works. Sir William Jones, Colebrooke and Wilson prosecuted researches into the untrodden field of Sanscrit learning and Indian antiquities; they received the help of Hindu Pandits; and they excited in the people of India an interest in their past literature and history. David Hare, a watchmaker in Calcutta, but a man of strong common sense and philanthropy, initiated English education in Bengal, and eventually helped in the establishment of the Hindu College in 1817. Richardson and Derozio were sympathetic teachers, and inspired in the young students of the Hindu College a passionate admiration for English literature and English institutions. And lastly, the great Macaulay advocated in his historic minute that higher education should be imparted to the people of India through the English language, and Lord William Bentinck closed his beneficent administration in 1835 by ratifying this minute, and placing English education in India on a solid foundation. These are, briefly, some of the steps by which English education and European influence have spread in Bengal in the present century.
Ram Mohan Rai was the first brilliant product of European influence in India. He was born at Radhanagar in the District of Hugli in 1774, the year in which Warren Hastings became the first Governor General of India, and the Supreme Court was established. The story of the life and work of the great reformer would fill a volume; it is the story of the social, moral and intellectual progress of the Hindus during the first thirty years of this century. The great controversies in
