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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1874.
become Musalmans in Bombay. We hope we shall be pardoned for pointing out these inaccuracies in A work perfect in every other respect. Although the author was obliged to take a great deal on trust, his own wise discrimination has proved a very good guide in sifting the wheat from the chaff. We in India have of course seen the Report by Mr. Kempson, the Director of Public Instruction for the North-West Provinces, about the publications issued, and also noticed by M. Garcin de Tassy: and although we consider the literary activity manifested by the authors as very creditable to them, we cannot help remarking that most of the books are insignificant and not original. The classic age of the Urdu language, however, is past: let us hopo that it is not gone for ever. As matters go, good school-books translated from the English are more useful than the best poetry could be; they are more needed than any other kind of literature : the want is accordingly encouraged by Government prizes, and is being supplied fast enough.
M. Garcin de Tassy concludes his Review with a kind of necrology of several of his Orientalist friends who died during the past year. It is as follows:
"Count Eusébe de Salles (cousin of the late General Count de Salles), & distinguished Orientalist, died on January 1, 1873, in Montpellier, his birthplace, at the age of sixty-three. He had during several years assiduously attended my Hindustani class, in the (at that time) Royal School of Living Oriental Languages, of which he was one of the first students in 1828, with Baron Caruel de Saint-Martin, de Toustain du Manoir, &c. He was the more interested in attending this class, as he was about to marry a very literary lady of Indian origin, whose mother-tongue was Hinda- stani, the excellent Sarah Cruttenden, widow of Count Even de la Tremblaye. This noble woman constituted for nearly forty years the happiness of Eusébe de Salles, whom she faithfully accompanied in all his jonrneys; and her death, which took place a short time before that of her husband, on account of the deep attachment he had for her, must in a great measure have contributed to his Own.
"Eusébe de Salles attended also the Arabic class of my master, Sylvestre de Sacy, and of Caus. sin de Perceval, for which reason it became posbibie to appoint him First Interpreter to the conquering Algerian army, and afterwards to the post of Arabic Professor at Marseille, where he succeeded Don Gabriel Taouil, and where in his turn he was engaged during thirty years in educating pupils. This post was conferred on him in consequence of his service in Algeria, in preference to the distinguished Egyptian Sakakini, who had
acted for Don Gabriel, and who was disappointed in the hope of succeeding also to the appointment, on which he had believed he could count.
"Eusebe de Salles was essentially a polygrapher; he wrote works of Oriental erudition, of philosophy, of medical science, as well as novels, several of which were successful. His Pérégrinanations en Orient are not merely interesting, they are very instructive. In his Histoire générale des races humaines he upheld, from convictions and by arguments drawn from the experience acquired by him in his journeys, and which has not yet been given to the public, the Biblical doctrine concerning the unity of the human species. He was also a poet, and his friend Baron Gaston de Flotte, himself a brilliant poet, who appreciated his real worth and loved his paradoxical mind, devoted, in the Gazette du Midi, an article to his memory, which is as well conceived as it is written.
"Henri Kurtz, a distinguished Orientalist, died on the 25th February last. He had also attended my class at a later period, from 1854 to 1855. Since that time he had never ceased to take an interest in the study of Hindustani, and I continued in correspondence with him several years after he had left Paris. The persecution suffered by him in Bavaria on account of his liberal opinions, and his opposition to what is called the clerical party in Switzerland, where he had taken refuge, have made him better known to the European public than his works and his professorship; for he was professor at the school of the canton of Argau, and librarian in the town of Aarau, where he terminated his life.
"Captain Henry Blosse Lynch, Commodore in the English Navy, and skilled in Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic, which he had learnt in Calcutta, and spoke fluently, died on the 14th April, at the age of sixty-three years, in Paris, where he had lately the misfortune to lose his only son. His linguistic knowledge had been improved by repeatedly sojourning in Asiatic cities, and was the reason of his being appointed interpreter by the British Government on various important occasions. He had, moreover, several times been entrusted to carry out important operations in the Persian Gulf, in Sindh, in Syria, and in Burmah, where he co-operated in the taking of Rangan in 1851, &c., as well as in Paris itself, where he carried on the negotiations with the Persian ambassador which terminated in the treaty of the 4th March 1857.
"Being a scholar without pretensions, he was often present at my Hindustani lectures. This honest man, who was extremely obliging, was beloved by all who visited him, and I have person.
