Education INTELLECTUAL WE NOW come to the intellectual part of education, which is certainly a larger and more difficult, although not more important than physical training and edification of character. The Indian University system has confined itself entirely to this branch and it might have been thought that this limitation and concentration of energy ought to have been attended by special efficiency and thoroughness in the single branch it had chosen. But unfortunately this is not the case. If the physical training it provides is contemptible and the moral training nil, the mental training is also meagre in quantity and worthless in quality. People commonly say that it is

Vikram and the Nymph "VIKRAM and the Nymph" is the second, in order of time, of Kalidasa's three extant dramas. The steady development of the poet's genius is easy to read even for a superficial observer. The Malavica and the King is a gracious and delicate trifle, full of the sweet and dainty characterisation which Kalidasa loves, almost too curiously admirable in the perfection of its structure and dramatic art but with only a few touches of that nobility of manner which raises his tender and sensuous poetry and makes it divine. In the Urvasie he is preening his wings for a mightier flight; the dramatic art is not so flawless, but the characters

-66_In the Society's Chambers.htm In the Society's Chambers Professor : Let me assure you, my friends, that the method of enquiry is alone responsible for all the error in the world. Mankind is in a hurry to know and prefers to catch at half-truths rather than wait for the full truth to dawn on him. Now a half-truth is a few degrees more mischievous than absolute error. It is the devil himself in the disguise of an angel. The Practical Man : But surely, Professor, half-truths are the preparation for whole truths. And mankind must have something to go by. We are not all College Professors who can wait comfortably in our studies for Truth to call on us at her leisure. I have got to get to my pla

FIVE His Literary History BANKIM'S literary activity began for any serious purpose at Khulna, but he had already trifled with poetry in his student days. At that time the poet Iswara Chandra Gupta was publishing two papers, the Sangbad Prabhakar and the Sudhiranjan, which Dwarakanath Mitra and Dinabandhu Mitra were helping with clever schoolboy imitation of Iswara Chandra's style. Bankim also entered these fields, but his striking originality at once distinguished him from the mere cleverness of his competitors, and the fine critical taste of Iswara Chandra easily discovered in this obscure student a great and splendid genius. Like Madhusudan Dutt Bankim began by

Two Pictures THE Modern Review and Prabasi are doing monthly a service to the country the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The former review is at present the best conducted and the most full of valuable matter of any in India. But good as are the articles which fill the magazine from month to month, the whole sum of them is outweighed in value by the single page which gives us the reproduction of some work of art by a contemporary Indian painter. To the lover of beauty and the lover of his country every one of these delicately executed blocks is an event of importance in his life within. The Reviews by bringing these masterpieces to the thousands who have no oppor

III. MINOR CHARACTERS Nothing more certainly distinguishes the dramatic artist from the poet who has trespassed into drama than the careful pains he devotes to his minor characters. To the artist nothing is small; he bestows as much of his art within the narrow limit of his small characters as within the wide compass of his greatest. Shakespeare lavishes life upon his minor characters; but in Shakespeare it is the result of an abounding creative energy; he makes living men as God made the world, because he could not help it, because it was in his nature and must out. But Kalidasa's dramatic gift, always suave and keen, had not this godlike abundance; it is therefore well

Fate and Free-Will A QUESTION which has hitherto divided human thought and received no final solution, is the freedom of the human being in his relation to the Power intelligent or unintelligent that rules the world. We strive for freedom in our human relations, to freedom we move as our goal, and every fresh step in our human progress is a further approximation to our ideal. But are we free in ourselves? We seem to be free, to do that which we choose and not that which is chosen for us; but it is possible that the freedom may be illusory and our apparent freedom may be a real and iron bondage. We may be bound by predestination, the will of a Supreme Intelligent Power

Indian Art and an Old Classic WE HAVE before us a new edition of Krittibas' Ramayana, edited and published by that indefatigable literary and patriotic worker, Sj. Ramananda Chatterji. Ramananda Babu is well known to the Bengali public as a clear minded, sober and fearless political speaker and writer; as editor of the Modern Review and the Prabasi he has raised the status and quality of Indian periodical literature to an extraordinary extent, and has recently been doing a yet more valuable and lasting service to his country by introducing the masterpieces of the new school of Art to his readers. His present venture is not in itself an ambitious one, as it p