it is desirable to extend instruction in these subjects through vernacular text-books up to the fourth class of Higher-class English Schools. The plan of conveying instruction in subjects like geography, mather matics, physics &c., in the stage of secondary education through the medium of the vernacular, i.e. by using vernacular text-books has my full sympathy in the abstract; and the course is so natural that I am convinced it is bound to be adopted sooner or later. The existing method of conveying secondary instruction through a foreign medium is per së so unnatural and preposterous that were it not for the political circumstances of the country it would not be tolerated for an instant. Imagine English boys taught through the medium of German, or French boys through the medium of English I put little store by the opinion of the philologists that English will become the universal language eight hundred years hence. It may, and, no doubt, will become a sort of lingue franca for the world; but the learned Doctors who dream of one pernacular for mankind may be placed in the same transcendental category as the squarers of the circle and the inventors of perpetual motion, or as the fourth-dimension or the fifth monarchy fanatics. But India being an English dependency, and our political salvation lying in the direction of federation with the rest of the British Empire rather than in isolation and consequent political death or destruction, the English language must ever possess for us a paramount importance. I would therefore strengthen rather than weaken the position that English occupies in the existing scheme of secondary as well as University education; but I do not think that it will always be necessary to teach subjects like Mathematics, Physical science and Geography through English text-books for the sake of giving English its rightful supremacy in the scheme of secondary education. I think that in time, mathematics, physics, and geography political as well as physical may, for the purposes of the Entrance Examination, be taught by means of vernacular text-books, while the history of England may continue to be taught in English. Such an arrangement may at first be suspected to weaken the hold of the pupils on the English tongue, but I do not think that this will really be the case. Rather, by setting free much of the energy that is now wasted or frittered away in senseless efforts to cram down matters of information in the forms of English speech, this will give scope for a better grounding in English composition, Besides (1) the Entrance standard will then be more advanced than it is at present, which is highly desirable in the true intersts of University education; and there will be possible not only greater progress in knowledge, but also increased grasp of mind at the Entrance stage;-(2) mere unintelligent rote or cram will cease to have its present all but universal sway;-(3) one of the causes that have led to the intellectual hybridity
