Calicut jail, forty-eight perished of cholera during one month. The Punjaub Reformatory, when visited by Government, was found to contain some twenty boys guilty of offences as serious as murder, but without work and without instruction; forming, in fact, a hotbed of crime. The "David-Sasson Reformatory," at Bombay, seems to be the only exception to this sickening detail of perverted discipline and neglected duty; and that was for several years unsupported by the Government. The excuse is, that the few English residents are overburdened with work, that an immense space separates one part of India from the other, that there is great difficulty of communication between the principal centres of civilization, and that a severe expense would be encountered even in providing solitary cells at night for so many thousands. But the subject is now engaging the attention of the Government; and Miss Carpenter has laid before the proper officials those steps of reform which the experience of her life amply justifies: 1st, that female prisoners must not be governed by male wardens, and should receive the visits of intelligent ladies; 2d, that there should be schoolmasters on every prison-staff; 3d, that employment must be constant; and, last, that the mingling together at night, which has caused so much sickness, and is perpetuating every moral disease, must be reformed entirely.

But her main work was with her own sex; and in this respect she is the harbinger of a new era. The zenanas, the harems of India, are now thrown open to visits of European ladies; and a hundred and fifty in Lower Bengal receive regular instruction by these female volunteers. Schools are opening for girls, as well as boys, in every village, and in connection with every mission. Educated native gentlemen are painfully alive to the condition of their wives, sisters, and daughters; and steps are taking to relieve widows, and those who have been espoused to deceased persons, from the degradation and privation visited upon Indian widowhood. Polygamy is certainly dying out: only a few persons of the lowest class marry a multitude of wives in order to obtain cheap labor, and public sentiment decidedly condemns the nearly obsolete custom. One of the prominent miseries of female life in India is, that

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the native women are shut out from such occupations as washing and needlework, belonging peculiarly to their sex; while boys are taught embroidery, dressmaking, and knitting. Another serious drawback is the early age at which wives are summoned by their youthful husbands to domestic duties, frequently before twelve, and just as a desire for useful knowledge is awakening in their minds, and a capacity of making progress manifesting itself. Then, again, at present the country cannot supply female educators; and English women will have to be looked to for help, that their oppressed sisters may break the chain which has rusted into the flesh. The purpose of Miss Carpenter's second voyage this autumn is to introduce into India some of her own sex, who can enter a female training-school as pupils, and at the same time conduct some model schools in the neighborhood.

Our imaginations may exaggerate the destitution far beyond its extent. Miss Carpenter speaks highly of the female schools connected with the missions, and might well have particularized the excellent instruction given by that zealous and untiring missionary, our friend Dall, assisted by two English ladies. Besides the one hundred and fifty private houses visited by regular female teachers in Lower Bengal, Ahmedabad has had the advantage of female schools for fifteen years; about two hundred girls' schools are aided in Bengal, but Inspector Martin says they only average nineteen pupils. A few normal schools have already made a beginning, one of them containing twenty-five pupils, and one enjoying somewhat the princely munificence of that famous disciple of Zoroaster, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. Twenty-three hundred girls were under instruction in the Bombay Presidency last year; and at a meeting held in London, Aug. 23, 1867, a number of Hindoo and Parsee gentlemen declared, that the prejudice against female education in Bombay was fast yielding to the conviction that the time had now come for decided government action; that there had been a vast increase of female pupils at the Parsee schools; and that the daughters of natives, who a little while ago bitterly opposed this whole movement, now regularly received instruction.

As might have been supposed, the stronghold of idolatry is in the ignorance of the women, their credulity, and adherence to the past. Enlightened men often conform to customs they despise, from regard to the entreaties of a mother or wife; while the very weakness of the uncultivated mind makes it more tenacious of those appendages of religion which it has not detected to be only the outer garment, and not the life of the soul. Working in correspondence with Indian views, carefully abstaining from every thing like proselytism, backed by the irresistible influence of the British Government, who can doubt that these efforts will nurture, at length, a true Christian womanhood in India; that girls will be felt to be quite as capable of education as boys; that, instead of being hung with jewels on their ankles and ears until they can hardly move, their adorning will be the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit; and that the gracious welcome given by a married Hindoo lady at Surat may be extended to all laborers for female education throughout not India alone, but all Asia?

To the very benevolent and virtuous woman, Mary Carpenter.

DEAR MOTHER, A few days ago I learnt from my husband your name and your object in coming here, at such a great distance from your country. I was very anxious to see you. Now that you come here, and take so much pains to better our condition, I, in behalf of these sisters here present, feel very grateful to you. May God grant you long life, and may you continue to exert yourself in this laudable work. (Signed)

SURAT, Oct. 16, 1866.

Miss Carpenter's statements regarding the Christianization of India need to be weighed: they are wholly incidental. She evidently thinks more of her work, than of the distinct preaching of the gospel. In every other country there is considerable unity of spirit produced by common ideas of civilization, and by unlimited social intercourse; and in Europe people travel from nation to nation, without shocking rudely their peculiar notions. But in India the different religions are actually hostile; and that hostility reaches down to daily intercourse, surrounding every sect with a barrier of sanctity, which the Government has to respect, and which nothing but such

influences as the introduction of travelling by railroad is doing much to surmount. The different castes are necessarily brought together by this immense revolution in Indian locomotion: they involuntarily associate as equals, and are accustomed to see the partition walls broken down, which for ages have stood as high as heaven. So that (as Buckle would say) the great Indian missionary is the locomotive, which deserves the offerings of cocoa-nuts, &c., from the wondering natives, because it is effectually emancipating them from the past, opening before them a future of which they had not dreamed, and summoning India to the highest seat in the Asiatic court of kings.

Paying her tribute of respect to the great reformer of India, to whose memory her book is dedicated, Miss Carpenter laments that, though his personal influence had drawn many intelligent Hindoos around him, he did not succeed in inspiring others with his own elevated views, nor in inducing them to make sacrifices for their promulgation. He had exposed many a national vice, had denounced caste as the root of innumerable evils, had offered his brethren no higher authority than their own sacred books for the abolition of cruel customs, and had proved himself altogether in advance of his country and his times.

A very small number of converts were made. His efforts were not seconded by Christians at home or abroad, as they would be to-day; nor were his " Precepts of Jesus" translated into any Indian tongue except his native Bengali; and his early death in England almost drew down again the dark cloud he seemed born to disperse. Yet Miss Carpenter discovered that he had not lived in vain; that a deep impression had been made on many hearts, and the way prepared for spiritual progress in the future. Only one Hindoo gentleman did she meet who knew the rajah personally; and his father well-nigh suffered excommunication because of his friendship for one who was detested as the abolisher of the infamous suttee. This gentleman, W. H. Chatterjee, is the only survivor of the five boys who composed the first school, gathered by the rajah and Rev. Dr. Duff, for the English education of native youths. Under this influence, too, a scheme was formed for female education in respectable Hindoo families, with the supervision of Dr.

1868.] Civilization and Barbarism in South America. 185

Duff and the personal direction of a Scottish clergyman's wife; but professional engagements called Mr. Chatterjee away, and in his absence his coadjutor was removed by death. The new religious movement of Keshub Chunder Sen, which promises so much, is in this direction; has its missionaries; assembles the native women in prayer-meetings of their own; and is devotedly endeavoring to arouse the spiritual nature of all intelligent Hindoos. Still, though the fact came to her knowledge. repeatedly, of many natives rejecting heathenism who have not courage to assume the Christian name, Miss Carpenter looks with most confidence to such mission schools as Mr. Dall has conducted with eminent success for several years, where the foundations of a purer faith are laid in childhood, where Christian virtues are ingrafted and Christian principles established; and where the only certain method is adopted, of preparing for the admission of practical Christianity as the future faith of this great and prosperous empire in years to come.

ART. VI. — CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM IN, SOUTH AMERICA.

Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism. From the Spanish of Domingo F. Sarmiento, LL.D., Minister Plenipotentiary from the Argentine Republic to the United States. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author, by Mrs. HORACE MANN. First American, from the third Spanish, edition. New York: Hurd & Houghton. pp. 400.

MRS. MANN has rendered a valuable service by the skill, fidelity, and patient zeal with which she has brought before the public this very interesting picture of a life so foreign and strange to us, and this record of the heroic labors which have made Colonel Sarmiento, now President elect of the Argentine Republic, the one man worthy and able to guide the destinies of a country whose grandeur of proportion and wealth of natural resources offer to it the noblest possibilities of the future. The Argentine Republic is that vast, rude quadrangle which