eight square miles. When the English first settled here in 1686 the city could scarcely be said to exist, its nucleus being three villages which were presented to the East India Company by the Emperor of Delhi. Calcutta was in reality the name of one of these villages, though for a time the new settlement took its name from Fort William, which had been erected to defend the factories, and which fort-or, at least, another under the same name-still exists. Since those days, in spite of many vicissitudes, it has prospered greatly, and now contains about half a million inhabitants, of whom not over eight thousand are Europeans: the majority are Hindoos and Mohammedans. If, however, the suburbs and three smaller municipalities on the opposite side of the river are added, the population of Calcutta is not less than 900,000. The poorer quarters of the city are squalid, but the newer streets are fine and spacious, lighted with gas, and supplied with water in greater abundance and of a better quality than that doled out to London. It has been called the "city of palaces," and certainly its numerous fine public buildings entitle it to that lofty designation. Its manufactures are numerous and increasing, and there seems no likelihood that the prosperity of the city will ever suffer a serious check. The other Bengal cities are more modest in their dimensions, and more native; but even they are rapidly advancing in European improvements, and the population year by year becoming more and more familiar with the language, customs, and even prejudices of the dominant race.

Bengal was in the early days of the English conquests in India a vague term covering nearly the whole of the British territory, and, as "the Company's" establishments "crept up the river," the "Bengal Presidency" came to mean really the whole of Northern India. But in 1831 the North-West Provinces were separated from this territory, and at a later date Oudh and the Punjab arose as the limits of the British rule extended. At present Bengal means the "Lower Bengal," and consists of four divisions; for in 1874 Assam was erected into a separate commissionership. Three of these provinces-viz., Bengal Proper, Behar, and Orissa-consist of river valleys, but Chota Nagpore is a mountain region which separates them from the central plateau of India. Finally, for administrative purposes, Bengal is divided into forty-seven districts, each ruled by separate officials, but all responsible to the Lieutenant-Governor, who in his turn must answer for his acts to the Viceroy and Council in Calcutta, and they in their turn to the Secretary of State for India, and generally to Her Majesty's Ministers and Parliament.

Unlike the Governors of Bombay and Madras, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal has no Executive Council to divide the responsibility or the glory of his rule with. He is watched over with discreet jealousy by the Governor-General and his Council, but practically he stands alone, issues orders in his own name, and bears the brunt or reaps the reward of his every act. However, in making laws he is assisted by a Legislative Council, consisting of his chief officers and the leading members of the non-official European and native communities, who are, however, not elected, but appointed by the Government.

Finally, Dr. Hunter insists that so long as the English hold the port of Calcutta and the rich provinces of Bengal, the power they will possess will be sufficient to enable them

to recover India should any accident ever temporarily shake their sway in the Punjab and north-west. But the vast income of Lower Bengal-about £18,000,000, of which £11,000,000 or so is surplus after defraying the cost of government-is not derived from

these provinces solely. China contributes £5,000,000 in the shape of opium duty, and the inland parts of India contribute about one-third of a million to the Bengal Customs. Roughly speaking, therefore, the Bengalees, in the shape of imperial, provincial, municipal, and rural taxation of every description, pay 3s. 5d. a head for their Government. It is, however, clear that the Chinese £5,000,000 cannot always continue, while the subsidiary revenue from inland States is precarious. But these are political questions which have

been long hotly debated; and though their discussion would be not without interest or importance, it does not strictly come within our scheme.*

THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES.

Up to 1831 these territories constituted part of the Presidency of Bengal, but they are now under a separate Lieutenant-Governor. Including Oudh, which in 1876

was absorbed into them, they number a population of over 43,000,000, occupying a region of about 106,000 square miles, so that the country is almost as thickly populated as Bengal. In this region are included Meerut, Rohilcund, Agra, Allahabad, and Benares, in addition to Oudh, though since 1859, when the Punjab was erected into a separate lieutenant-governorship, Delhi was transferred to that province.

More than a thousand miles from Calcutta, and forty miles to the north of Delhi,

Hunter: "Statistical Account of Bengal;" "Annals of Rural Bengal;" "Orissa;" and articles in Encyclopædia Britannica; Dalton: "Ethnology of Bengal;" Campbell: "Administrative Reports from 1871-3;" Barton: "Bengal;" Grant-Duff: "Notes of an Indian Journey; " Dilke: "Greater Britain," &c.

lies Meerut, a green and pleasant city, the centre of a district of the North-Western Provinces. Here the Mutiny of 1857 first broke out, and was unaccountably allowed to spread, the garrison officers being evidently not completely alive to the character of the plot which for months had been fermenting under their very eyes.

Rohilcund is a fruitful, well-watered province; and Agra, though sadly fallen from its ancient grandeur, when it was the imperial city of Akbar, the "greatest and wisest," as he has been justly characterised of the old Emperors of Hindostan. Agra is also famous for its mosques and tombs (pp. 200, 208), and is known for the "Taj Mahal," that "dream in marble" which Akbar's grandson, Shah Jehan, reared at once as a tomb and a monument to his beautiful queen, Mumlaz-i-Mahal, "the flower of the palace." Nothing like this wonderful building exists in India, and even in Florence its mosaics in pietra dura are unequalled. Akbar himself lies in a mausoleum a few miles out of the city, so vast that a regiment of horse were on one occasion quartered in its arches (p. 200). Twenty miles off is Futtepore Sickri, the noble mosque of which is another of the many monuments remaining to attest the greatness and the misfortunes of Akbar. Thirty-five miles north-west of Agra is Muttra, an old Hindoo city famed for its shrines and sacred monkeys. Mr. Andrews tells us that many years ago two young Englishmen in silly sport wounded one of these holy animals. Its screams and the chorus of its offended relatives attracted In a frenzy of religious excitement they would have torn the Englishmen to pieces had they not forced the elephants they were riding into the river; but as this animal rolls when in the water, the offenders were drowned in mid-stream, the mahout, or driver, alone reaching the opposite bank.

the inhabitants to the spot.

Allahabad is the present capital of the North-Western Provinces, and from its commanding situation at the meeting-place of the waters of the Jumna and Ganges is important from a military and commercial point of view, but what in India is often quite as important, from a religious aspect also. It is about 500 miles from Calcutta, and contains a population of 150,000, which at certain seasons, when the pilgrims flock into it, is swollen to much greater numbers, the railways of which it is a centre enabling the pious to journey thither with greater ease and much more cheaply than they were able to do in former days. Allahabad is also the name of a "division" and a "district" which contains nearly a million and a half of souls. The division, in addition to four other districts, comprises that of Cawnpore, the centre of which is the city of the same name, on the left banks of the Ganges, containing 123,000 inhabitants, and doing a large trade in indigo (p. 209), saddlery, and other leather manufactures. But Cawnpore will ever have a sad fame in Indian history on account of the share it took in the terrible events of the Mutiny. After the news of the rising at Meerut and Delhi reached the city, the native troops mutinied, and besieged the British residents and soldiers, who had taken refuge within the ill-chosen cantonments outside the city. After enduring terrible hardships in the defence, the survivors were promised safe conduct to Allahabad if they would surrender; but as they were embarking on the river they were fallen upon by Nana Sahib's ruffians, and many cruelly *Keene: "Fall of the Moghul Empire;" Kaye: History of the Sepoy War; "Statistical Account of the Delhi District;" and the works of Hunter, Rousselet, Andrews, Schlagint weit, and numerous other recent writers.

massacred. Only four survived to tell the tale; and the remainder spared from the river-slaughter were remorselessly butchered on the news reaching the city of the successive defeats of the mutineers by the relieving armies. Finally Havelock succeeded in recapturing it, though unhappily the head of the rebels, Nana Sahib, succeeded in escaping with his immediate followers, and has never since been seen by any one who cared or who was strong enough to hand him over to justice. A monument is now erected over the well into which so many of the slaughtered women, children, and men, as well as those who fell during the siege, were thrown, and a lovely garden covers the place which was, in the memory of so many still living, the scene of such horrors. Cawnpore District is a portion of the well-watered and fertile country known as the "Duab." It supports over a million and a half of people, mostly engaged in agriculture or its collateral industries. Their staple is wheat, but cotton of a good quality has of late been cultivated, in addition to the usual crops of the North-Western Provinces.

Benares is an even more important and an infinitely holier division, district, and town, than Cawnpore. Its merits in this respect have already been noticed; but in modern times the commercial importance of the place is likely to compete with its religious reputation. Yet undoubtedly to both its trading and sacred advantages Benares owes its celebrity, as well to the fact that from the most ancient times it has been the seat of a native kingdom. Indeed, if the chronicles are to be credited, a Hindoo rajah ruled here 1,200 years before Christ was born; and ever since the Indian historians have been comparatively trustworthy they have recorded the struggles of rival adventurers for the possession of Benares. The rebellion of Chait Singh, owing to the unjust demands of Warren Hastings, and the Mutiny of the native regiments in 1857, are its most important events in later times. The first incident figured extensively in the trial of the Governor-General, and the second resulted unsuccessfully so far that the district was never for an hour lost to British rule. Though the neighbouring country is very fertile, and would therefore support a large population, its temples attract pilgrims quite as much as its bazaars, heaped with sugar, saltpetre, indigo, silk, shawls, vessels of brass, filagree work, and the gold-embroidered cloths which are famous under the name of "kincob." "Twenty-five centuries ago at least," writes the Rev. Mr. Sherring, "it was famous. When Babylon was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy, when Tyre was planting her colonies, when Athens was growing in strength, before Rome had become known, or Greece had contended with Persia, or Cyrus added lustre to the Persian monarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of Judæa had been carried into captivity, she had already risen to greatness, if not to glory. Nay, she may have heard of the fame of Solomon, and have sent her ivory, her apes, and her peacocks to adorn his palaces, while partly with her gold she may have overlaid the Temple of the Lord." In the seventh century of our era a Chinese pilgrim described it as containing thirty Buddhist monasteries and about a hundred Hindoo temples. Even yet, though the Buddhists have almost entirely vanished from the city, it is still great in its religious houses, rich in worldly goods, and, apart from its religious associations and ancient history, Benares is one of the most picturesque of the cities of India (pp. 185, 186). The first view of its domes and minarets from the bend of the Ganges on which the city is