been an offensive minute entered on the Council books by Mr. Francis, which he refused to rescind; but being unacquainted with the particulars, I have as little right as inclination to make any comments on the subject. It always vexes me to hear of such things."

Not far from the spot where the duel took place stands Hastings' House. It is fast crumbling into ruin, but it should be purchased by Government, repaired and converted into a public institution. It was the favourite residence of the man whose far sight first saw, and whose brave and confident patience realized, the romantic idea of his country founding an empire in the East. When he returned to England he always remembered with fond affection the house at Alipore, the paddocks in which he bred his Arab horses, and the grounds which he planted with rare trees from all parts of Asia. On the bank of the Thames he erected a house after the model of his home at Alipore, and when he retired to Daylesford he laid out the grounds after the fashion of his Indian country seat.

Alipore was dear to him because there he spent the best years of his life, with the woman for whom he had an unbounded love and admiration. There was not such another being in the world. As long as she was by his side, nothing could come amiss to him: the cares and fatigues of the day made no impression on his spirits. When the state of her health had laid him under the stern necessity of sending her to England, he wrote: "I miss you in every instant and incident of my life, and everything seems to wear a dead stillness around me. I come home as to a solitude." After she had gone he cared not to dwell at Alipore, and he determined to sell the property.

Mrs. Fay thus describes the woman who won the great heart of Hastings:

"Mrs. H herself," she writes, "it is easy to perceive at the first glance, is far superior to the generality of her sex

though her appearance is rather eccentric, owing to the circum. stance of her beautiful auburn hair being disposed in ringlets, throwing an air of elegant, nay, almost infantine simplicity over the countenance, most admirably adapted to heighten the effect intended to be produced. Her whole dress, too, though studiously becoming, is at variance with our present modes, which are certainly not so: perhaps for that reason she has chosen to depart from them-as a foreigner, you know, she may be excused for not strictly conforming to our fashions; besides,

her rank in the settlement sets her above the necessity of studying anything but the whim of the moment. It is easy to perceive how fully sensible she is of her own consequence. She is, indeed, raised to a giddy height,' and expects to be treated with the most profound respect and deference."

Driving through what Macaulay, with considerable poetic latitude, calls "the rosy lanes of Alipore," we come across a primitive cabin, little more than a roof of grass to keep the sun and rain out, for this is all that is needed. At the door is a woman grinding corn; about her are a group

of scantily-clad men discussing the state of the crops and the hardness of the heart of the village money-lender. The carman, carrying a load of timber to the great town, leaves the bullocks by the roadside and joins in the conversation. A stalwart peasant who is walking with his son-whose graceful olive-brown figure is marred by no clothes-has also stopped for a few seconds to exchange greetings. It is a picturesque and peaceful scene. The people are both blithe and gentle. The passions of the Oriental, like those of children, are on the surface. But the combination of passion and softness in the Indian peasant has a great charm, when one has learned by the observation of twenty years that their lives are laborious and frugal, and that their vigour is hardly less than their kindness to the old and the young. Happy are they, and happy they will remain till their minds are poisoned against their rulers by a seditious press. Then athwart the mind of the Indian ryot may arise, as it arose in the mind of the French peasant, the idea that he is one of a multitude, starved and fleeced; and then he may in his wrath do what the French peasant did. Let us never forget that when reverence for authority perishes among the masses, it will be an almost superhuman task to keep peace in India. "It is a noble empire," said that distinguished traveller and diplomat, Baron Hubner, to me the day he left India, “and it is well worth keeping : but do not lose it by introducing what you please to call Liberal ideas.”

As we leave the hamlet the lane grows narrower, and lofty bamboos and tall palms line its sides, and great banian trees spread a green roof over all. By a graceful palm is a well. A bullock cart drawn by oxen with wide-spreading horns has halted by its side. The driver with his shaven head, and his spouse in her scarlet cotton robe, gaze at us with curiosity as we drive past. Waves of conquerors have swept by and been forgotten, but the bullock cart continues a symbol of the immortal East.

FR

XIII

MADRAS

ROM the deck of a steamer in the grey dawn of the morning Madras rising from a long stretch of bright sandy beach beyond the dark green sea has the appearance of a continental city. Madras has, however, kept to a large extent an early individuality, and the past is a living presence in the old town. The fine storehouses which line the surf-beaten shore with colonnades to the upper stories, belong to a former generation, and the old roadstead of Fort St. George recalls to mind stirring events of a bygone age.

Madras is a town with a history, as all know who have read their Orme. There was a time when it ranked higher than Calcutta, and it was from Madras, then a flourishing settlement, that Job Charnock went to found on a swamp by the banks of the Hughly, the City of Palaces.

The foundation of Fort St. George was due to the struggle between the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English as to who should enjoy the trade between India and the Spice Islands. In 1611 (eleven years after Elizabeth had granted the first charter of "the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies ") Captain Heppon, of the Globe, touched at Pulicat, then the chief port on the Eastern or Coromandal Coast. The Dutch had established a factory and built a fort there, and the Dutch Governor, Van Wezik, refused to allow the English to trade. Taking with him two merchants who had been in