The greater portion of the people remain sunk in the grossest ignorance--scarcely knowing (the most of them) much even of the Superstition, other than crude notions of Hell and the Devil. In this, probably, they are not much to be pitied; though in losing the precepts of Christ, and seeing around them the conduct of Christ-god worshippers, they are to be commiserated. They look with the contempt of ignorance upon foreigners, and call the people of distant seas _Heathen_, only fit for the Hell! As I have said, in another place, some attempts are being made to give this degraded populace, at least, the rudiments of learning. The task is hard, and made nearly impracticable by the stolid indifference of the Low-Castes, and their positive hostility to anything which interferes with their habits. They are very English, not different from their betters, and resent any sort of change as an interference with their individual freedom of action. To make these degraded beings _slaves_, you must not seize the individual--you must act upon them as a class--and they resent the attempt to teach them. Compulsion will be resorted to. The English Barbarians have a proverb [li-tze], "One may lead a horse to the water, but who can make him drink?" These people may be forced to the springs of learning, but who shall make them drink--unless _beer_? (This is the common drink, very muddling; used to an astonishing quantity.) The women are not admitted to the Halls of Learning, though they are to be seen everywhere. Men do not wish them to be educated in those things admired by men--it would, as they think, make brutes of them. In this they are right; yet there is no consistency of idea in the general treatment of the sex, as will easily be gathered from these _observations_. A learned woman--that is, one who has acquired the sort of education recognised by the _Literati_--is disliked by her own sex as well as by the men. The men will not marry her, unless she can buy a husband. This she may be able to do if she have money in abundance.