H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO
Ali Baba avowedly treats the Bengali Baboo merely as a being "full of inappropriate words and phrases … and the loose shadows of English thought." Such being the case, it must never be forgotten that he is the product, in every sense of the word, of British modes of purely secular education. Modes which, eminently at the present time, are being gravely called in question.
All of which has been more lately elaborated by "F. Anstey," i.e. Mr. Thomas Anstey Guthrie, in the persons of "Baboo Jabberjee, B.A." and "A Bayard from Bengal."
The broad results of purely secular and mainly literary education might in fact be quite fairly summed up in the reproachful words of Caliban—
"You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse."
Aberigh-Mackay devoted his life in India to counteract the effects of purely literary instruction, which he persistently deprecated; and the last thirty years have undoubtedly witnessed many advances in the same direction, tending to the material progress of India.
Ali Baba trembled for the future of Baboodom, that its tendencies as he depicted them might infect others who might pass, through various stages, into "trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection."
No. 7