rise of the spirit of nationality is now claiming all these energies for a single united purpose. Every department of life and thought is stirring to fresh activity; and the vitality of its promise is most surely proved by the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice which the new creed everywhere arouses. The movement is alive, beyond all question; among its leaders and supporters are men of the widest range of thought and study, advanced thinkers mentally at grips with problems and difficulties by which we of the West are never faced-men who take a passionate pride in their country and the great heritage of its past, who yet realise the obstacles it must surmount before it can become emancipated and play its part in active modern life.

Above all, it is necessary to secure that continuity between past and future without which no effort can boast a stable foundation. The necessity for continuous growth and evolution has not always been recognised in Europe, but it has never been defied with impunity. In India the principle of growth from within is even more fundamentally important, by reason of her long antecedent civilisation and the strong instinct of conservatism in the life of every class. The New Renaissance of the East is a movement of the widest possible scope. Elements of the successive waves which came to Europe in the advent of the New Learning, the Reformation of the 16th century, and the national revival of the 19th, are all present in the quickening of Young India of to-day. The course which this movement will take is as yet undetermined; we only know that everything which India's past civilisation has accumulated of literature, art, music, and spiritual culture, has felt the stimulus of new life, and will play its part in the moulding of New India out of the present turmoil.

The practical results of the modern Nationalist revival in Europe are now incarnated in the education of the child of this generation; and the lessons of national growth and evolution are thus secured to future generations by being implanted upon the child imagination during its most impressionable years. The influences of childhood are, without doubt, the most permanent and indelible. Even accidental impressions received at this period have a tendency to dominate subconscious thought

and so to determine action, as modern psychology, confirming the old Jesuit adage, has recognised. The need, therefore, of a childhood training which shall embody the nation's ideals is clearly of the first necessity for India's future progress. This nurture and training of the child is normally the province of the home and properly the work of women. But, until the home is prepared to perform its part, devoted reformers can do much to enable modern educational science to utilise the resources of India's national heritage for the mental and physical culture of young children. There are signs that such a change is already coming.

In recent years, and for the first time, a children's literature is slowly growing up in Bengal-a literature of Indian tales and legends illustrated with Indian pictures. But the beginnings are still small and local, and the need is national. This task must not be postponed to some more convenient season or relegated to the leisure moments of busy men, to be dealt with when the claims of public office and of affairs have been satisfied. The mind of the child is unceasingly active and receptive; his hunger for knowledge about the world he lives in is constant, and should be wisely fed. The world of history, literature and legend is full of incident and movement, adventure and romance. The stories they yield must be told with skill and sympathy, simply and with sincerity. The wonders of nature, the life of forest, plain and river, of bird and beast, of tree and flower, are the intimate comrades of childhood. Vision and understanding are needed to interpret even the outer meaning of these, to explain their forms and phases, their purpose and development, and their relation to human life. Colour and song-innate expressions of Indian æsthetic genius-and the rhythm of ordered movement as well as of sound, have been too long banished from so-called practical life. These must become considered agents in awakening and training the perceptions and faculties of childhood. All the elements, in short, which will take their share in the social reconstruction of the future, must be brought together in harmonious combination to form the environment of the child of to-day.

The narrow pedantry of the 19th century, which

taught by rule and rote, by weary memorising of dead formulæ, together with the Spencerian doctrines and materialistic codes of the period, have ceased to be a danger to us in the West. A wave of Hellenism, which always brings with it a return to nature and new life, has delivered us from that particular bondage. But a late outcrop, transplanted by Macaulay and his early Victorian associates, still flourishes in India, in school and college, in the thought and conversation of the 'literate' classes. Deliverance must come to India through her own effort, by an ardent cultivation of the ancient arts, the ancient learning and wisdom, along the lines which modern educational and psychological science has discovered for our use, in such a way as to sow the seeds of a sturdy and self-reliant national growth in the fertile soil of childhood's training-ground.

By such means is it possible to awaken living interests, to appeal to inborn instincts and inherited associations, and thereby to train a character which shall discover both purpose and inspiration in the land of its birth. For each nation must inevitably find growth, direction and energy from within, before it can realise its true destiny, and bring to the common treasure-house of the world's civilisations the gift of its own particular and distinctive genius. For three generations, or more, under the security of the 'Pax Britannica,' the national art of India has declined, education has been perverted, activity deflected from its normal course; thought has become atrophied, culture is suspended. The chastisement of our peace is upon them.

The civilisation of India has dwindled, during this period, to a memory, its cults and ceremonies to a lifeless observance; the motives and practice of daily life are sought from without. But for the jealous custody of their heritage by the women-at all times and in all countries the natural guardians of national culture-even the memory might have taken its place with the history of the past, and the links of the chain have been severed beyond all possibility of reunion. For the effort to revive a disused speech or an obsolete custom has never yet produced a national result; its utmost achievement is to stimulate interest and research among the learned, and to provide material for antiquarian discussion.

India's civilisation, however, is not dead but dormant ; and the spell of its long sleep is at last being broken. The renaissance of the present day seeks inspiration and guidance at its source. But with the reaction against the passive inertia of generations comes a certain danger from emotionalism-the mesmerism of bygone glories and the tendency to perpetuate past failings and ignorance because they form a part of sacred tradition. As it is the province of woman to guard and to preserve, so it must be the task of enlightened women to select that which is worthy of preservation and reject all that is no longer relevant. It is theirs to save and defend the vital element in tradition, the living heritage of faith and understanding, the special aspect of truth and beauty which finds separate embodiment in every people, grows with their growth and progresses with their progress.

With the awakening of a national consciousness, the motives for national reform have now become insistent. The outward expression of these motives-a symptom of all pioneer work-remains hitherto isolated and spasmodic. The tendency to theorise and debate, to discuss political actions and reactions, to deal with symptoms and externals, is still somewhat exaggerated. It is in the nurseries of to-day that the forces must be fostered and organised which will hereafter work out the regeneration of India in harmony and cooperation; and this child-nurture should be made the first and permanent charge upon the time, energy, and expenditure of all the reforming zeal which now seeks an outlet.

Finally, we must remember that, though the building up of India's future in the light of the present national revival must incontestably be planned and carried out by Indians and for Indians, the experience touches not India alone but all mankind. The world at large will be not only spectator but partaker of its results. When the light of Classic thought and Classic culture-the rediscovered treasures of Hellenic genius-dawned upon the darkened understanding of medieval Europe, the day of a new era was born, and modern civilisation came into being. So, to complete the cycle, the impulse of modern thought and modern progress was carried in the last century to the Classic East. The normal effects of such a contact were, for the time being, delayed through

artifice and experiment on the part of Anglo-Indian opinion. The Orientalists' would hear of no contamination of the new-found treasures of Eastern learning; the 'Anglicists' had no thought but to clean the slate and inscribe upon it the writing of the West. In the event, India has, to the outward eye, lain dormant under the imposition of an alien culture, substituted for her own, but never adapted to her needs. Yet the fruit of an unwilling union was maturing, in spite of conflict and reluctance; and the rebirth of to-day, however ardently national in form, owes its incentive to the direct influence of the West upon the East.

Throughout all recorded history the great civilisations of East and West have held singularly aloof from one another in all their inmost experiences. Conquest, invasion, and trade have effected an intercourse between the two in external dealings which has but deepened the instincts of mutual reserve. To-day we must learn a new lesson-that a freer interchange of thought and ideas between different peoples endangers nothing of permanent value, and obliterates only those characteristics which accident has fostered, while enriching the elements of their several strength. In its response to the stimulus of an outside influence, the culture of a people, no less than the character of an individual, can best realise its own purposes and powers, and achieve its highest self-development. Therefore, if the destinies of East and West are knit together at the present day, and for so long as the partnership may continue, let each see to it that the union may be productive of the best results, without compromise of sentiment or of conviction on either side, and lay the foundations of a larger development and a wider achievement than the world has yet witnessed.

E. AGNES R. HAIGH.