This A of ours is a very capital A indeed, being some nineteen hundred miles in length and fifteen hundred in width. Lying on the western edge of this peninsula is Bombay Island. It is crossed by the line of 19 deg. north latitude, and is, roughly speaking, halfway between the Punjab on the north and Ceylon on the south. Its shape is that of a lobster, with his claws extended southward and his body trending a little to the west of north. The larger island of Salsette lies immediately north, and the two, connected by a causeway, enclose the noble harbor of Bombay. Salsette approaches near to the mainland at its northern end, and is connected with it by the railway structure. These causeways act as break-waters and complete the protection of the port. The outer claw, next to the Indian Ocean, of the lobster-shaped Bombay Island is the famous Malabar Hill; the inner claw is the promontory of Calaba; in the curved space between the two is the body of shallow water known as the Back Bay, along whose strand so many strange things are done daily. As one turns into the harbor around the promontory of Calaba—which is one of the European quarters of the manifold city of Bombay, and is occupied by magnificent residences and flower-gardens—one finds just north of it the great docks and commercial establishments of the Fort; then an enormous esplanade farther north; across which, a distance of about a mile, going still northward, is the great Indian city called Black Town, with its motley peoples and strange bazars; and still farther north is the Portuguese quarter, known as Mazagon.

As we crossed the great esplanade to the north of the Fort—Bhima Gandharva and I—and strolled along the noisy streets, I began to withdraw my complaint. It was not like Jonesville. It was not like any one place or thing, but like a hundred, and all the hundred outre to the last degree. Hindu beggars, so dirty that they seemed to have returned to dust before death; three fakirs, armed with round-bladed daggers with which they were wounding themselves apparently in the most reckless manner, so as to send streams of blood flowing to the ground, and redly tattooing the ashes with which their naked bodies were covered; Parsees with their long noses curving over their moustaches, clothed in white, sending one's thoughts back to Ormuz, to Persia, to Zoroaster, to fire-worship and to the strangeness of the fate which drove them out of Persia more than a thousand years ago, and which has turned them into the most industrious traders and most influential citizens of a land in which they are still exiles; Chinese, Afghans—the Highlanders of the East—Arabs, Africans, Mahrattas, Malays, Persians, Portuguese half-bloods; men that called upon Mohammed, men that called upon Confucius, upon Krishna, upon Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen, alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode, with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky curb-stone shopkeepers, rushing at me with strenuous offerings of their wares; lines of low shop-counters along the street, backed by houses rising in many stories, whose black pillared verandahs were curiously carved and painted: cries, chafferings, bickerings, Mussulman prayers, Arab oaths extending from "Praise God that you exist" to "Praise God although you exist;"—all these things appealed to the confused senses.

The tall spire of a Hindu temple revealed itself.



"It seems to me," I said to Bhima Gandharva, "that your steeples—as we would call them in Jonesville—represent, in a sort of way, your cardinal doctrine: they seem to be composed of a multitude of little steeples, all like the big one, just as you might figure your Supreme Being in the act of absorbing a large number of the faithful who had just arrived from the dismal existence below. And then, again, your steeple looks as if it might be the central figure of your theistic scheme, surrounded by the three hundred millions of your lesser deities. How do you get on, Bhima Gandharva, with so many claims on your worshiping faculties? I should think you would be well lost in such a jungle of gods?"

"My friend," said Bhima Gandharva, "a short time ago a play was performed in this city which purported to be a translation into the Mahratta language of the Romeo and Juliet which Shakespeare wrote. It was indeed a very great departure from that miraculous work, which I know well, but among its many deviations from the original was one which for the mournful and yet humorous truth of it was really worthy of the Master. Somehow, the translator had managed to get a modern Englishman into the play, who, every time that one of my countrymen happened to be found in leg-reach, would give him a lusty kick and cry out 'Damn fool!' Why is the whole world like this Englishman?—upon what does it found its opinion that the Hindu is a fool? Is it upon our religion? Listen! I will recite you some matters out of our scriptures: Once upon a time Arjuna stood in his chariot betwixt his army and the army of his foes. These foes were his kinsmen. Krishna—even that great god Krishna—moved by pity for Arjuna, had voluntarily placed himself in Arjuna's chariot and made himself the charioteer thereof. Then—so saith Sanjaya—in order to encourage him, the ardent old ancestor of the Kurus blew his conch-shell, sounding loud as the roar of a lion. Then on a sudden trumpets, cymbals, drums and horns were sounded. That noise grew to an uproar. And, standing on a huge car drawn by white horses, the slayer of Madhu and the son of Pandu blew their celestial trumpets. Krishna blew his horn called Panchajanya; the Despiser of Wealth blew his horn called the Gift of the Gods; he of dreadful deeds and wolfish entrails blew a great trumpet called Paundra; King Yudishthira, the son of Kunti, blew the Eternal Victory; Nakula and Sahadeva blew the Sweet-toned and the Blooming-with-Jewels. The king of Kashi, renowned for the excellence of his bow, and Shikandin in his huge chariot, Dhrishtyadumna, and Virata, and Satyaki, unconquered by his foes, and Drupada and the sons of Drupadi all together, and the strong-armed son of Subhadra, each severally blew their trumpets. That noise lacerated the hearts of the sons of Dhartarashtra, and uproar resounded both through heaven and earth. Now when Arjuna beheld the Dhartarashtras drawn up, and that the flying of arrows had commenced, he raised his bow, and then addressed these words to Krishna:

"'Now that I have beheld this kindred standing here near together for the purpose of fighting, my limbs give way and my face is bloodless, and tremor is produced throughout my body, and my hair stands on end. My bow Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. Nor am I able to remain upright, and my mind is as it were whirling round. Nor do I perceive anything better even when I shall have slain these relations in battle, I seek not victory, Krishna, nor a kingdom, nor pleasures. What should we do with a kingdom, Govinda? What with enjoyments, or with life itself? Those very men on whose account we might desire a kingdom, enjoyments or pleasures are assembled for battle. Teachers, fathers, and even sons, and grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, with connections also,—these I would not wish to slay, though I were slain myself, O Killer of Madhu! not even for the sake of the sovereignty of the triple world—how much less for that of this earth! When we had killed the Dhartarashtras, what pleasure should we have, O thou who art prayed to by mortals? How could we be happy after killing our own kindred, O Slayer of Madhu? Even if they whose reason is obscured by covetousness do not perceive the crime committed in destroying their own tribe, should we not know how to recoil from such a sin? In the destruction of a tribe the eternal institutions of the tribe are destroyed. These laws being destroyed, lawlessness prevails. From the existence of lawlessness the women of the tribe become corrupted; and when the women are corrupted, O son of Vrishni! confusion of caste takes place. Confusion of caste is a gate to hell. Alas! we have determined to commit a great crime, since from the desire of sovereignty and pleasures we are prepared to slay our own kin. Better were it for me if the Dhartarashtras, being armed, would slay me, harmless and unresisting in the fight.'



"Having thus spoken in the midst of the battle, Arjuna, whose heart was troubled with grief, let fall his bow and arrow and sat down on the bench of the chariot."

"Well," I asked after a short pause, during which the Hindu kept his eyes fixed in contemplation on the spire of the temple, "what did Krishna have to say to that?"

"He instructed Arjuna, and said many wise things. I will tell you some of them, here and there, as they are scattered through the holy Bhagavad-Gita: Then between the two armies, Krishna, smiling, addressed these words to him, thus downcast:

"'Thou hast grieved for those who need not be grieved for, yet thou utterest words of wisdom. The wise grieve not for dead or living. But never at any period did I or thou or these kings of men not exist, nor shall any of us at any time henceforward cease to exist. There is no existence for what does not exist, nor is there any non-existence for what exists.... These finite bodies have been said to belong to an eternal, indestructible and infinite spirit.... He who believes that this spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed—both of these are mistaken. It neither kills nor is killed. It is born, and it does not die.... Unborn, changeless, eternal both as to future and past time, it is not slain when the body is killed.... As the soul in this body undergoes the changes of childhood, prime and age, so it obtains a new body hereafter.... As a man abandons worn-out clothes and take other new ones, so does the soul quit worn-out bodies and enter other new ones. Weapons cannot cleave it, fire cannot burn it, nor can water wet it, nor can wind dry it. It is impenetrable, incombustible, incapable of moistening and of drying. It is constant; it can go everywhere; it is firm, immovable and eternal. And even if thou deem it born with the body and dying with the body, still, O great-armed one! thou art not right to grieve for it. For to everything generated death is certain: to everything dead regeneration is certain.... One looks on the soul as a miracle; another speaks of it as a miracle; another hears of it as a miracle; but even when he has heard of it, not one comprehends it.... When a man's heart is disposed in accordance with his roaming senses, it snatches away his spiritual knowledge as the wind does a ship on the waves.... He who does not practice devotion has neither intelligence nor reflection. And he who does not practice reflection has no calm. How can a man without calm obtain happiness? The self-governed man is awake in that which is night to all other beings: that in which other beings are awake is night to the self-governed. He into whom all desires enter in the same manner as rivers enter the ocean, which is always full, yet does not change its bed, can obtain tranquillity.... Love or hate exists toward the object of each sense. One should not fall into the power of these two passions, for they are one's adversaries.... Know that passion is hostile to man in this world. As fire is surrounded by smoke, and a mirror by rust, and a child by the womb, so is this universe surrounded by passion.... They say that the senses are great. The heart is greater than the senses. But the intellect is greater than the heart, and passion is greater than the intellect....



"'I and thou, O Arjuna! have passed through many transmigrations. I know all these. Thou dost not know them.... For whenever there is a relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata! and an increase of impiety, I then reproduce myself for the protection of the good and the destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose of establishing duty.... Some sacrifice the sense of hearing and the other senses in the fire of restraint. Others, by abstaining from food, sacrifice life in their life. (But) the sacrifice of spiritual knowledge is better than a material sacrifice.... By this knowledge thou wilt recognize all things whatever in thyself, and then in me. He who possesses faith acquires spiritual knowledge. He who is devoid of faith and of doubtful mind perishes. The man of doubtful mind enjoys neither this world nor the other, nor final beatitude. Therefore, sever this doubt which exists in thy heart, and springs from ignorance, with thy sword of knowledge: turn to devotion and arise, O son of Bharata!...

"'Learn my superior nature, O hero! by means of which this world is sustained. I am the cause of the production and dissolution of the whole universe. There exists no other thing superior to me. On me are all the worlds suspended, as numbers of pearls on a string. I am the savor of waters, and the principle of light in the moon and sun, the mystic syllable Om in the Vedas, the sound in the ether, the essence of man in men, the sweet smell in the earth; and I am the brightness in flame, the vitality in all beings, and the power of mortification in ascetics. Know, O son of Pritha! that I am the eternal seed of all things which exist. I am the intellect of those who have intellect: I am the strength of the strong.... And know that all dispositions, whether good, bad or indifferent, proceed also from me. I do not exist in them, but they in me.... I am dear to the spiritually wise beyond possessions, and he is dear to me. A great-minded man who is convinced that Vasudevu (Krishna) is everything is difficult to find.... If one worships any inferior personage with faith, I make his faith constant. Gifted with such faith, he seeks the propitiation of this personage, and from him receives the pleasant objects of his desires, which (however) were sent by me alone. But the reward of these little-minded men is finite. They who sacrifice to the gods go to the gods: they who worship me come to me. I am the immolation. I am the whole sacrificial rite. I am the libation to ancestors. I am the drug. I am the incantation. I am the fire. I am the incense. I am the father, the mother, the sustainer, the grandfather of this universe—the path, the supporter, the master, the witness, the habitation, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the dissolution, the place, the receptacle, the inexhaustible seed. I heat. I withhold and give the rain. I am ambrosia and death, the existing and the non-existing. Even those who devoutly worship other gods with the gift of faith worship me, but only improperly. I am the same to all beings. I have neither foe nor friend. I am the beginning and the middle and the end of existing things. Among bodies I am the beaming sun. Among senses I am the heart. Among waters I am the ocean. Among mountains I am Himalaya. Among trees I am the banyan; among men, the king; among weapons, the thunderbolt; among things which count, time; among animals, the lion; among purifiers, the wind. I am Death who seizes all: I am the birth of those who are to be. I am Fame, Fortune, Speech, Memory, Meditation, Perseverance and Patience among feminine words. I am the game of dice among things which deceive: I am splendor among things which are shining. Among tamers I am the rod; among means of victory I am polity; among mysteries I am silence, the knowledge of the wise....

"'They who know me to be the God of this universe, the God of gods and the God of worship—they who know me to be the God of this universe, the God of gods and the God of worship—yea, they who know me to be these things in the hour of death, they know me indeed.'"



When my friend finished these words there did not seem to be anything particular left in heaven or earth to talk about. At any rate, there was a dead pause for several minutes. Finally, I asked—and I protest that in contrast with the large matters wherof Bhima Gandharva had discoursed my voice (which is American and slightly nasal) sounded like nothing in the world so much as the squeak of a sick rat—"When were these things written?"

"At least nineteen hundred and seventy-five years ago, we feel sure. How much earlier we do not know."

We now directed our course toward the hospital for sick and disabled animals which has been established here in the most crowded portion of Black Town by that singular sect called the Jains, and which is only one of a number of such institutions to be found in the large cities of India. This sect is now important more by influence than by numbers in India, many of the richest merchants of the great Indian cities being among its adherents, though by the last census of British India there appears to be but a little over nine millions of Jains and Buddhists together, out of the one hundred and ninety millions of Hindus in British India. The tenets of the Jains are too complicated for description here, but it may be said that much doubt exists as to whether it is an old religion of which Brahmanism and Buddhism are varieties, or whether it is itself a variety of Buddhism. Indeed, it does not seem well settled whether the pure Jain doctrine was atheistical or theistical. At any rate, it is sufficiently differentiated from Brahmanism by its opposite notion of castes, and from Buddhism by its cultus of nakedness, which the Buddhists abhor. The Jains are split into two sects—the Digambaras, or nude Jains, and the Svetambaras, or clothed Jains, which latter sect seem to be Buddhists, who, besides the Tirthankars (i.e. mortals who have acquired the rank of gods by devout lives, in whom all the Jains believe), worship also the various divinities of the Vishnu system. The Jains themselves declare this system to date from a period ten thousand years before Christ, and they practically support this traditional antiquity by persistently regarding and treating the Buddhists as heretics from their system. At any event, their religion is an old one. They seem to be the gymnosophists, or naked philosophers, described by Clitarchos as living in India at the time of the expedition of Alexander, and their history crops out in various accounts—that of Clement of Alexandria, then of the Chinese Fu-Hian in the fourth and fifth centuries, and of the celebrated Chinese Hiouen-Tsang in the seventh century, at which last period they appear to have been the prevailing sect in India, and to have increased in favor until in the twelfth century the Rajpoots, who had become converts to Jainism, were schismatized into Brahmanism and deprived the naked philosophers of their prestige.

The great distinguishing feature of the Jains is the extreme to which they push the characteristic tenderness felt by the Hindus for animals of all descriptions. Jaina is, distinctly, the purified. The priests eat no animal food; indeed, they are said not to eat at all after noon, lest the insects then abounding should fly into their mouths and be crushed unwittingly. They go with a piece of muslin bound over their mouths, in order to avoid the same catastrophe, and carry a soft brush wherewith to remove carefully from any spot upon which they are about to sit such insects as might be killed thereby.

"Ah, how my countryman Bergh would luxuriate in this scene!" I said as we stood looking upon the various dumb exhibitions of so many phases of sickness, of decrepitude and of mishap—quaint, grotesque, yet pathetic withal—in the precincts of the Jain hospital. Here were quadrupeds and bipeds, feathered creatures and hairy creatures, large animals and small, shy and tame, friendly and predatory—horses, horned cattle, rats, cats, dogs, jackals, crows, chickens; what not. An attendant was tenderly bandaging the blinking lids of a sore-eyed duck: another was feeding a blind crow, who, it must be confessed, looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put his wing in a sling?"



Bhima Gandharva looked me full in the face, and, smiling gently, said, "They would if they could."

The Jains are considered to have been the architects par excellence of India, and there are many monuments, in all styles, of their skill in this kind. The strange statues of the Tirthankars in the gorge called the Ourwhai of Gwalior were (until injured by the "march of improvement") among the most notable of the forms of rock-cutting. These vary in size from statuettes of a foot in height to colossal figures of sixty feet, and nothing can be more striking than these great forms, hewn from the solid rock, represented entirely nude, with their impassive countenances, which remind every traveler of the Sphinx, their grotesque ears hanging down to their shoulders, and their heads, about which plays a ring of serpents for a halo, or out of which grows the mystical three-branched Kalpa Vrich, or Tree of Knowledge.

The sacred hill of Sunaghur, lying a few miles to the south of Gwalior, is one of the Meccas of the Jains, and is covered with temples in many styles, which display the fertility of their architectural invention: there are over eighty of these structures in all.

"And now," said Bhima Gandharva next day, "while you are thinking upon temples, and wondering if the Hindus have all been fools, you should complete your collection of mental materials by adding to the sight you have had of a Hindu temple proper, and to the description you have had of Jain temples proper, a sight of those marvelous subterranean works of the Buddhists proper which remain to us. We might select our examples of these either at Ellora or at Ajunta (which are on the mainland a short distance to the north-east of Bombay), the latter of which contains the most complete series of purely Buddhistic caves known in the country; or, indeed, we could find Buddhistic caves just yonder on Salsette. But let us go and see Karli at once: it is the largest shaitya (or cave-temple) in India."

Accordingly, we took railway at Bombay, sped along the isle, over the bridge to the island of Salsette, along Salsette to Tannah, then over the bridge which connects Salsette with the mainland, across the narrow head of Bombay harbor, and so on to the station at Khandalla, about halfway between Bombay and Poonah, where we disembarked. The caves of Karli are situated but a few miles from Khandalla, and in a short time we were standing in front of a talus at the foot of a sloping hill whose summit was probably five to six hundred feet high. A flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to a ledge running out from an escarpment which was something above sixty feet high before giving off into the slope of the mountain. From the narrow and picturesque valley a flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to the platform. We could not see the facade of the shaitya on account of the concealing boscage of trees. On ascending the steps, however, and passing a small square Brahmanic chapel, where we paid a trifling fee to the priests who reside there for the purpose of protecting the place, the entire front of the excavation revealed itself, and with every moment of gazing grew in strangeness and solemn mystery.

The shaitya is hewn in the solid rock of the mountain. Just to the left of the entrance stands a heavy pillar (Silasthamba) completely detached from the temple, with a capital upon whose top stand four lions back to back. On this pillar is an inscription in Pali, which has been deciphered, and which is now considered to fix the date of the excavation conclusively at not later than the second century before the Christian era. The eye took in at first only the vague confusion of windows and pillars cut in the rock. It is supposed that originally a music-gallery stood here in front, consisting of a balcony supported out from the two octagonal pillars, and probably roofed or having a second balcony above. But the woodwork is now gone. One soon felt one's attention becoming concentrated, however, upon a great arched window cut in the form of a horseshoe, through which one could look down what was very much like the nave of a church running straight back into the depths of the hill. Certainly, at first, as one passes into the strange vestibule which intervenes still between the front and the interior of the shaitya, one does not think at all—one only feels the dim sense of mildness raying out from the great faces of the elephants, and of mysterious far-awayness conveyed by the bizarre postures of the sculptured figures on the walls.

Entering the interior, a central nave stretches back between two lines of pillars, each of whose capitals supports upon its abacus two kneeling elephants: upon each elephant are seated two figures, most of which are male and female pairs. The nave extends eighty-one feet three inches back, the whole length of the temple being one hundred and two feet three inches. There are fifteen pillars on each side the nave, which thus enclose between themselves and the wall two side-aisles, each about half the width of the nave, the latter being twenty-five feet and seven inches in width, while the whole width from wall to wall is forty-five feet and seven inches. At the rear, in a sort of apse, are seven plain octagonal pillars—the other thirty are sculptured. Just in front of these seven pillars is the Daghaba—a domed structure covered by a wooden parasol. The Daghaba is the reliquary in which or under which some relic of Gotama Buddha is enshrined. The roof of the shaitya is vaulted, and ribs of teak-wood—which could serve no possible architectural purpose—reveal themselves, strangely enough, running down the sides.

As I took in all these details, pacing round the dark aisles, and finally resuming my stand near the entrance, from which I perceived the aisles, dark between the close pillars and the wall, while the light streamed through the great horseshoe window full upon the Daghaba at the other end, I exclaimed to Bhima Gandharva, "Why, it is the very copy of a Gothic church—the aisles, the nave, the vaulted roof, and all—and yet you tell me it was excavated two thousand years ago!"

"The resemblance has struck every traveler," he replied. "And, strange to say, all the Buddhist cave-temples are designed upon the same general plan. There is always the organ-loft, as you see there; always the three doors, the largest one opening on the nave, the smaller ones each on its side-aisle; always the window throwing its light directly on the Daghaba at the other end; always, in short, the general arrangement of the choir of a Gothic round or polygonal apse cathedral. It is supposed that the devotees were confined to the front part of the temple, and that the great window through which the light comes was hidden from view, both outside by the music-galleries and screens, and inside through the disposition of the worshipers in front. The gloom of the interior was thus available to the priests for the production of effects which may be imagined."

Emerging from the temple, we saw the Buddhist monastery (Vihara), which is a series of halls and cells rising one above the other in stories connected by flights of steps, all hewn in the face of the hill at the side of the temple. We sat down on a fragment of rock near a stream of water with which a spring in the hillside fills a little pool at the entrance of the Vihara. "Tell me something of Gotama Buddha," I said. "Recite some of his deliverances, O Bhima Gandharva!—you who know everything."

"I will recite to you from the Sutta Nipata, which is supposed by many pundits of Ceylon to contain several of the oldest examples of the Pali language. It professes to give the conversation of Buddha, who died five hundred and forty-three years before Christ lived on earth; and these utterances are believed by scholars to have been brought together at least more than two hundred years before the Christian era. The Mahamangala Sutta, of the Nipata Sutta, says, for example: 'Thus it was heard by me. At a certain time Bhagava (Gotama Buddha) lived at Savatthi in Jetavana, in the garden of Anathupindika. Then, the night being far advanced, a certain god, endowed with a radiant color illuminating Jetavana completely, came to where Bhagava was, [and] making obeisance to him, stood on one side. And, standing on one side, the god addressed Bhagava in [these] verses:

"1. Many gods and men, longing after what is good, have considered many things as blessings. Tell us what is the greatest blessing.

"2. Buddha said: Not serving fools, but serving the wise, and honoring those worthy of being honored: this is the greatest blessing.

"3. The living in a fit country, meritorious deeds done in a former existence, the righteous establishment of one's self: this is the greatest blessing.

"4. Extensive knowledge and science, well-regulated discipline and well-spoken speech: this is the greatest blessing.

"5. The helping of father and mother, the cherishing of child and wife, and the following of a lawful calling: this is the greatest blessing.

"6. The giving alms, a religious life, aid rendered to relatives, blameless acts: this is the greatest blessing.

"7. The abstaining from sins and the avoiding them, the eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds: this is the greatest blessing.

"8. Reverence and humility, contentment and gratefulness, the hearing of the law in the right time: this is the greatest blessing.

"9. Patience and mild speech, the association with those who have subdued their passions, the holding of religious discourse in the right time: this is the greatest blessing.

"10. Temperance and charity, the discernment of holy truth, the perception of Nibbana: this is the greatest blessing.

"11. The mind of any one unshaken by the ways of the world, exemption from sorrow, freedom from passion, and security: this is the greatest blessing.

"12. Those who having done these things become invincible on all sides, attain happiness on all sides: this is the greatest blessing."

"At another time also Gotama Buddha was discoursing on caste. You know that the Hindus are divided into the Brahmans, or the priestly caste, which is the highest; next the Kshatriyas, or the warrior and statesman caste; next the Vaishyas, or the herdsman and farmer caste; lastly, the Sudras, or the menial caste. Now, once upon a time the two youths Vasettha and Bharadvaja had a discussion as to what constitutes a Brahman. Thus, Vasettha and Bharadvaja went to the place where Bhagava was, and having approached him were well pleased with him; and having finished a pleasing and complimentary conversation, they sat down on one side. Vasettha, who sat down on one side, addressed Buddha in verse: ...

"3. O Gotama! we have a controversy regarding [the distinctions of] birth. Thus know, O wise one! the point of difference between us: Bharadvaja says that a Brahman is such by reason of his birth.

"4. But I affirm that he is such by reason of his conduct....

"7. Bhagava replied: ...

"53. I call him alone a Brahman who is fearless, eminent, heroic, a great sage, a conqueror, freed from attachments—one who has bathed in the waters of wisdom, and is a Buddha.

"54. I call him alone a Brahman who knows his former abode, who sees both heaven and hell, and has reached the extinction of births.

"55. What is called 'name' or 'tribe' in the world arises from usage only. It is adopted here and there by common consent.

"56. It comes from long and uninterrupted usage, and from the false belief of the ignorant. Hence the ignorant assert that a Brahman is such from birth.

"57. One is not a Brahman nor a non-Brahman by birth: by his conduct alone is he a Brahman, and by his conduct alone is he a non-Brahman,

"58. By his conduct he is a husbandman, an artisan, a merchant, a servant;

"59. By his conduct he is a thief, a warrior, a sacrificer, a king....

"62. One is a Brahman from penance, charity, observance of the moral precepts and the subjugation of the passions. Such is the best kind of Brahmanism."

"That would pass for very good republican doctrine in Jonesville," I said. "What a pity you have all so backslidden from your orthodoxies here in India, Bhima Gandharva! In my native land there is a region where many orange trees grow. Sometimes, when a tree is too heavily fertilized, it suddenly shoots out in great luxuriance, and looks as if it were going to make oranges enough for the whole world, so to speak. But somehow, no fruit comes: it proves to be all wood and no oranges, and presently the whole tree changes and gets sick and good for nothing. It is a disease which the natives call 'the dieback.' Now, it seems to me that when you old Aryans came from—from—well, from wherever you did come from—you branched out at first into a superb magnificence of religions and sentiments and imaginations and other boscage. But it looks now as if you were really bad off with the dieback."

It was, however, impossible to perceive that Bhima Gandharva's smile was like anything other than the same plain full of ripe corn.



LADY ARTHUR EILDON'S DYING LETTER.

I.

Lady Arthur Eildon was a widow: she was a remarkable woman, and her husband, Lord Arthur Eildon, had been a remarkable man. He was a brother of the duke of Eildon, and was very remarkable in his day for his love of horses and dogs. But this passion did not lead him into any evil ways: he was a thoroughly upright, genial man, with a frank word for every one, and was of course a general favorite. "He'll just come in and crack away as if he was ane o' oorsels," was a remark often made concerning him by the people on his estates; for he had estates which had been left to him by an uncle, and which, with the portion that fell to him as a younger son, yielded him an ample revenue, so that he had no need to do anything.

What talents he might have developed in the army or navy, or even in the Church, no one knows, for he never did anything in this world except enjoy himself; which was entirely natural to him, and not the hard work it is to many people who try it. He was in Parliament for a number of years, but contented himself with giving his vote. He did not distinguish himself. He was not an able or intellectual man: people said he would never set the Thames on fire, which was true; but if an open heart and hand and a frank tongue are desirable things, these he had. As he took in food, and it nourished him without further intervention on his part, so he took in enjoyment and gave it out to the people round him with equal unconsciousness. Let it not be said that such a man as this is of no value in a world like ours: he is at once an anodyne and a stimulant of the healthiest and most innocent kind.

As was meet, he first saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the mouths of the public.

Miss Garscube was said to be clever—she was certainly eccentric—and she was no beauty, but community of tastes in the matter of horses and dogs drew her and Lord Arthur together.

On one of the choicest of October days, when she was following the hounds, and her horse had taken the fences like a creature with wings, he came to one which he also flew over, but fell on the other side, throwing off his rider—on soft grass, luckily. But almost before an exclamation of alarm could leave the mouths of the hunters behind, Miss Garscube was on her feet and in the saddle, and her horse away again, as if both had been ignorant of the little mishap that had occurred. Lord Arthur was immediately behind, and witnessed this bit of presence of mind and pluck with unfeigned admiration: it won his heart completely; and on her part she enjoyed the genuineness of his homage as she had never enjoyed anything before, and from that day things went on and prospered between them.

People who knew both parties regretted this, and shook their heads over it, prophesying that no good could come of it. Miss Garscube's will had never been crossed in her life, and she was a "clever" woman: Lord Arthur would not submit to her domineering ways, and she would wince under and be ashamed of his want of intellect. All this was foretold and thoroughly believed by people having the most perfect confidence in their own judgment, so that Lord Arthur and his wife ought to have been, in the very nature of things, a most wretched pair. But, as it turned out, no happier couple existed in Great Britain. Their qualities must have been complementary, for they dovetailed into each other as few people do; and the wise persons who had predicted the contrary were entirely thrown out in their calculations—a fact which they speedily forgot; nor did it diminish their faith in their own wisdom, as, indeed, how could one slight mistake stand against an array of instances in which their predictions had been verified to the letter?

Lord Arthur might not have the intellect which fixes the attention of a nation, but he had plenty for his own fireside—at least, his wife never discovered any want of it—and as for her strong will, they had only one strong will between them, so that there could be no collision. Being thus thoroughly attached and thoroughly happy, what could occur to break up this happiness? A terrible thing came to pass. Having had perfect health up to middle life, an acutely painful disease seized Lord Arthur, and after tormenting him for more than a year it changed his face and sent him away.

There is nothing more striking than the calmness and dignity with which people will meet death—even people from whom this could not have been expected. No one who did not know it would have guessed how Lord Arthur was suffering, and he never spoke of it, least of all to his wife; while she, acutely aware of it and vibrating with sympathy, never spoke of it to him; and they were happy as those are who know that they are drinking the last drops of earthly happiness. He died with his wife's hand in his grasp: she gave the face—dead, but with the appearance of life not vanished from it—one long, passionate kiss, and left him, nor ever looked on it again.

Lady Arthur secluded herself for some weeks in her own room, seeing no one but the servants who attended her; and when she came forth it was found that her eccentricity had taken a curious turn: she steadily ignored the death of her husband, acting always as if he had gone on a journey and might at any moment return, but never naming him unless it was absolutely necessary. She found comfort in this simulated delusion no doubt, just as a child enjoys a fairy-tale, knowing perfectly well all the time that it is not true. People in her own sphere said her mind was touched: the common people about her affirmed without hesitation that she was "daft." She rode no more, but she kept all the horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for antiquities; she wrote poetry—- ballad poetry—which people who were considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things into the awful chasm that had been made in her life, she tried her best to fill it up. She set herself to consider the poor man's case, and made experiments and gave advice which confirmed her poorer brethren in their opinion that she was daft; but as her hand was always very wide open, and they pitied her sorrow, she was much loved, although they laughed at her zeal in preserving old ruins and her wrath if an old stone was moved, and told, and firmly believed, that she wrote and posted letters to Lord Arthur. What was perhaps more to the purpose of filling the chasm than any of these things, Lady Arthur adopted a daughter, an orphan child of a cousin of her own, who came to her two years after her husband's death, a little girl of nine.

II.

Alice Garscube's education was not of the stereotyped kind. When she came to Garscube Hall, Lady Arthur wrote to the head-master of a normal school asking if he knew of a healthy, sagacious, good-tempered, clever girl who had a thorough knowledge of the elementary branches of education and a natural taste for teaching. Mr. Boyton, the head-master, replied that he knew of such a person whom he could entirely recommend, having all the qualities mentioned; but when he found that it was not a teacher for a village school that her ladyship wanted, but for her own relation, he wrote to say that he doubted the party he had in view would hardly be suitable: her father, who had been dead for some years, was a workingman, and her mother, who had died quite recently, supported herself by keeping a little shop, and she herself was in appearance and manner scarcely enough of the lady for such a situation. Now, Lady Arthur, though a firm believer in birth and race, and by habit and prejudice an aristocrat and a Tory, was, we know, eccentric by nature, and Nature will always assert itself. She wrote to Mr. Boyton that if the girl he recommended was all he said, she was a lady inside, and they would leave the outside to shift for itself. Her ladyship had considered the matter. She could get decayed gentlewomen and clergymen and officers' daughters by the dozen, but she did not want a girl with a sickly knowledge of everything, and very sickly ideas of her own merits and place and work in the world: she wanted a girl of natural sagacity, who from her cradle had known that she came into the world to do something, and had learned how to do it.

Miss Adamson, the normal-school young lady recommended, wrote thus to Lady Arthur:

"MADAM: I am very much tempted to take the situation you offer me. If I were teacher of a village school, as I had intended, when my work in the school was over I should have had my time to myself; and I wish to stipulate that when the hours of teaching Miss Garscube are over I may have the same privilege. If you engage me, I think, so far as I know myself, you will not be disappointed.

"I am," etc. etc.

To which Lady Arthur:

"So far as I can judge, you are the very thing I want. Come, and we shall not disagree about terms," etc. etc.

Thus it came about that Miss Garscube was unusually lucky in the matter of her education and Miss Adamson in her engagement. Although eccentric to the pitch of getting credit for being daft, Lady Arthur had a strong vein of masculine sense, which in all essential things kept her in the right path. Miss Adamson and she suited each other thoroughly, and the education of the two ladies and the child may be said to have gone on simultaneously. Miss Adamson had an absorbing pursuit: she was an embryo artist, and she roused a kindred taste in her pupil; so that, instead of carrying on her work in solitude, as she had expected to do, she had the intense pleasure of sympathy and companionship. Lady Arthur often paid them long visits in their studio; she herself sketched a little, but she had never excelled in any single pursuit except horsemanship, and that she had given up at her husband's death, as she had given up keeping much company or going often into society.

In this quiet, unexciting, regular life Lady Arthur's antiquarian tastes grew on her, and she went on writing poetry, the quantity of which was more remarkable than the quality, although here and there in the mass of ore there was an occasional sparkle from fine gold (there are few voluminous writers in which this accident does not occur). She superintended excavations, and made prizes of old dust and stones and coins and jewelry (or what was called ancient jewelry: it looked ancient enough, but more like rusty iron to the untrained eye than jewelry) and cooking utensils supposed to have been used by some noble savages or other. Of these and such like she had a museum, and she visited old monuments and cairns and Roman camps and Druidical remains and old castles, and all old things, with increasing interest. There were a number of places near or remote to which she was in the habit of making periodical pilgrimages—places probably dear to her from whim or association or natural beauty or antiquity. When she fixed a time for such an excursion, no weather changed her purpose: it might pour rain or deep snow might be on the ground: she only put four horses to her carriage instead of two, and went on her way. She was generally accompanied in these expeditions by her two young friends, who got into the spirit of the thing and enjoyed them amazingly. They were in the habit of driving to some farm-house, where they left the carriage and on foot ascended the hill they had come to call on, most probably a hill with the marks of a Roman camp on it—there are many such in the south of Scotland—hills called "the rings" by the people, from the way in which the entrenchments circle round them like rings.

Dear to Lady Arthur's heart was such a place as this. Even when the ground was covered with snow or ice she would ascend with the help of a stick or umbrella, a faint adumbration of the Alpine Club when as yet the Alpine Club lurked in the future and had given no hint of its existence. On the top of such a hill she would eat luncheon, thinking of the dust of legions beneath her foot, and drink wine to the memory of the immortals. The coachman and the footman who toiled up the hill bearing the luncheon-basket, and slipping back two steps for every one they took forward, had by no means the same respect for the immortal heroes. The coachman was an old servant, and had a great regard for Lady Arthur both as his mistress and as a lady of rank, besides being accustomed to and familiar with her whims, and knowing, as he said, "the best and the warst o' her;" but the footman was a new acquisition and young, and he had not the wisdom to see at all times the duty of giving honor to whom honor is due, nor yet had he the spirit of the born flunkey; and his intercourse with the nobility, unfortunately, had not impressed him with any other idea than that they were mortals like himself; so he remarked to his fellow-servant, "Od! ye wad think, if she likes to eat her lunch amang snawy slush, she might get enough of it at the fut o' the hill, without gaun to the tap."

"Weel, I'll no deny," said the older man, "but what it's daftlike, but if it is her leddyship's pleasure, it's nae business o' oors."

"Pleasure!" said the youth: "if she ca's this pleasure, her friends should see about shutting her up: it's time."

"She says the Romans once lived here," said John.

"If they did," Thomas said, "I daur say they had mair sinse than sit down to eat their dinner in the middle o' snaw if they had a house to tak it in."

"Her leddyship does na' tak the cauld easy," said John.

"She has the constitution o' a horse," Thomas remarked.

"Man," said John, "that shows a' that ye ken about horses: there's no a mair delicate beast on the face o' the earth than the horse. They tell me a' the horses in London hae the influenza the now."

"Weel, it'll be our turn next," said Thomas, "if we dinna tak something warm."

When luncheon was over her ladyship as often as not ordered her servants to take the carriage round by the turnpike-road to a given point, where she arranged to meet it, while she herself struck right over the hills as the crow flies, crossing the burns on her way in the same manner as the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, only the water did not stand up on each side and leave dry ground for her to tread on; but she ignored the water altogether, and walked straight through. The young ladies, knowing this, took an extra supply of stockings and shoes with them, but Lady Arthur despised such effeminate ways and drove home in the footgear she set out in. She was a woman of robust health, and having grown stout and elderly and red-faced, when out on the tramp and divested of externals she might very well have been taken for the eccentric landlady of a roadside inn or the mistress of a luncheon-bar; and probably her young footman did not think she answered to her own name at all.

There is a divinity that doth hedge a king, but it is the king's wisdom to keep the hedge close and well trimmed and allow no gaps: if there are gaps, people see through them and the illusion is destroyed. Lady Arthur was not a heroine to her footman; and when she traversed the snow-slush and walked right through the burns, he merely endorsed the received opinion that she wanted "twopence of the shilling." If she had been a poor woman and compelled to take such a journey in such weather, people would have felt sorry for her, and have been ready to subscribe to help her to a more comfortable mode of traveling; but in Lady Arthur's case of course there was nothing to be done but to wonder at her eccentricity.

But her ladyship knew what she was about. The sleep as well as the food of the laboring man is sweet, and if nobility likes to labor, it will partake of the poor man's blessing. The party arrived back among the luxurious appointments of Garscube Hall (which were apt to pall on them at times) legitimately and bodily tired, and that in itself was a sensation worth working for. They had braved difficulty and discomfort, and not for a nonsensical and fruitless end, either: it can never be fruitless or nonsensical to get face to face with Nature in any of her moods. The ice-locked streams, the driven snow, the sleep of vegetation, a burst of sunshine over the snow, the sough of the winter wind, Earth waiting to feel the breath of spring on her face to waken up in youth and beauty again, like the sleeping princess at the touch of the young prince,—all these are things richly to be enjoyed, especially by strong, healthy people: let chilly and shivering mortals sing about cozy fires and drawn curtains if they like. Besides, Miss Adamson had the eye of an artist, upon which nothing, be it what it may, is thrown away.

But an expedition to a hill with "rings" undertaken on a long midsummer day looked fully more enjoyable to the common mind: John, and even the footman approved of that, and another individual, who had become a frequent visitor at the hall, approved of it very highly indeed, and joined such a party as often as he could.

This was George Eildon, the only son of a brother of the late Lord Arthur.

Now comes the tug—well, not of war, certainly, but, to change the figure—now comes the cloud no bigger than a man's hand which is to obscure the quiet sunshine of the regular and exemplary life of these three ladies.

Having been eight years at Garscube Hall, as a matter of necessity and in the ordinary course of Nature, Alice Garscube had grown up to womanhood. With accustomed eccentricity, Lady Arthur entirely ignored this. As for bringing her "out," as the phrase is, she had no intention of it, considering that one of the follies of life: Lady Arthur was always a law to herself. Alice was a shy, amiable girl, who loved her guardian fervently (her ladyship had the knack of gaining love, and also of gaining the opposite in pretty decisive measure), and was entirely swayed by her; indeed, it never occurred to her to have a will of her own, for her nature was peculiarly sweet and guileless.

III.

Lady Arthur thought George Eildon a good-natured, rattling lad, with very little head. This was precisely the general estimate that had been formed of her late husband, and people who had known both thought George the very fac-simile of his uncle Arthur. If her ladyship had been aware of this, it would have made her very indignant: she had thought her husband perfect while living, and thought of him as very much more than perfect now that he lived only in her memory. But she made George very welcome as often as he came: she liked to have him in the house, and she simply never thought of Alice and him in connection with each other. She always had a feeling of pity for George.

"You know," she would say to Miss Adamson and Alice—"you know, George was of consequence for the first ten years of his life: it was thought that his uncle the duke might never marry, and he was the heir; but when the duke married late in life and had two sons, George was extinguished, poor fellow! and it was hard, I allow."

"It is not pleasant to be a poor gentleman," said Miss Adamson.

"It is not only not pleasant," said Lady Arthur, "but it is a false position, which is very trying, and what few men can fill to advantage. If George had great abilities, it might be different, with his connection, but I doubt he is doomed to be always as poor as a church mouse."

"He may get on in his profession perhaps," said Alice, sharing in Lady Arthur's pity for him. (George Eildon had been an attache to some foreign embassy.)

"Never," said Lady Arthur decisively. "Besides, it is a profession that is out of date now. Men don't go wilily to work in these days; but if they did, the notion of poor George, who could not keep a secret or tell a lie with easy grace if it were to save his life—the notion of making him a diplomatist is very absurd. No doubt statesmen are better without original ideas—their business is to pick out the practical ideas of other men and work them well—but George wants ability, poor fellow! They ought to have put him into the Church: he reads well, he could have read other men's sermons very effectively, and the duke has some good livings in his gift."

Now, Miss Adamson had been brought up a Presbyterian of the Presbyterians, and among people to whom "the paper" was abhorrent: to read a sermon was a sin—to read another man's sermon was a sin of double-dyed blackness. However, either her opinions were being corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley to prop her own.

Miss Adamson merely said, "Do you not underrate Mr. Eildon's abilities?"

"I think not. If he had abilities, he would have been showing them by this time. But of course I don't blame him: few of the Eildons have been men of mark—none in recent times except Lord Arthur—but they have all been respectable men, whose lives would stand inspection; and George is the equal of any of them in that respect. As a clergyman he would have set a good example."

Hearing a person always pitied and spoken slightingly of does not predispose any one to fall in love with that person. Miss Garscube's feelings of this nature still lay very closely folded up in the bud, and the early spring did not come at this time to develop them in the shape of George Eildon; but Mr. Eildon was sufficiently foolish and indiscreet to fall in love with her. Miss Adamson was the only one of the three ladies cognizant of this state of affairs, but as her creed was that no one had any right to make or meddle in a thing of this kind, she saw as if she saw not, though very much interested. She saw that Miss Garscube was as innocent of the knowledge that she had made a conquest as it was possible to be, and she felt surprised that Lady Arthur's sight was not sharper. But Lady Arthur was—or at least had been—a woman of the world, and the idea of a penniless man allowing himself to fall in love seriously with a penniless girl in actual life could not find admission into her mind: if she had been writing a ballad it would have been different; indeed, if you had only known Lady Arthur through her poetry, you might have believed her to be a very, romantic, sentimental, unworldly person, for she really was all that—on paper.

Mr. Eildon was very frequently in the studio where Miss Adamson and her pupil worked, and he was always ready to accompany them in their excursions, and, Lady Arthur said, "really made himself very useful."

It has been said that John and Thomas both approved of her ladyship's summer expeditions in search of the picturesque, or whatever else she might take it into her head to look for; and when she issued orders for a day among the hills in a certain month of August, which had been a specially fine month in point of weather, every one was pleased. But John and Thomas found it nearly as hard work climbing with the luncheon-basket in the heat of the midsummer sun as it was when they climbed to the same elevation in midwinter; only they did not slip back so fast, nor did they feel that they were art and part in a "daftlike" thing.

"Here," said Lady Arthur, raising her glass to her lips—"here is to the memory of the Romans, on whose dust we are resting."

"Amen!" said Mr. Eildon; "but I am afraid you don't find their dust a very soft resting-place: they were always a hard people, the Romans."

"They were a people I admire," said Lady Arthur. "If they had not been called away by bad news from home, if they had been able to stay, our civilization might have been a much older thing than it is.—What do you think, John?" she said, addressing her faithful servitor. "Less than a thousand years ago all that stretch of country that we see so richly cultivated and studded with cozy farm-houses was brushwood and swamp, with a handful of savage inhabitants living in wigwams and dressing in skins."

"It may be so," said John—"no doubt yer leddyship kens best—but I have this to say: if they were savages they had the makin' o' men in them. Naebody'll gar me believe that the stock yer leddyship and me cam o' was na a capital gude stock."

"All right, John," said Mr. Eildon, "if you include me."

"It was a long time to take, surely," said Alice—"a thousand years to bring the country from brushwood and swamp to corn and burns confined to their beds,"

"Nature is never in a hurry, Alice," replied Lady Arthur.

"But she is always busy in a wonderfully quiet way," said Miss Adamson. "Whenever man begins to work he makes a noise, but no one hears the corn grow or the leaves burst their sheaths: even the clouds move with noiseless grace."

"The clouds are what no one can understand yet, I suppose," said Mr. Eildon, "but they don't always look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, as they are doing to-day. What do you say to thunder?"

"That is an exception: Nature does all her best work quietly."

"So does man," remarked George Eildon.

"Well, I dare say you are right, after all," said Miss Adamson, who was sketching. "I wish I could paint in the glitter on the blade of that reaping-machine down in the haugh there: see, it gleams every time the sun's rays hit it. It is curious how Nature makes the most of everything to heighten her picture, and yet never makes her bright points too plentiful."

Just at that moment the sun's rays seized a small pane of glass in the roof of a house two or three miles off down the valley, and it shot out light and sparkles that dazzled the eye to look at.

"That is a fine effect," cried Alice: "it looks like the eye of an archangel kindling up,"

"What a flight of fancy, Alice!" Lady Arthur said. "That reaping-machine does its work very well, but it will be a long time before it gathers a crust of poetry about it: stopping to clear a stone out of its way is different from a lad and a lass on the harvest-rig, the one stopping to take a thorn out of the finger of the other."

"There are so many wonderful things," said Alice, "that one gets always lost among them. How the clouds float is wonderful, and that with the same earth below and the same heaven above, the heather should be purple, and the corn yellow, and the ferns green, is wonderful; but not so wonderful, I think, as that a man by the touch of genius should have made every one interested in a field-laborer taking a thorn out of the hand of another field-laborer. Catch your poet, and he'll soon make the machine interesting."

"Get a thorn into your finger, Alice," said George Eildon, "and I'll take it out if it is so interesting."

"You could not make it interesting," said she.

"Just try," he said.

"But trying won't do. You know as well as I that there are things no trying will ever do. I am trying to paint, for instance, and in time I shall copy pretty well, but I shall never do more."

"Hush, hush!" said Miss Adamson. "I'm often enough in despair myself, and hearing you say that makes me worse. I rebel at having got just so much brain and no more; but I suppose," she said with a sigh, "if we make the best of what we have, it's all right, and if we had well-balanced minds we should be contented."

"Would you like to stay here longer among the hills and the sheep?" said Lady Arthur. "I have just remembered that I want silks for my embroidery, and I have time to go to town: I can catch the afternoon train. Do any of you care to go?"

"It is good to be here," said Mr. Eildon, "but as we can't stay always, we may as well go now. I suppose."

And John, accustomed to sudden orders, hurried off to get his horses put to the carriage.

Lady Arthur, upon the whole, approved of railways, but did not use them much except upon occasion; and it was only by taking the train she could reach town and be home for dinner on this day.

They reached the station in time, and no more. Mr. Eildon ran and got tickets, and John was ordered to be at the station nearest Garscube Hall to meet them when they returned.

Embroidery, being an art which high-born dames have practiced from the earliest ages, was an employment that had always found favor in the sight of Lady Arthur, and to which she turned when she wanted change of occupation. She took a very short time to select her materials, and they were back and seated in the railway carriage fully ten minutes before the train started. They beguiled the time by looking about the station: it was rather a different scene from that where they had been in the fore part of the day.

"There's surely a mistake," said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow's cap: the princess of Wales was very busy at the third. "Is not that what is called an anachronism, Miss Adamson? Are not sewing-machines a recent invention? There were none in Elizabeth's time, I think?"

"There are people," said Lady Arthur, "who have neither common sense nor a sense of the ridiculous."

"But they have a sense of what will pay," answered her nephew. "That appeals to the heart of the nation—that is, to the masculine heart. If Queen Bess had been handling a lancet, and Queen Vic pounding in a mortar with a pestle, assisted by her daughter-in-law, the case would have been different; but they are at useful womanly work, and the machines will sell. They have fixed themselves in our memories already: that's the object the advertiser had when he pressed the passion of loyalty into his service."

"How will the strong-minded Tudor lady like to see herself revived in that fashion, if she can see it?" asked Miss Garscube.

"She'll like it well, judging by myself," said George: "that's true fame. I should be content to sit cross-legged on a board, stitching pulpit-robes, in a picture, if I were sure it would be hung up three hundred years after this at all the balloon-stations and have the then Miss Garscubes making remarks about me."

"They might not make very complimentary remarks, perhaps," said Alice.

"If they thought of me at all I should be satisfied," said he.

"Couldn't you invent an iron bed, then?" said Miss Adamson, looking at a representation of these articles hanging alongside the three royal ladies. "Perhaps they'll last three hundred years, and if you could bind yourself up with the idea of sweet repose—"

"They won't last three hundred years," said Lady Arthur—"cheap and nasty, new-fangled things!"

"They maybe cheap and nasty," said George, "but new-fangled they are not: they must be some thousands of years old. I am afraid, my dear aunt, you don't read your Bible."

"Don't drag the Bible in among your nonsense. What has it to do with iron beds?" said Lady Arthur.

"If you look into Deuteronomy, third chapter and eleventh verse," said he "you'll find that Og, king of Bashar used an iron bed. It is probably in existence yet, and it must be quite old enough to make it worth your while to look after it: perhaps Mr. Cook would personally conduct you, or if not I should be glad to be your escort."

"Thank you," she said: "when I go in search of Og's bed I'll take you with me."

"You could not do better: I have the scent of a sleuth-hound for antiquities."

As they were speaking a man came and hung up beside the queens and the iron beds a big white board on which were printed in large black letters the words, "My Mother and I"—nothing more.

"What can the meaning of that be?" asked Lady Arthur.

"To make you ask the meaning of it," said Mr. Eildon. "I who am skilled in these matters have no doubt that it is the herald of some soothing syrup for the human race under the trials of teething." He was standing at the carriage-door till the train would start, and he stood aside to let a young lady and a boy in deep mourning enter. The pair were hardly seated when the girl's eye fell on the great white board and its announcement. She bent her head and hid her face in her handkerchief: it was not difficult to guess that she had very recently parted with her mother for ever, and the words on the board were more than she could stand unmoved.

Miss Adamson too had been thinking of her mother, the hard-working woman who had toiled in her little shop to support her sickly husband and educate her daughter—the kindly patient face, the hands that had never spared themselves, the footsteps that had plodded so incessantly to and fro. The all that had been gone so long came back to her, and she felt almost the pang of first separation, when it seemed as if the end of her life had been extinguished and the motive-power for work had gone. But she carried her mother in her heart: with her it was still "my mother and I."

Lady Arthur did not think of her mother: she had lost her early, and besides, her thoughts and feelings had been all absorbed by her husband.

Alice Garscube had never known her mother, and as she looked gravely at the girl who was crying behind her handkerchief, she envied her—she had known her mother.

As for Mr. Eildon, he had none but bright and happy thoughts connected with his mother. It was true, she was a widow, but she was a kind and stately lady, round whom her family moved as round a sun and centre, giving light and heat and all good cheer; he could afford to joke about "my mother and I."

What a vast deal of varied emotion these words must have stirred in the multitudes of travelers coming and going in all directions!

In jumping into the carriage when the last bell rang, Mr. Eildon missed his footing and fell back, with no greater injury, fortunately, than grazing the skin, of his hand.

"Is it much hurt?" Lady Arthur asked.

He held it up and said, "'Who ran to help me when I fell?'"

"The guard," said Miss Garscube.

"'Who kissed the place to make it well?'" he continued.

"You might have been killed," said Miss Adamson.

"That would not have been a pretty story to tell," he said. "I shall need to wait till I get home for the means of cure: 'my mother and I' will manage it. You're not of a pitiful nature, Miss Garscube."

"I keep my pity for a pitiful occasion," she said.

"If you had grazed your hand, I would have applied the prescribed cure."

"Well, but I'm very glad I have not grazed my hand,"

"So am I," he said.

"Let me see it," she said. He held it out. "Would something not need to be done for it?" she asked.

"Yes. Is it interesting—as interesting as the thorn?"

"It is nothing," said Lady Arthur: "a little lukewarm water is all that it needs;" and she thought, "That lad will never do anything either for himself or to add to the prestige of the family. I hope his cousins have more ability."

IV.

But what these cousins were to turn out no one knew. They had that rank which gives a man what is equivalent to a start of half a lifetime over his fellows, and they promised well; but they were only boys as yet, and Nature puts forth many a choice blossom and bud that never comes to maturity, or, meeting with blight or canker on the way, turns out poor fruit. The eldest, a lad in his teens, was traveling on the Continent with a tutor: the second, a boy who had been always delicate, was at home on account of his health. George Eildon was intimate with both, and loved them with a love as true as that he bore to Alice Garscube: it never occurred to him that they had come into the world to keep him out of his inheritance. He would have laughed at such an idea. Many people would have said that he was laughing on the wrong side of his mouth: the worldly never can understand the unworldly.

Mr. Eildon gave Miss Garscube credit for being at least as unworldly as himself: he believed thoroughly in her genuineness, her fresh, unspotted nature; and, the wish being very strong, he believed that she had a kindness for him.

When he and his hand got home he found it quite able to write her a letter, or rather not so much a letter as a burst of enthusiastic aspiration, asking her to marry him.

She was startled; and never having decided on anything in her life, she carried this letter direct to Lady Arthur.

"Here's a thing," she said, "that I don't know what to think of."

"What kind of thing, Alice?"

"A letter."

"Who is it from?"

"Mr. Eildon."

"Indeed! I should not think a letter from him would be a complicated affair or difficult to understand."

"Neither is it: perhaps you would read it?"

"Certainly, if you wish it." When she had read the document she said, "Well I never gave George credit for much wisdom, but I did not think he was foolish enough for a thing like this; and I never suspected it. Are you in love too?" and Lady Arthur laughed heartily: it seemed to strike her in a comic light.

"No. I never thought of it or of him either," Alice said, feeling queer and uncomfortable.

"Then that simplifies matters. I always thought George's only chance in life was to marry a wealthy woman, and how many good, accomplished women there are, positively made of money, who would give anything to marry into our family!"

"Are there?" said Alice.

"To be sure there are. Only the other day I read in a newspaper that people are all so rich now money is no distinction: rank is, however. You can't make a lawyer or a shipowner or an ironmaster into a peer of several hundred years' descent."

"No, you can't," said Alice; "but Mr. Eildon is not a peer, you know."

"No, but he is the grandson of one duke and the nephew of another; and if he could work for it he might have a peerage of his own, or if he had great wealth he would probably get one. For my own part, I don't count much on rank or wealth" (she believed this), "but they are privileges people have no right to throw away."

"Not even if they don't care for them?" asked Alice,

"No: whatever you have it is your duty to care for and make the best of."

"Then, what am I to say to Mr. Eildon?"

"Tell him it is absurd; and whatever you say, put it strongly, that there may be no more of it. Why, he must know that you would be beggars."

Acting up to her instructions, Alice wrote thus to Mr. Eildon:

"DEAR MR. EILDON: Your letter surprised me. Lady Arthur says it is absurd; besides, I don't care for you a bit. I don't mean that I dislike you, for I don't dislike any one. We wonder you could be so foolish, and Lady Arthur says there must be no more of it; and she is right. I hope you will forget all about this, and believe me to be your true friend,

"ALICE GARSCUBE.

"P.S. Lady Arthur says you haven't got anything to live on; but if you had all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't make any difference.

"A. G."

This note fell into George Eildon's mind like molten lead dropped on living flesh. "She is not what I took her to be," he said to himself, "or she never could have written that, even at Lady Arthur's suggestion; and Lady Arthur ought to have known better."

And she certainly ought to have known better; yet he might have found some excuse for Alice if he had allowed himself to think, but he did not: he only felt, and felt very keenly.

In saying that Mr. Eildon and Miss Garscube were penniless, the remark is not to be taken literally, for he had an income of fifteen hundred pounds, and she had five hundred a year of her own; but in the eyes of people moving in ducal circles matrimony on two thousand pounds seems as improvident a step as that of the Irishman who marries when he has accumulated sixpence appears to ordinary beings.

Mr. Eildon spent six weeks at a shooting-box belonging to his uncle the duke, after which he went to London, where he got a post under government—a place which was by no means a sinecure, but where there was plenty of work not over-paid. Before leaving he called for a few minutes at Garscube Hall to say good-bye, and that was all they saw of him.

Alice missed him: a very good thing, of which she had been as unconscious as she was of the atmosphere, had been withdrawn from her life. George's letter had nailed him to her memory: she thought of him very often, and that is a dangerous thing for a young lady to do if she means to keep herself entirely fancy free. She wondered if his work was very hard work, and if he was shut in an office all day; she did not think he was made for that; it seemed as unnatural as putting a bird into a cage. She made some remark of this kind to Lady Arthur, who laughed and said, "Oh, George won't kill himself with hard work." From that time forth Alice was shy of speaking of him to his aunt. But she had kept his letter, and indulged herself with a reading of it occasionally; and every time she read it she seemed to understand it better. It was a mystery to her how she had been so intensely stupid as not to understand it at first. And when she found a copy of her own answer to it among her papers—one she had thrown aside on account of a big blot—she wondered if it was possible she had sent such a thing, and tears of shame and regret stood in her eyes. "How frightfully blind I was!" she said to herself. But there was no help for it: the thing was done, and could not be undone. She had grown in wisdom since then, but most people reach wisdom through ignorance and folly.

In these circumstances she found Miss Adamson a very valuable friend. Miss Adamson had never shared Lady Arthur's low estimate of Mr. Eildon: she liked his sweet, unworldly nature, and she had a regard for him as having aims both lower and higher than a "career." That he should love Miss Garscube seemed to her natural and good, and that happiness might be possible even to a duke's grandson on such a pittance as two thousand pounds a year was an article of her belief: she pitied people who go through life sacrificing the substance for the shadow. Yes, Miss Garscube could speak of Mr. Eildon to her friend and teacher, and be sure of some remark that gave her comfort.

V.

A year sped round again, and they heard of Mr. Eildon being in Scotland at the shooting, and as he was not very far off, they expected to see him any time. But it was getting to the end of September, and he had paid no visit, when one day, as the ladies were sitting at luncheon, he came in, looking very white and agitated. They were all startled: Miss Garscube grew white also, and felt herself trembling. Lady Arthur rose hurriedly and said, "What is it, George? what's the matter?"

"A strange thing has happened," he said. "I only heard of it a few minutes ago: a man rode after me with the telegram. My cousin George—Lord Eildon—has fallen down a crevasse in the Alps and been killed. Only a week ago I parted with him full of life and spirit, and I loved him as if he had been my brother;" and he bent his head to hide tears.

They were all silent for some moments: then in a low voice Lady Arthur said, "I am sorry for his father."

"I am sorry for them all," George said. "It is terrible;" then after a little he said, "You'll excuse my leaving you: I am going to Eildon at once: I may be of some service to them. I don't know how Frank will be able to bear this."

After he had gone away Alice felt how thoroughly she was nothing to him now: there had been no sign in his manner that he had ever thought of her at all, more than of any other ordinary acquaintance. If he had only looked to her for the least sympathy! But he had not. "If he only knew how well I understand him now!" she thought.

"It is a dreadful accident," said Lady Arthur, "and I am sorry for the duke and duchess." She said this in a calm way. It had always been her opinion that Lord Arthur's relations had never seen the magnitude of her loss, and this feeling lowered the temperature of her sympathy, as a wind blowing over ice cools the atmosphere. "I think George's grief very genuine," she continued: "at the same time he can't but see that there is only that delicate lad's life, that has been hanging so long by a hair, between him and the title."

"Lady Arthur!" exclaimed Alice in warm tones.

"I know, my dear, you are thinking me very unfeeling, but I am not: I am only a good deal older than you. George's position to-day is very different from what it was a year ago. If he were to write to you again, I would advise another kind of answer."

"He'll never write again," said Alice in a tone which struck the ear of Lady Arthur, so that when the young girl left the room she turned to Miss Adamson and said, "Do you think she really cares about him?"

"She has not made me her confidante," that lady answered, "but my own opinion is that she does care a good deal for Mr. Eildon."

"Do you really think so?" exclaimed Lady Arthur. "She said she did not at the time, and I thought then, and think still, that it would not signify much to George whom he married; and you know he would be so much the better for money. But if he is to be his uncle's successor, that alters the case entirely. I'll go to Eildon myself, and bring him back with me."

Lady Arthur went to Eildon and mingled her tears with those of the stricken parents, whose grief might have moved a very much harder heart than hers. But they did not see the state of their only remaining son as Lady Arthur and others saw it; for, while it was commonly thought that he would hardly reach maturity, they were sanguine enough to believe that he was outgrowing the delicacy of his childhood.

Lady Arthur asked George to return with her to Garscube Hall, but he said he could not possibly do so. Then she said she had told Miss Adamson and Alice that she would bring him with her, and they would be disappointed.

"Tell them," he said, "that I have very little time to spare, and I must spend it with Frank, when I am sure they will excuse me."

They excused him, but they were not the less disappointed, all the three ladies; indeed, they were so much disappointed that they did not speak of the thing to each other, as people chatter over and thereby evaporate a trifling defeat of hopes.

Mr. Eildon left his cousin only to visit his mother and sisters for a day, and then returned to London; from which it appeared that he was not excessively anxious to visit Garscube Hall.

But everything there went on as usual. The ladies painted, they went excursions, they wrote ballads; still, there was a sense of something being amiss—the heart of their lives seemed dull in its beat.

The more Lady Arthur thought of having sent away such a matrimonial prize from her house, the more she was chagrined; the more Miss Garscube tried not to think of Mr. Eildon, the more her thoughts would run upon him; and even Miss Adamson, who had nothing to regret or reproach herself with, could not help being influenced by the change of atmosphere.

Lady Arthur's thoughts issued in the resolution to re-enter society once more; which resolution she imparted to Miss Adamson in the first instance by saying that she meant to go to London next season.

"Then our plan of life here will be quite broken up," said Miss A.

"Yes, for a time."

"I thought you disliked society?"

"I don't much like it: it is on account of Alice I am going. I may just as well tell you: I want to bring her and George together again if possible."

"Will she go if she knows that is your end?"

"She need not know."

"It is not a very dignified course," Miss Adamson said.

"No, and if it were an ordinary case I should not think of it."

"But you think him a very ordinary man?"

"A duke is different. Consider what an amount of influence Alice would have, and how well she would use it; and he may marry a vain, frivolous, senseless woman, incapable of a good action. Indeed, most likely, for such people are sure to hunt him."

"I would not join in the hunt," said Miss Adamson. "If he is the man you suppose him to be, the wound his self-love got will have killed his love; and if he is the man I think, no hunters will make him their prey. A small man would know instantly why you went to London, and enjoy his triumph."

"I don't think George would: he is too simple; but if I did not think it a positive duty, I would not go. However, we shall see: I don't think of going before the middle of January."

Positive duties can be like the animals that change color with what they feed on.

VI.

When the middle of January came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed, various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took it, his daughter took it, also Thomas the footman, and others of the inhabitants, as well as Lady Arthur. The doctor of the place came and lived In the house; besides that, two of the chief medical men from town paid almost daily visits. Bottles of the water supplied to the hall were sent to eminent chemists for analysis: the drainage was thoroughly examined, and men were set to make it as perfect and innocuous as it is in the nature of drainage to be.

Lady Arthur wished Miss Adamson and Alice to leave the place for a time, but they would not do so: neither of them was afraid, and they stayed and nursed her ladyship well, relieving each other as it was necessary.

At one point of her illness Lady Arthur said to Miss Adamson, who was alone with her, "Well, I never counted on this. Our family have all had a trick of living to extreme old age, never dying till they could not help it; but it will be grand to get away so soon."

Miss Adamson looked at her. "Yes," she said, "it's a poor thing, life, after the glory of it is gone, and I have always had an intense curiosity to see what is beyond. I never could see the sense of making a great ado to keep people alive after they are fifty. Don't look surprised. How are the rest of the people that are ill?" She often asked for them, and expressed great satisfaction when told they were recovering. "It will be all right," she said, "if I am the only death in the place; but there is one thing I want you to do. Send off a telegram to George Eildon and tell him I want to see him immediately: a dying person can say what a living one can't, and I'll make it all right between Alice and him before I go."

Miss Adamson despatched the telegram to Mr. Eildon, knowing that she could not refuse to do Lady Arthur's bidding at such a time, although her feeling was against it. The answer came: Mr. Eildon had just sailed for Australia.

When Lady Arthur heard this she said, "I'll write to him." When she had finished writing she said, "You'll send this to him whenever you get his address. I wish we could have sent it off at once, for it will be provoking if I don't die, after all; and I positively begin to feel as if that were not going to be my luck at this time."

Although she spoke in this way, Miss Adamson knew it was not from foolish irreverence. She recovered, and all who had had the fever recovered, which was remarkable, for in other places it had been very fatal.

With Lady Arthur's returning strength things at the hall wore into their old channels again. When it was considered safe many visits of congratulation were paid, and among others who came were George Eildon's mother and some of his sisters. They were constantly having letters from George: he had gone off very suddenly, and it was not certain when he might return.

Alice heard of George Eildon with interest, but not with the vital interest she had felt in him for a time: that had worn away. She had done her best to this end by keeping herself always occupied, and many things had happened in the interval; besides, she had grown a woman, with all the good sense and right feeling belonging to womanhood, and she would have been ashamed to cherish a love for one who had entirely forgotten her. She dismissed her childish letter, which had given her so much vexation, from her memory, feeling sure that George Eildon had also forgotten it long ago. She did not know of the letter Lady Arthur had written when she believed herself to be dying, and it was well she did not.

VII.

Every one who watched the sun rise on New Year's morning, 1875, will bear witness to the beauty of the sight. Snow had been lying all over the country for some time, and a fortnight of frost had made it hard and dry and crisp. The streams must have felt very queer when they were dropping off into the mesmeric trance, and found themselves stopped in the very act of running, their supple limbs growing stiff and heavy and their voices dying in their throats, till they were thrown into a deep sleep, and a strange white, still, glassy beauty stole over them by the magic power of frost. The sun got up rather late, no doubt—between eight and nine o'clock—probably saying to himself, "These people think I have lost my power—that the Ice King has it all his own way. I'll let them see: I'll make his glory pale before mine."

Lady Arthur was standing at her window when she saw him look over the shoulder of a hill and throw a brilliant deep gold light all over the land covered with snow as with a garment, and every minute crystal glittered as if multitudes of little eyes had suddenly opened and were gleaming and winking under his gaze. To say that the bosom of Mother Earth was crusted with diamonds is to give the impression of dullness unless each diamond could be endowed with life and emotion. Then he threw out shaft after shaft of color—scarlet and crimson and blue and amber and green—which gleamed along the heavens, kindling the cold white snow below them into a passion of beauty: the colors floated and changed form, and mingled and died away. Then the sun drew his thick winter clouds about him, disappeared, and was no more seen that day. He had vindicated his majesty.