
red letter headings of chapters which give some notion of what
a hook is about; but with your application and your familiarity
with bad hands you might gather a great deal; and if in a
thousand gduAeAs ^ you found a pearl, you would know the value
of it, and where it ought to be set. You have a great advan-
tage from your residence in India and your long-continued
attention to the realities of that country. We constantly see
the best European writers, with abundance of facts before them,
completely miss the spirit of an age or country very different
from their own. Guizot thinks the essential character of feudal
times consisted in the independence of many petty
chiefs in one country (which would be like the tyrants and
oligarchies in Greece, the Maluk il Tooaif in Persia, or the
Nabobs, Rajas, and Poligars in modern India); while most
other writers think the peculiarity of the feudal system lay in
the dependence of many chiefs, nearly absolute within their
own hefs, on one common sovereign, and the mutual relations
among themselves produced by this connection. For national
character, take Mitford's view of the Athenians, and that of any
democratic writer, or take two people describing the High-
landers as late as the middle of last century. One sees paternal
government, polished manners, high spirit, and generous self-
devotion ; while another finds nothing but greed, treachery and
cruelty, servility and terror. Now in India there have been no
exterminations of races, no Martin Luthers nor French revolu-
tions, which make the eighteenth century in Europe as different
from the fifteenth as China is from Persia. The groundwork of
society in India is probably little different from what it was in
the time of the Toghluks, perhaps even in that of the Pandus.
But to make use of your advantages you must
and must give up all attention to minute events in war and
politics. I have, in what only professes to be an outline, given
2 Acts of diving.
Theseus and the populace of Sarra in the land of Tartary are
all Englishmen of Chaucer's age. I cannot guess where such
scraps are likely to be found, because I cannot read even the
red letter headings of chapters which give some notion of what
a hook is about; but with your application and your familiarity
with bad hands you might gather a great deal; and if in a
thousand gduAeAs ^ you found a pearl, you would know the value
of it, and where it ought to be set. You have a great advan-
tage from your residence in India and your long-continued
attention to the realities of that country. We constantly see
the best European writers, with abundance of facts before them,
completely miss the spirit of an age or country very different
from their own. Guizot thinks the essential character of feudal
times consisted in the independence of many petty
chiefs in one country (which would be like the tyrants and
oligarchies in Greece, the Maluk il Tooaif in Persia, or the
Nabobs, Rajas, and Poligars in modern India); while most
other writers think the peculiarity of the feudal system lay in
the dependence of many chiefs, nearly absolute within their
own hefs, on one common sovereign, and the mutual relations
among themselves produced by this connection. For national
character, take Mitford's view of the Athenians, and that of any
democratic writer, or take two people describing the High-
landers as late as the middle of last century. One sees paternal
government, polished manners, high spirit, and generous self-
devotion ; while another finds nothing but greed, treachery and
cruelty, servility and terror. Now in India there have been no
exterminations of races, no Martin Luthers nor French revolu-
tions, which make the eighteenth century in Europe as different
from the fifteenth as China is from Persia. The groundwork of
society in India is probably little different from what it was in
the time of the Toghluks, perhaps even in that of the Pandus.
But to make use of your advantages you must
and must give up all attention to minute events in war and
politics. I have, in what only professes to be an outline, given
2 Acts of diving.