Nexr to a brand new word, the best thing is an old word used in a new sense, and this the home newspapers have just given us. We read now of a visit to the East as "Orientation."
The projected " progress" of the Prince of Wales through India is described by this awkward but suggestive word. The event is one of such importance that we admit it deserves a new vocable, and for want of a better we must put up with the one adopted. The Prince of Wales' "Orientation" or airing in the East, is really a very noteworthy occurrence. The fact that, for the first time in history, "the immediate heir of England" will visit the seat of Indian Empire is of itself sufficient. No sitnation can be more striking than that which the Prince will find himself placed in, ata grand Durbar of Native Princes. Never perhaps at any period of his life, not even when he is crowned, will he feel himself so superbly surrounded by the pageantry and splendours of royalty as at these Indian levees. We must not imagine, however, that the visit to the East will be a mere series of dazzling shows. The Prince will see many new sights. Ho will be brought into contact with a world utterly unlike the world in which he has lived. He will seo the growths of ancient civilizations, the ritual of venerable creeds, the strange conflict between the institutions of immemorial antiquity and the active bustling spirit of modern science and modern enterprise, He will seo British rale under conditions the Jike to which have never been presented to him before, And unless he is a man of far less ability than we have every reason to think he is, he will make good uso of his time. The value of the information that will be within his grasp cannot possibly be over-estimated, andthe insight that he will gain into the whole complex sys toms of Anglo-Indian legislation, jurisprudence, and policy, must be vivid and usefal in the highest degree.
In these and many other like ways, the process of "Orientation" will be serviceable to the Heir Apparent. It is indeed a great and important part of education, and it would be well if our statesmen, lawyers, and clergymen will consider the advisability of submitting themselves to a course of education similar to that which the Prince proposes to go through, or rather, to speak more correctly, will hasten to supplement their Western teaching by a visit to the East. The enlargement of view which they would gain by seeing how they manage matters in Oriental countries, would be wide and improving. There are certain institutions in this land which seem very attractive when we see them at a distance, but which wear a totally different aspect when we getaclose sight of them. Competitive examination for instance has been for centuries the rule in China, and Life Peerages are given freely here. It would do the advocates of these things good to see how they have worked, and are working now, in the Middle Kingdom. The system of Juris prudence which prevails in China is of course very much abused, but there are features in the theory though not in the practice of the Law Courts, which would repay study. We no not imagine that a sight of the Taotai's yamen would fill a Lord Chancellor or even a Judge of the Queen's Bench with admiration, but both would be the better for seeing how a Court of justice can be carried on without advo cates; and though, if he were a superficial man, he would seo nothing but a corrupt judge and a crowd of still more corrupt underlings, he might learn, on a deeper acquaintance with the idea of these tribunals, to modify the contempt for "Cadi's Justice," which he had Jearned from a remind" sconce of a well-known passage in Sterne, Chinese Law may have had many abuses, but it has scarcely had anything worse than certain: suits in Chancery and the trial of Arthur Orton, Kenealy would be impossible in the East. "Ib is almost superfluous to say that the ministers of religion would learn much by studying the creeds and the philosophy of China, and by observing how they go on side by side with each other, A sight of the actual work of Protestant and Catholic Missionaries—and discussion of the difficulties they meet with, and of the obstacles opposed by prejudice and ignorance to the religion of the Cross, would be invaluable. For, in order to estimate the matter fairly, Missionaries must be seen abroad, not at home, in their own chapels, not on London platforms, The various differences between the Protestant sects, and the effect of these differences on the minds of the heathen, can only be judged in the actual field of operation. How much good the late Dr. Norman Macleod derived from his Indian trip, we all know. The moral of the whole is that all Europeans would be improved by a period of Orientation,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.