"The richer natives in Calcutta are imitating European manners, equipages, and buildings.…It is the universal feeling that in Calcutta, where the wealthier natives mix a good deal with Europeans, their Hindoo prejudices are fast giving way, not, I fear, to the Gospel but to English science and literature. Good however must be done by the extension of knowledge, and by a breach being made in the seven fold shield of dustoor (custom) which has so long defied improvement. We were struck when reading the observations in Saturday Evening on the Grecianising Jews how much they applied to the Anglicised Hindoos of Calcutta. European female teachers are employed as day governesses of some rich natives and I heard a very intelligent Englishman, who had been long in the country, notice the great change when respectable native ladies were seen taking a drive in an open carriage. Some Hindoo gentlemen even eat with Europeans, and at the Hindu College the youths are instructed in the English language and literature. Though they nominally continue Hindoos, they are in fact Deists. Government seminaries for the diffusion of education without any direct attempt at proselytising are established in all large stations. One lad who had been brought up at the college used frequently to come to Major Hutchinson. He was a fine, intelligent looking fellow, who seemed thirsty after information. He had a pretty correct idea of the outline of Christianity and spoke of the absurdities of Hindooism but seemed untouched at heart by either “the sinfulness of sin”, or the beauty of holiness. This lad spoke English very well, and one day brought us a composition of his own in that language, rambling essay on the advantage of science. In the Indian papers and journals there are frequent contributions from the students, generally correct as to grammar, and shewing a considerable knowledge of our standard authors, but the questions are elaborately brought in and the style is universally bad, inflated, full of false metaphor and frequently a mere caricature of Gibbon’s inversions and circumlocutions. The sensuality of Hindoo faith and practice is so gross that to them the self denying doctrines of Christianity must be peculiarly distasteful, and the daily habits of falsehood and licentiousness must almost incapacitate their minds from comprehending the Christian standard of morals."