But the Brahmans have stood by her through all the vicissitudes of fortune.

It is they who raised her to the highest pinnacle of glory, and it is they whose ministrations still keep up the drooping spirits of her children." The Brahmans are the sacerdotal caste of India.

They are at the same time the proudest and the closest aristocracy that the world has ever seen, for they form not merely an aristocracy of birth in the strictest sense of the term, but one of divine origin.

Of the Brahman it may be said as of no other privileged mortal except perhaps the Levite of the Old Testament: _Nascitur non fit_.

No king, however powerful, can make or unmake a Brahman, no genius, however transcendent, no services, however conspicuous, no virtues, however pre-eminent, can avail to raise a Hindu from a lower caste to the Brahman's estate.