( 7 ) in imagery, more brilliant ** a rhetorician. And it must be remembered he died a much younger man. Rajendra Lala Mitra also had not Bankim's penetration into human character and social problems, but his pOWers were more voluminous and Varied, his reading was larger, his work in life more usei ul. His special gift lay in the interpretaion ifting weighing of historical - fore, has been of an fit to receive the appreciation of scholars than of the people. But he lacked Bankim Chandra's philosophical capacity and we are sorry, no less for the man than for the Country, that Bankim Babu's philosophical work should have been left in an unshaped, embryonic form. One work he would have been especially well qualified to execule, and that is !a history of ancient civilisation in India. Mr. R. C. Dutt's work has many mesis, but in the first place it exhibits a bias, and in the next, it is only an epitome of European learning. Mr. Dutt goes to his work in the spirit of a social reformer, and is only too anxious to point this or that preconceived moral. We should have likely to see our ancient civilisation read at first hand, that is through our own literature, by native eyes and interpreted by a native iudgement, a judgement sympathetic if critical and duly alíve to sense of relativity. Bankim Babu could have given us a work to our taste, but that satisfaction we are destined not to receive. One lesson of Bankim Babu's life it would be unpardonable to ignore. The influences of western culture on the Hindu mind are not necessarily sterilising and denationalising. No Bengalee had drunk deeper draughts at the ೦ug of European thought and learning than Babu Bankim Chandra, no one was more anglicised in his habits of thought and mo್ಲಿ. of expression. His last paper on the Vedas has an English
