But a Sacred Authority has assured us that though sorrow may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning; and the experience even of a half-boarder demonstrates that a patient continuance in welldoing is not without its reward. By degrees the lot of our heroine is considerably ameliorated: the prejudice against her begins to wear away; and even the English teacher, who has held out the longest, having a character for consistency to maintain, is constrained to admit that Miss Armstrong is an estimable and well-conducted young person. Her desire to please is at length appreciated, and her poverty is even admitted to be rather her misfortune than her fault. The great girls cease to despise her—the little girls learn to love her. The higher powers readily second the exertions for self-improvement which promise to relieve them from the drudgery of initiatory instruction; and the prize held out for the successful fulfilment of her humbler duties is in process of time secured. Instruction in dancing and music commences with the second half year, and glimmerings of still greater glories are pointed out in the distance.
The governess, though an exacting, is not an unjust taskmistress. If she requires much during school-hours, she allows the unusual luxuries of fire and lights when school duty is over; and furthermore advances the interests of her pupil by a statement, under her own hand, to the benefactress of the half-boarder, that she promises to do honour to that lady's patronage no less than to her own establishment.
Her successful progress in the road to learning, and in the good graces of those around her, coupled with the encouragement afforded by a kind word, and now and then a small present bestowed on her by the grateful mamma of some infant prodigy, all combine to quicken her steps in the race towards the grand object of her ambition—the qualifying herself for the situation of a nursery governess. In the meantime, in the words of Crabbe, her duty is—
——'to feel
Dependent helper always at the wheel;
Her power minute, her compensation small,
Her labours great, her life laborious all;
Set after set the lower tribe to make
Fit for the class which her superiors take.
The road of learning for a time to track
In roughest state, and then again go back,
Just the same way on other troops to wait—
Doorkeeper she at Learning's lower gate.'
This is her lot for some two years; but she has the encouragement of knowing that her apprenticeship, though a hard one, is gradually fitting her for the object of her ambition; while, as she advances in her career, the experience of the past inspires her with confidence for the future, since it proves to her that right principle and steady perseverance are invincible, or they could never have enabled her to overcome the trials and difficulties which beset the path of a Half-Boarder.
[INDIAN POLICE REVELATIONS.]
We have frequently had occasion to observe that travellers differ widely from each other, even as to such matters of fact as must have come under the cognisance of their senses. The late Mr Rae Wilson, for instance, who observed personally the falls of the Narova, gives the measurement of the descent of water at something so comparatively enormous, as to prove that he had unconsciously blended in his imagination the whole of the rapids into one cataract; and we ourselves, when gazing upon those troubled waters from the wooden bridge that spans them, looked with such surprise upon the 'Yarrow Visited,' as must, we fear, have coloured, in an opposite way from Mr Wilson's, our impressions, and consequently our report. If travellers who desire, both from interest and inclination, to be impartial differ so widely in matters of fact, what shall be said of matters of opinion? A compiler is frequently taunted with presuming to write critically of countries he has never visited in person; but if he will only take the pains to collect, and sift, and compare the jarring and often opposite accounts of residents and travellers, we have a strong suspicion that he will be found better qualified for his business than any of them!
India has always been the Debateable Land of authors, both as to fact and opinion. The books published upon that country contain the most outrageous mass of contradictions extant; and each successive writer gives the lie, without the smallest ceremony, to those who preceded him. This cannot be wholly owing to our ignorance of the country and the people. The Hon. Robert Lindsay was shut up with the natives almost exclusively for twelve years; and he represents them as being so honest, that he could intrust three or four thousand pounds' worth of his property to a menial servant, wandering to the farthest extremity of the country, and absent for twelve months at a time. Colonel Davidson resided for many years, and travelled much in India; and he turns the reverse of the medal, representing the native inhabitants as thieves and vagabonds to a man. We must go further, therefore, than the mere question of knowledge; for these two witnesses (whom we take as the types of two numerous classes) are men of both knowledge and honour. We must seek for an explanation of the mystery in the depths of the human character.
The colour of an object, although really one of its inherent properties, is always modified by the medium through which it is seen; and nothing but care and reflection, or at least lengthened experience, will enable us to correct the error, and trace the actual through the apparent hue. In the same way, the qualities of a people in one stage of civilisation cannot be judged of intuitively by a people in another stage, because they are viewed through an uncongenial medium. The Indians can no more be comprehended at once by Europeans, than Europeans can be comprehended at once by the Indians. Much care will be required to enable the two to arrive even at an approximation to a true understanding of each other. Virtue and vice are not the substantive and unbending terms we commonly imagine them to be. They receive a new meaning, or a new force, in every new form of civilisation; the lex talionis of the ancient Jews, for instance, was abrogated by the more advanced law of Christianity; and we meet with a hundred things in history—