A History of Hindu Chemistry, vol. 2

It is with mixed feelings that I mark the hour of my final deliverance from a self-imposed task that has occupied all my spare time for the last 15 years and more—feelings not unlike those that overpowered the historian of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.. The reader will, I hope, forgive me if I venture to express them in the words of Edward Gibbon himself: “I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom... But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion.”

The Hindu nation, with its glorious past and vast latent potential, may yet look forward to an even more glorious future. If the perusal of these pages has the effect of stimulating my countrymen to strive to regain their old position in the intellectual hierarchy of nations, then I shall not have labored in vain.

PRESIDENCY COLLEGE. } *June 1, 1909.* } **P. C. RAY.**