( 8 ) terseness of expression, an English severity of reasoning, and an English humour. His novels are English in taste, in the construction of the plot, in the setting of character, somtimes to a fault. He was no imitator, but the moulds of his thought had come to be, by much reading and assimilation, English, and they imparted their stamp to all his productions. If parallels can be discovered to his plots, situations and characters in European literature, they do not prove lack o' originality, any more than the parallels that have bee: discovered to some Milton's images and Tennyson's ideas. European culture may have a two-fold effect on the Hindu mind. It may crush native energy and breed a passion for western ideas and ideals, or else it may correct, refine and develop the endowment of nature, and stimulate a feeling of nationality. What effect will arise in a given case will depend on circumstances, chief of which are temperament, association, accident and the spirit of the times. For his preference of the Bangali as the language of his productions, he was indebted to the influence of Iswar Chunder Gupta. That we call an accident. His own temperament and the time-spirit turned his thoughts definitely to philosophy and religion in his mature years, but we should not be surprised if the bent was finally determined, if a mere philosophic interest was sublimed into a religious earnestness, by a particular domestic misfortune. Death is an awakener and can make prophets and Saints. Babu Bankim Chandra's views on religion and social philosophy seem to have been in the course of formation. It would not be fair to judge him in any adverse way by the fragments he has left. His Dharma-tatwa has all the appearance of prolegomena. Reading it between the lines we are inclined to suspect that in a few years more, the writer, continuing of course to be a Hindu in life, would have
