they could understand me quite well if I could find words for my ideas; but these I cannot find, though their languages abound in them, nor have I ever met the European gentleman who could.  East Indians can;[6] but they commonly want the ideas as much as we want the language.  The chief cause of this deficiency is the want of sufficient intercourse with men in whose presence we should be ashamed to appear ignorant—­this is the great secret, and all should know and acknowledge it.

We are not ashamed to convey our orders to our native servants in a barbarous language.  Military officers seldom speak to their ‘sipahis’ (sepoys) and native officers, about anything but arms, accoutrements, and drill; or to other natives about anything but the sports of the field; and, as long as they are understood, they care not one straw in what language they express themselves.  The conversation of the civil servants with their native officers takes sometimes a wider range; but they have the same philosophical indifference as to the language in which they attempt to convey their ideas; and I have heard some of our highest diplomatic characters talking,[7] without the slightest feeling of shame or embarrassment, to native princes on the most ordinary subjects of everyday interest in a language which no human being but themselves could understand.  We shall remain the same till some change of system inspire us with stronger motives to please and conciliate the educated classes of the native community.  They may be reconciled, but they can never be charmed out of their prejudices or the errors of their preconceived opinions by such language as the European gentlemen are now in the habit of speaking to them.[8] We must learn their language better, or we must teach them our own, before we can venture to introduce among them those free institutions which would oblige us to meet them on equal terms at the bar, on the bench, and in the senate.[9] Perhaps two of the best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their relations with each other, are those of Imam-ud-din Ghazzali, and Nasir-ud-din of Tus.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of a more practical character than his, and less dry than those of Aristotle.

I may here mention the following, among many instances that occur to me, of the amusing mistakes into which Europeans are liable to fall in their conversation with natives.

Mr. J. W------n, of the Bengal Civil Service, commonly known by the
name of Beau W------n,[11] was the Honourable Company’s opium agent
at Patna, when I arrived at Dinapore to join my regiment in 1810.[12]
He had a splendid house, and lived in excellent style; and was never
so happy as when he had a dozen young men from the Dinapore
cantonments living with him.  He complained that year, as I was told,
that he had not been able to save more than one hundred thousand
rupees that season out of his salary and commission upon the opium,