MKMOKY IN EDUCATION. H5

:are full of compliment. And there is no difference bet-
ween the ability and speech of a Country man and a
'Courtier." The Sinhalese proverb, " Take a ploughman
from the plough and wash off his dirt and he is fit to rule
.-a kingdom," was spoken, he says, " of the people
-of Cande Ucla .. because of the civility, under-
standing and gravity of the poorest among them." *

How could this have been ? It is explained by the
'existence of a national culture, not dependent altogether oil
;a knowledge of reading and writing. I still take Ceylon
.-as the special case. Think of a party of women spinning
in a Sinhalese village, ten or twenty illiterate and super-
.stitious country women working at a common daily task ;
but they sang meanwhile, principally Vessantara and

* So too with the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders of Scotland.
•" All were as courteous as the courtier," says Alexander Carmi-
•chael, almost in Knox's own words. One Hector Macisaae knew
-stories and poems that would have filled several volumes; he
could not write, or speak any 1 inguage but Gaelic, and had never
been out of Uist; yet he "was as polite and well-mannered and
courteous as Ian Campbell, the learned barrister, the world-wide
•traveller, and the honoured guest of every court in Europe. Both
•were at ease and at home with one another, there being neither
servility on the one side nor condescension on the other ...... The

people of the outer Csles, like the people of the Highlands and
Islands generally, are simple and law-abiding, common crime being
Tare and serious crime unknown among them ......... During all

-the years that I lived and travelled among them, night and day, I
never met with incivility, never with rudeness, never with vulgari-
ty, never with aught but courtesy." How like Knor's description
-of Katidyan Sinhalese! But observe, "Gaelic oral literature
•was widely diffused, greatly abundant, and excellent in quality,"
.And now courtesy-and culture together are being civilised away.
"Ignorant school teaching and clerical narrowness have been
•painfully detrimental to the expressive language, wholesome
'literature, manly sports and interesting amusements of the people'
(in the Highlands of Scotland). Is not the same thing happening
in India ? And is the new education going to be any compensation
for tkie old culture ? Certainly few signs of such a thing have
ye| appeared. Were it not for the hope of * change beyond.
change ' we should be hopeless indeed.