§1. The sepoy mutinies awakened the British nation from the lethargy of forty years. At one time it was aroused by the discovery that the East India Company had acquired an empire larger than that of Napoleon; but was soon immersed once more in its own insular concerns. The sepoy revolt of 1857 stirred it up to its innermost depths. The alarms swelled to a panic. Exeter Hall clamoured for the conversion of Hindus and Mohammedans to Christianity. Some called aloud for vengeance on Delhi. The inhabitants were to be slaughtered as David slaughtered the Ammonites; the city was to be razed to the ground and its site sown with salt. Others, more ignorant than either, denounced the East India Company and Lord Dalhousie; demanded the restoration of British territory to Asiatic rulers, and the abandonment of India to its ancient superstition and stagnation. [Sidenote: British ignorance.] In the olden time India was only known to the bulk of the British nation as a land of idol-worshippers, who burnt living widows with their dead husbands, tortured themselves by swinging on hooks, thrust javelins through their tongues, prostrated themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernauth's car, and threw their dying and dead into the holy Ganges, under a child-like faith that the safest way of going to heaven was by water. Educated men knew that the greater part of India had been previously conquered by Mohammedans, just as Syria and Persia were conquered by Arabs and Turks. It was also known that Mohammedans hated idolatry, broke down idols and pagodas, built mosques in their room, and forced many Hindus to accept Islam. But few, excepting those who had lived in India, knew anything of its affairs, or cared to know anything about them, except when war was declared against Afghans, Sikhs, or Burmese, or when Parliament was about to renew the charter of the late East India Company. [Sidenote: Missionary and educational movements.]