ed a moment, then resumed:

"You may know me, brethren, by the name of Melchior. I speak to
you in a language which, if not the oldest in the world, was at
least the soonest to be reduced to letters--I mean the Sanscrit
of India. I am a Hindoo by birth. My people were the first to
walk in the fields of knowledge, first to divide them, first to
make them beautiful. Whatever may hereafter befall, the four
Vedas must live, for they are the primal fountains of religion and
useful intelligence. From them were derived the Upa-Vedas, which,
delivered by Brahma, treat of medicine, archery, architecture,
music, and the four-and-sixty mechanical arts; the Ved-Angas,
revealed by inspired saints, and devoted to astronomy, grammar,
prosody, pronunciation, charms and incantations, religious rites
and ceremonies; the Up-Angas, written by the sage Vyasa, and given
to cosmogony, chronology, and geography; therein also are the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, heroic poems, designed for the
perpetuation of our gods and demi-gods. Such, O brethren, are the
Great Shastras, or books of sacred ordinances. They are dead to me
now; yet through all time they will serve to illustrate the budding
genius of my race. They were promises of quick perfection. Ask you
why the promises failed? Alas! the books themselves closed all
the gates of progress. Under pretext of care for the creature,
their authors imposed the fatal principle that a man must not
address himself to discovery or invention, as Heaven had provided
him all things needful. When that condition became a sacred law,
the lamp of Hindoo genius was let down a well, where ever since
it has lighted narrow walls and bitter waters.

"These allusions, brethren, are not from pride, as you will
understand when I tell you that the Shastras teach a Supreme
God called Brahm; also, that the Puranas, or sacred poems of
the Up-Angas, tell us of Virtue and Good Works, and of the Soul.
So, if my brother will permit the saying"--the speaker bowed
deferentially to the Greek--"ages before his people were known,
the two great ideas, God and the Soul, had absorbed all the forces
of the Hindoo mind. In further explanation let me say that Brahm
is taught, by the same sacred books, as a Triad--Brahma, Vishnu,
and Shiva. Of these, Brahma is said to have been the author of our
race; which, in course of creation, he divided into four castes.
First, he peopled the worlds below and the heavens above; next,
he made the