the meaning of which, he knows no more than the parrot that
has been taught to utter certain words. Accordingly, from
studies, in which he has spent many a day of laborious, but
fruitless toil, the native scholar gains no improvement, except
the exercise of memory and the power to read and write on the
common business of life; he makes no addition to his stock of
useful knowledge, and acquires no moral impressions. He has
spent his youth in reading syllables, not words, and, on entering
into life, he meets with hundreds and thousands of books of the
meaning of which he can form not even the most distant
conjecture, and as to the declension of a noun, or the
conjugation of a verb, he knows no more than of the most
abstruse problem in Euclid. It is not to be wondered at, with
such an imperfect education, that, in writing a common letter to
their friends, orthographical errors and other violations of
grammar, may be met with in almost every line written by a
native.
- The government could not promote the improved
education of their native subjects in these districts more, than
by patronizing versions, in the common prose and spoken
dialect, of the most moral parts of their popular poets and
elementary works, now committed to memory in unintelligible
verse. He who could read would then understand what he reads,
which is far from the case at present. I am acquainted with
many persons very capable of executing such a task; and, in the
Teloogoo language, would gladly superintend it, as far as is in
my power, at this distance from the Presidency. - The economy with which children are taught to write in
the native schools, and the system by which the more advanced
scholars are caused to teach the less advanced and at the same
time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable, and
well deserved the imitation it has received in England. The chief
defects in the native schools are the nature of the books and
learning taught and the want of competent masters. - Imperfect, however, as the present education of the
natives is, there are a few who possess the means to command it
for their children even were books of a proper kind plentiful and
the master every way adequate to the task imposed upon him,
he would make no advance from one class to another, except as
he might be paid for his labour. While learning the first
rudiments, it is common for the scholar to pay to the teacher a
quarter