The Gulf of Spezia and the Peasantry of Italy [pp. 346-351]

TEE LADIES' REPOSITORY.
assumne such a condition for self-righteous and
self-glorifying reasons. Such men can and will
do for such reasons what men have not nerve
enough to adventure merely in obedience to the
theoretic rules of their order.
The Brahmans would fain be regarded as the
learned class of India. Of course there was a
time when in the earlier ages of the world they
were so, as compared to other men in other
nations. No scholar can doubt this for a
moment. But the world and education are no
lotnger what they once were; both have ad vanced amazingly, while the Brahlman has not
only stood still, but he has retrograded. The
ruins of India's colleges, observatories, and sci entific instruments, especially in Benares-once
"the eye of Hindostan" -convinces the trav eler too painfully of this fact. Even there, in
that renowned city, there is not a single public
building devoted to, or containing, the treasures
of India's arts, sciences, or literature; no paint ings, sculptures, or libraries; no colleges of
learning; no museums of her curiosities; no
monuments of her great men; only beastly
idolatry, filthy Fakirs, shrines of vileness with out number, and festivals of Saturnalian license,
all sustained and illustrated by a selfish and ig norant Brahmanhood.
Their learning is in the past, and little re mains of it now, save their great epics and the
imagnificent dead language in which they were
written. Their chronology is a wild exaggerated
falsehood; their geography and astronomy are
subjects of ridicule to every school-boy; their
astrolo,gy-to which they are especially de voted-a hlumbug for deluding their country men. They had no true history till foreigners
wrote it for them, and could not even read the
Palim on their own public monuments, till such
Englishmen as Princeps and Tytlers deci phered it for them. Native education to-day
owes more to Macaulay, Dr. Duff, and Trevel yan, than to all the Brahmans of India for the
past five hundred years. Every improvement
introduced, and every mitigation of the miser ies in the lot of woman, and the lower, and the
suffering classes, has been introduced against
their will and without their aid, as a class.
They feel, they know, that their system is more
or less effete-that they are being left behind
in the march of improvement, in which their
country has entered. But there they stand,
scowling and twirling their Brahmanical string,
while the Sudras, and the very " Chandalas,"
iwhom they tried so hard to doom to eternal
degradation, are obtaining in government and
missionary schools a sanctified scholarship
which is soon to consign the claims and preten
sions of this venerable, haughlty, and heartless
aristocracy to the everlasting contempt which
they deserve! One by one, they behold, in
their ridiculous helplessness, their strong plans
taken and wrested from their grasp. The very
Veda in which they gloried, and behind which
they falsely defended the vileness and cruelty
of their system, has been magnificently collated, and published in eight volumes, by the
scholarship of Max Miiller, and these rendered
with equal ability-the last volume having been
published within the last three years-into
English by Wilson and Cowell. So that, all
the world may now know what the Veda is,
and what it teachles, and thus hold these unworthy guardians of it to the fearful responsibility which they have incurred in pretending
to quote its authority for the abominations
which characterize their modern Hindooism,
with all its grievous wrongs against woman, in
particular, and against the interests of their
own nation, both moral and economical, as well
as its violation of the common sense and judgment of mankind, for whose opinions, however,
the Brahmans of India never showed the least
respect.
THE GULF OF SPEZIA AND THE
PEASANTRY OF ITALY.
C T the commencement of this century, a
' journey to La Spezia offered very few in ducements to those who dreaded seasickness. It was well known, ever since Byron had
celebrated in immortal song that marvelous
gulf on which the old Ligurian city is built, that
the slopes of the Apennines facing toward it
were rich in charming scenery. But the slow
pace at which the vetttrizzi traveled, and the
exorbitant demands of the facc/izizi, alarmed
many; while rumors of primitive cookery in
this mountainous country caused to others
much vague anxiety. Those who spent money
freely were exposed to every sort of vexation.
Those who saw the unfavorable side of things
were forever haranguing on the ferocious intolerance of the inhabitants of these districts,
who, according to their view, were totally unworthy of better government than the grinding
tyranny they suffered under.
As in the East, so it is in Italy. Indolent
natures, unwilling to change their intellectual
habits, and arguing that nations are unimprovable, end by believing that their present condition corresponds with what they themselves
were in former times. If, however, Byron
could rise from his tomb, he would no more
1I
i
I
346