VI_. II.

Sailing, say to India, from Britain down through the Atlantic, close by
the coast of Portugal and Spain, and then, within the Mediterranean,
skirting the coast of Algeria, and so on, one is often oppressed with a
sense of his isolation. We can see that the land we are passing is
inhabited by human beings like ourselves; and those houses visible are
homes; and signs of life we can see even from our passing vessel. What
of all the tragedies and comedies that are daily being enacted in these
houses--the exits and the entrances, the friendships and the feuds, the
selfishnesses and self-sacrifices, the commonplace toil, the children's
play, that are going on the very moment we are looking? We are out of
it, and our affections refuse to be wholly alienated from these
fellow-beings, although the ship of which we form a part must pursue her
own aim, and hurries along.

The Briton's tie to India and Indians is of no passing accidental
character. Our life-histories are not merely running parallel; our
destinies are linked together. Christian feeling, duty, self-interest,
and the interest of a linked destiny all call upon us to know each other
and cherish mutual sympathy. Not that the West has ever been without an
interest in India, as far back as we have Indian history, in the Greek
accounts of the invasion of India by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C.
Writing in the first century B.C. and rehearsing what the earlier Greek
writers had said about India, Strabo, the Greek geographer, testifies to
the prevailing interest in India, and even sets forth the difficulty of
knowing India, exactly as a modern student of India often feels inclined
to do. "We must take with discrimination," he says, "what we are told
about India, for it is the most distant of lands, and few of our nation
have seen it. Those, moreover, who have seen it, have seen only a part,
and most of what they say is no more than hearsay. Even what they saw,
they became acquainted with only while passing through the country with
an army, in great haste. Yea, even their reports about the same things
are not the same, although they write as if they had examined the things
with the greatest care and attention. Some of the writers were
fellow-soldiers and fellow-travellers, yet oft-times they contradict
each other.... Nor do those who at present make voyages thither afford
any precise information." We sympathise with Strabo, as our own readers
also may. The intere