fined their attention to the engagement of youths trained in British schools. These same employers have been equally concerned at learning that it was not possible to find in the labor market a British youth-or, if possible, then but rarely, and as an exception proving the rule-capable of competing with continental youths who have had the advantage of "practical" education, whose tuition has been guided by the career they had in prospect, and who to the commercial man of to-day are valuable. The employment of foreigners has hitherto been compulsory in English business houses.

That there is a lack in English schools of proper training for commercial life, and that as yet no successful systematic effort has been made to supply the gap in our system, is evidenced by the statistics given by the chamber of commerce of the examinations which they have conducted. Although 200 London firms have undertaken to give preference, in selecting assistants, to lads who possess the chamber of commerce certificate, yet after the scheme has been in existence for over six years, last year only 49 candidates presented themselves for examination, 40 sitting at London, 6 at Aberdeen, and 3 at Portsmouth. In 1890, 65 London candidates were examined; in 1891, 86 candidates; in 1892, 79 candidates; in 1893, 76 candidates. When it is remembered that in London alone there are 105,000 business men and women who style themselves clerks, the signal failure of the chamber to induce schools to train on commercial lines is apparent, especially when we see that in 1896 the candidates were half the number of those in 1891.

That the supply of English commercial assistants is less than the demand is patent, for the report of the chamber states:

The most eloquent fact that the chamber can adduce as an encouragement to proceed with its work is that no holder of the junior certificate has yet endeavored unsuccessfully to obtain a situation through the chamber formerly, or latterly through its employment department.

"Commercial education" figures largely in the prospectus of many schools, but only a very few send up their lads for the chamber of commerce examinations, in spite of the manifest advantages accruing to a successful examinee.

FOREIGN PROGRESS V. ENGLISH CONSERVATISM.

Alertly progressive in commercial education are our foreign competitors, while we are blindly traditional. Our greatest competitor is Germany, and at the present moment she has 200 schools and institutions devoted solely to commercial training; these have 24,000 pupils, 19,000 being elementary and 5,000 being intermediate. France has 9,000 pupils in her commercial schools, and Italy has 8,500.

Russian progress.-The latest information from Russia is of an instructive character. Her first commercial school was established in Moscow in 1772, and its definite aim is shown by the words of the statute under which it works:

To give to its pupils a general education, and to prepare them for commerce, and for taking the post of bookkeepers, controllers, and chief clerks to manufacturers.

In 1885 Russia had 36 of such schools, but in 1894 it was found that the number had been reduced to 25. The Russian Government, with a foresight which is lacking here, immediately placed the matter in the hands of its most powerful government department, the ministry of finance. This department is setting up new schools in which the pupils are to receive the necessary training for service in the capacity of clerks and small traders and in industrial banking and insurance methods. "One-class" schools are being established for those pupils whose lack of means prevent them from remaining for a long course, and "three-class" schools for the children of more well-to-do people; and finally, employers' classes for those who can attend in the day as well as in the evening for a long course. The programme of each school is adapted by the ministry to the local needs. Austrian progress.-Mr. J. Goldschmidt, the United States consul-general in

Vienna, gives details with reference to the work carried on in that city. A full description is given in the Board of Trade Journal for August, 1892. He says:

In these special commercial schools pupils are actively brought into contact with practical life; they regularly visit the public collections of commercial and industrial art, industrial establishments and make "instruction journeys" to the great centers of commerce under the guidance of the professors. Despite a high fee-150 florins annually-the number of pupils has steadily increased, as it was found that those who had passed the academy could command their price in the market.

The instruction does not end in and around Vienna, for many of the students have been, and are now, in England, in order that

as opportunity offers, they may return to their native State and put their newly acquired knowledge to use in the marts of the world.

At the risk of being tedious, I quote two other extracts from this valuable monograph:

I. England is thus (by training these young Austrians) raising up for herself in the near future a new, most intelligent, capable, and determined competitor.

For some years past the director of this special school has been applied to by foreign governments to give complete practical explanation of its organization and system, while banking and commercial houses in London and elsewhere, requiring specially trained and capable young men, have been applied to and supplied by him from the students under his charge.

German progress.-A correspondent of the Monde Economique says:

The Germans have shown themselves during the last few years to be on the way to become past masters in commercial matters. Their energy, patience, activity, and spirit of enterprise are remarkable, and at the pace they are going they will soon succeed in obtaining the commercial supremacy in the chief markets of the world. The correspondent then deals with the means employed by the Germans with a view to developing and encouraging the native qualities of their race. He attributes much of their successes to their commercial education, and he especially calls attention to a society founded in Hamburg in 1858, with the object of procuring situations for young men desirous of entering trade, in which they may have facilities for learning the usages of international commerce. At the time of writing, the correspondent states that the society consisted of 31,000 members, and that it had 170 branches. Such a society formed in England would be a valuable adjunct to any system of commercial education which may be hereafter established. To pile up instances would avail little, but it would be casy to produce evidence of a most conclusive character, showing that the countries which are increasing their trade are also those which are giving the most attention to systematic commercial education.

"COMPETITION BECOMING MORE ACUTE."

Indeed, there are indications that in the immediate future our own countrymen will have to encounter a competition far more acute than anything they have had yet to grapple with.

So say Sir Philip Magnus and his colleagues in their report of last year, a report based on personal observation of the methods of trade adopted in the countries which they visited. This competition we are preparing to meet on the technical industrial side of our education, but on the technical commercial side we have done nothing worthy of a name.

There are encouraging signs, for the technical education board for Loudon is alive to the necessity for immediate action. In their last report to the county council, referring to education, they say:

One of the subjects constantly kept in view by the board has been the importance of commercial education; there is no direction in which better technical instruction is likely to be more effective in promoting the industry and well-being of London.

ED 98-22

A few weeks since the board appointed a special committee to bring up plans for effective work in this direction, and if London leads well in this matter the provinces will assuredly follow. At present in the higher branches of commercial life the foreigner holds the field, but there is no reason why he should continue to do so, provided we supply systematic training for our native talent.

In his "Expansion of England" when referring to our war with France in the two first decades of the eighteenth century, Seeley says:

England and France stood in direct competition for a prize of incalculable value. The prize was the control of the markets of the world.

The ethics of a war, based on such a motive, I am not prepared to defend, but the value of the prize for which both nations spent so much blood and treasure is beyond question. The commercial war is no less keen now, although the fighting men are clothed in fustian and broadcloth and the field of battle is the manufactory and the counting house.

Energy, brains, and physique we have, but in commercial education our methods are antiquated, our guides are not sympathetic, and we must decline to follow the latter and modernize the former if England is to remain in the forefront of the commercial world.

CHAPTER X.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

By W. E. DE RIEMER, A. B., D. B., A. M.

I. EXTENT OF INDIAN LITERATURE.

"Knowledge is the best among all things, for it can neither be lost, nor sold, nor destroyed." (Hitopodesá, Hindoo Shástras.)

"Those who have believed and have received knowledge, God exalts in rank." (Koran of Mohammed.)

"Knowledge is a power causing man to be successful in every business." (Sár Uktávali, Sikh Scriptures.)

Contrary to the common thought of our day, India is a land where education of a high degree has prevailed for many centuries. Not that highly finished thing of which we moderns boast, but a culture so extensive and so varied that it is the surprise of the modern scholar. In India there are vast treasures of literature which have survived the destructive changes wrought by successive dynasties, and notwithstanding the fact that these writings were made upon perishable strips of palm leaves bound together by strings into huge volumes. The Hindoo mind is prolific in authorship. Mang remarkable products of philosophic thought, retained only in memory to be thus transmitted to posterity, have perished in oblivion. Yet there remains a remarkable store of valued materials.

The Vethic literature is the oldest literary product of the Aryan race, if not of the world. It is also extremely voluminous. The Rig-Vetha alone contains 10,580 slokes or double verses. Adding the Yajur and Sama Vethas we find 100,000 slokes. The famous epic poem "Mahabharata" is a veritable cyclopedia of its day. Its French translator hopes to complete it in sixteen octavo volumes of 600 pages each. Its related poem, the "Ramayana," translated, fills five similar octavo volumes.

Some idea of the extent of Indian literature may be gathered from the fact that in 1878 the registered number of vernacular publications was 3,783. Of these, 709 were religious treatises, 663 on poetry and the drama, 330 were linguistic, 195 dealt with sciences, 181 were fiction, 146 treated of law and 95 of medicine.

At no period of its history has India been an altogether unenlightened country. Inscriptions on stone and copper and palm-leaf books, and the existence of paper of native manufacture, are all indications both of literary ability and of the widespread art of writing. The Brahminic literature of the Vethic period is admitted to be unrivaled in antiquity and intellectual subtlety.

In proof of the native love of literature in India Dr. G. W. Leitner tells us: As the wanderer through villages or unfrequented suburbs of towns passes unperceived along the deserted streets or lanes, after the oil lamp has been lit

'I have preferred this spelling because it more nearly represents the sound of the Tamil word "Vatha."-D.

2 Encyclopædia Britannica. Article "India."

3 Doctor of Oriental Learning of the University of the Punjab, Lahore, in his work entitled History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab. Calcutta, 1882, page 1.

in the native household, he will hear snatches of songs or fragments of poems telling of departed grandeur, of duty to the Deity, of the fear of God which overcomes the fear of man. Love, which has inspired poetry in all ages and countries, will be celebrated in chaste and tender strains. Here a minstrel will praise Ranjit Singh, or recount the glories of the "Dharm Raj," when God's law alone was king. There a boy will chant a chapter from the Koran, or a "sweet-voiced" reader recite portions of the "Ramayana." Elsewhere the sound of some saying of a Sikh sage or of the verses of a favorite Punjabi poet, unknown to print, but living in the mouths of the people, will strike the attentive ear. Indeed the taste for poetry, chiefly Punjabi, Persian, and now Urdu, is still the native resource for a prosaic life. Few are the shops, houses, or even huts in which there are not periodical gatherings to hear readings or recitations from religious books. Many there still are who have committed porticus of the "Mahabharata" to memory in polyglot versions. In the humblest household will often be heard those charmingly compiled stories of prophets and saints which have been written for the use of girls. The driest grammatical or philosophical disquisition will collect and keep an audience in the village hall or shop whose owner wishes to become a public benefactor, and even the frivolities of the Holi [festival] are sobered at numerous places by the concourse of Pandits to discuss some subtle point in the Vedanta and of "Mastersingers" in Punjabi.

Besides this, thousands of pupils thronged the Arabic and Sanscrit colleges in which oriental law, logic, philosophy, and medicine were taught in the highest standards. At Nalanda, in Behar, during the reign of the Buddhistic Emperor Siláditya, there was a vast monastery-a seat of universal learning-where 10,000 monks and novices of 18 schools of thought studied theology, philosophy, law, and medical science.

II. METHOD OF INQUIRY.

A history of indigenous education in India prior to British occupancy must be identical with a history of its literature. The development of a people's language in its primitive life is a true index of that people's mental condition. I can only hope to touch it here and there.

It would be folly for us to insist on measuring the learning of primitive India by the intellectual standards of our day. Matthew Arnold defines education to be that course of training by which we come "to know ourselves and the world." "The sciences," says Mr. Thomas, "by which we are taught to know ourselves are the sciences of culture, such as anthropology, philology, history, mental and moral philosophy, while the whole range of physical sciences serves to inculcate the immutable laws of nature.”1

Now, as a matter of fact, the Vethic Hindoo was utterly ignorant of all the sciences of Mr. Thomas's enumeration, save only that of philology. Yet it would be idle to assert that the Aryans were an ignorant race. No such comparison of standards with those of Greece and Rome at a similar period of their development can diminish the high regard which moderns cherish for the imperishable treasures of literary and philosophic art which those nations have bequeathed to posterity. We may well compare Vyasa with Cæsar, Valmiki with Virgil, and Manu with Justinian or Draco, though these Aryan prototypes anticipated the Latins by many centuries.

Neither is it possible to give a statistical report on educational matters covering the long, dim period which precedes British occupancy. Indeed no official figures are available for all India previous to this event. The Hindoo mind was not trained along statistical and precisely historic lines. Neither has there existed among them a philanthropy sufficiently broad to suggest any inquiry concerning educational matters outside their own caste or province.

My analysis of the situation suggests three important periods, each beginning with one of the three great religions which most have flourished in India, viz, the Vethic, the Buddhistic, and the Mohammedan. The real intellectual life of India has radiated from these religious forces.

'British Education in India, by F. W. Thomas, page 118.