and other entrancing subjects, just to consider what this particular lion really did mean. Clearly he had an idea of some kind, that much may be allowed even to an Indian Prince talking transcendental politics,— and was not that an idea this? European observers are accustomed to say that the first distinction between man and the brute is the want in the latter of the accumulative faculty. Rover the retriever learns many things, but Rover's heir is the wiser for very few of those things and Rover's grandson perhaps for none of them, except the one or two which have become caste peculiarities, exceptional faculty, for exam

-the very thing one can so seldom induce a Hindoo to betray. The thought is a remarkable one considered merely as a political utterance. We do not suppose, for example, that any Englishman of cultivation who reads the conversation will ever again believe that Sindhia is a savage, a sort of Ashantee king, a barbarian on whom political argument would be thrown away,-a change of opinion which is in itself a great gain; but that is not our point just now. Sindhia, who occupies among Indian princes very much the position of a Bonaparte among European sovereigns, not exactly a new man, but still a man necessarily at war with the old world, a Prince without a pedigree,ple, of bringing back dead birds without who asked, for example, when the Mutiny broke out why on earth he was expected to support the Indian Bourbon, the heir of Timour, has been thinking hard over a problem which every now and then disturbs all studious politicians. What is the essential difference between an Oriental and a Western European? Why are a few thousand white boors, never a hundred thousand in all, led by a few hundred white gentlemen, never thirty hundred in all, able to coerce two hundred millions of slightly darker persons, of whom the majority are as brave as the said boors, nearly or quite as intelligent as the gentlemen, and decidedly better mannered than both? Why, in short, is society in Asia stereotyped; why cannot this very Sindhia, who, if he lifted his standard and won a battle would have all India at his back, kick us out into outer darkness, as any Western prince ruling Western subjects under the same circumstances infallibly would do? Sindhia has thought that out, he says, for many years,"I have watched it and thought of it long," - has driven about on mail carts incognito, like a modern Haroun al Rashid, seeking light upon that point within British dominion, and not being the fool a person with the golden bronze tinge ought to be, has arrived at a definite conclusion. You English, he says, and "to me it is the most striking thing of all you do, husband your experience in a careful way."

Let us consider that opinion a little. It is a very foolish one no doubt, for Sindhia has the golden bronze tinge, was when this writer saw him fourteen years ago very nearly light copper-coloured, and a person so dark must talk nonsense, but still there is intellectual interest in watching even a poor picture of man painted by a lion, and we may therefore be forgiven for a momentary neglect of the compound householder, and the best means of suppressing the British rough, and the ideas of M. Deleyyani,

eating them. Speculative persons marking this have questioned, cautiously, as becomes persons building a great theory on very imperfect data, whether it may not be possible that there is in each race some sort of a limit to the faculty of accumulation, a limit either of power or of will which it cannot or will not overpass, which once reached, that race begins to stereotype itself. Is there not, in Sindhia's language, a point at which men cease to "husband their experience," being, it may be, content with what they have acquired, -as Chinese, for example, who think they have attained perfection; or unwilling to labour more, like most priesthoods; or lacking storehouses in which to store up the new accumulations, like people who cannot write? Most thoughtful men, we conceive, without directly answering in the affirmative, would consider the proposition worth at least some minutes' reflection, if only because it would be so unspeakably pleasant to see a conceivable possibility of breaking the spell. Just imagine the feeling of the man who found, as the late Dr. Ballantyne of Benares fancied that he had found the talisman, that he could melt the ice and set all Asiatic waters flowing, that he could give the shove which should set Chinaman and Hindoo and Arab all in motion spinning" down," or up, the "ringing grooves of change" and progress towards an independent but indefinitely advancing civilization. Life would be worth having to that man, even if he had gout. We ourselves have repeatedly tried to show that the first proposition is the true one; that a race ceases to accumulate whenever it is content; that the people who believe their social order divine do not and cannot attempt to advance, lest movement should break up a divinely established organization. The Hindoo Brahmins are in that stage, and the Ultramontane clergy of Europe. No, says Sindhia, as we understand him, that is not the true proposition; the third is the truer.

stone, as a Chinese would do, but how many would see it? And why should the discoverer make his knowledge common? The Hindoo world, which in this respect is the whole Asiatic world, has as yet few records; those are scarce, costly, and confined by an etiquette as strong as a law to comparative

My people are stereotyped because they it that all mankind, or a large section of have reached the limit of their mechanical mankind, should benefit by it. We might resources for accumulation, have reached describe the theory of spectrum analysis on the margin of their mechanical or moral power of "husbanding their experience." To me the most striking is the careful way in which you husband your experience. Your records are so preserved that in almost all the positions filled by your officers the current of business is little affected by the men themselves. With a Native Gov-ly few families. No secular book other ernment it is entirely otherwise; its servants pay no deference to the records of their predecessors to follow them if such can be said to exist rather the reverse. The incumbent of the office probably strives to undo what has been done." The mere keeping of records, it will be seen, of those "writings" which most Anglo-Indians condemn, strikes Sindhia as a source of power, of an incessant increase of force, of a growth, to put it in one word, wanting in the native society of which he is the representative. In other words, the quasi-mechanical habit of keeping the information one has got, and giving it to the next man who wants it, makes the whole difference between progress and stagnation, between Western Europe and the Eastern World.

than an almanack, and, we believe, a translation of Robinson Crusoe, has ever attained a circulation in India which would fairly pay expenses, and no manuscript, not more or less religious, can be said to be popularly known. No experience is really husbanded except by tradition, and verbal tradition is liable to sudden gaps, while nothing which is so transmitted can, if lost, be recovered. Entire arts have, in this way, been lost in India by the extinction of the castes who keep the tradition. It is very difficult, or, say impossible, to hand down history thus

ask the sons of English soldiers about Waterloo- and nearly as difficult to preserve political ideas, or any but the most elementary social laws. Question a country squire whose grandfather would have died It is clearly a half-truth that, but may for Pitt as to Pitt's ideas, or ask the new not even a half-truth if it be a real half-truth generation to explain any change-like the be of importance, when, if it were a whole change in the criminal law which occurred truth, it would change the face of the world between the time when their school books as undoubtedly this one would? The mere end and their personal experience begins. mechanical faculty, or rather habit, of rec- Naturally a race aware that every idea or ord, of stowing up knowledge in a granary, rule is liable to be falsified, recurs perpetuis one which can be communicated, which ally to the past in order to prevent falsificamay as easily be acquired by a race like, for tion, protects itself by prohibiting change in instance, the Hindoos, as by a class like, the few good laws it has acquired, and for instance, the hereditary labourers of guards a social order it approves by declarYorkshire. We know that education, much ing it beyond change, and thus makes proif not all of which is intended to teach the gress impossible to itself, except as the reYorkshire lads to study recorded experi-sult of foreign conquest, or of a social cataence, has changed them, and why should it clysm. Sindhia directly applies his thought not also change the natives of India, or only to the domain of political administraEgypt, or Thibet? Access to such records tion, being interested mainly in that; but it did once change Europe. The origin of the is clear from the context that he thought Renaissance, the great movement which this husbanding of experience the source of founded modern society, was just that, that social peculiarity which strikes all naaccess, through the fall of Constantinople, tives of India with wonder -the perfect to the husbanded and recorded experience reliance of the English upon each otherof the ancient world, and more especially to the suppression among them of the individits granary of ideas. The Italians read the ual will, which natives with no vast granary manuscripts the flying Greeks carried with of experience cultivate till, as Sindhia says, them, and added their experience to their every man, unless prevented by religious own, and the Old World slowly melted tradition, upsets every other's work. And away. We all acknowledge in words the is not the existence of law, and particularly power of the printing-press, but we scarcely secular law, as a system of thought controlunderstand, as Sindhia from his experience ling individual will, wholly dependent upon understands, what its absence would mean, this power of husbanding experience, of how difficult it would be without it to "hus-recording the knowledge acquired by longband experience," or rather so to husband continued dealing with mankind? Of course

the removal of mere mechanical difficulties | shame it is that such composts and such in the way of such recording will not be stenches should exist!" The obvious reply sufficient to melt the stereotyped surface of to our moraliser of the sewers would be that Asiatic society. The Orientals might if they by such existences he derives his living, and liked have kept all the knowledge they acquired in writing, as the Benedictines pretty honestly tried to do. Something more must be born among them, a wish to husband experience; but we know that education evokes this among classes as stereotyped as they are, the British husbandmen, and why not among them? Little has been done as yet, no doubt; but, after all, the first native type was cast in the lifetime of men still living, and already we have Sindhia, that is, a Hindoo Prince, who calmly suggests a crude and imperfect, but still distinct and philosophical, explanation of the reason why he has to take orders from a white invader, a native who reasons on a matter of transcendental politics, if not with the acumen, at least in the spirit, of Mr. Mill. As yet the majority are using the new knowledge they are husbanding chiefly upon the old problem, "Whence comes he, whither goes he?" and " experience" acts mainly as a religious solvent; but then this was the case also in the European Renaissance. The Reformation succeeded the importation of the Greek literature, but preceded the rise of the philosophy of induction. From Gutenberg's Bible to Bacon's Essays there was a space of 147 years.

that his duty is simply to clear them away and make as little noise about it as possible. There is a decided nauseous absurdity about our kennel philosopher protesting against the dirtiness of his own profession; and this absurdity is exaggerated when he takes to denouncing the dirtiness of other people. When the chiffonier calls out indignantly, "What a disgrace to cleanliness is yonder chimney-sweep! how can you suffer him to enter your house?" the natural answer is, "My friend, I would much rather be compelled to sit at table with him than with you."

From The Leader.

THE DEVIL TURNED PRECISIAN.

Now there are among the public teachers permitted by our press laws a few daily and weekly journals who flourish by an art similar to that employed by the rag-pickers and dust contractors and various assorters of the refuse of our homes. Their profit is made, not by clearing off the superincumbent dirt of daily topics, but by separating it, classifying it, and bringing it back into public view. And the difference of utility in the two callings is this, that whereas the material rubbish can generally be turned to good account, the moral rubbish can very rarely be so turned. The press chiffonier thrives by stirring it round and round, and raising an odour which sundry debased nostrils find piquant. And he does so in a spirit of the highest virtue and decency. But he is peculiarly indignant when anybody else does the same; fearing, doubtless, rivalry in his craft. An exhibition of THERE is, as somebody once said, an this last idiosyncrasy is furnished in the egregious cant which cants against cant; latest number of the Saturday Review. As there is equally a peculiar indecency which everybody more or less knows, the Saturloves to denounce indecency. Natures of day Review has for the last twelvemonth a certain constitution are never happy save signalised itself and gained a certain repuwhen they are raking together the garbage tation among the class which loves the of life. We suppose it is a natural selec- sensationalism of slander and suggestive tion of occupation, analogous to the selec- naughtiness, by a series of foul-mouthed tion of species, which gives us our chiffo- attacks upon women. It was a notion niers and nightmen. Like tends to like; worthy of the greatest sensation-monger and as by the law of race certain creatures of the age, this dragging through the dirt choose their fittest mates, equally do con- what all chivalry and all Christianity have stitutions of a dirty order gravitate towards elevated into a religion among us - our bedirty work. We have nothing to object to lief in the purity of womanhood, typified by the law, which indeed is highly necessary. our sisters, and mothers, and wives. Only The scavenger is as useful to society as the an indecent and unscrupulous mind could savant, and in his class may be commended; have hit on this newest piquancy, which all we ask is that the scavenger do not per- even the scepticism and wickedness of the petually obtrude his person and calling upon eighteenth century left alone. The new society's notice do not bring into our draw-idea culminated perhaps, though it did not ing-rooms the produce of the gutter, with the virtuous claim, "See what filthiness I am cleansing from your houses; what a

end, in that well-known article called "The Girl of the Period," wherein the writer openly preached the superiority of harlotry

to the ethics of our modern English girls. | assimilate in manner to the unfortunates of "Let us have," exclaimed the writer, the the higher class! In fact, a Saturday Requeens of St. John's Wood in their unblush- view number without an allusion to the ing honesty rather than their imitators and demi-monde is an egg without salt. Nomake-believes in Bayswater and Belgravia." thing pleases our friend so much as the opAnd again, "If some fashional dévergondée portunity of painting a frowsy picture in en evidence is reported to have come out the most glaring of colours. A tirade with her dress below her shoulder-blades which we do not care to quote in full about and a gold strap for all the sleeve thought flaccid cheeks" and "displayed busts, as necessary, the girl of the period follows suit if beauty was to be measured by cubic next day. The girl of the period inches," and "lustreless eyes blackened envies the queens of the demi monde far round the lids," and "no drapery of lace or more than she abhors them." It should be gauze to conceal the breadth of her robust remembered of this and many parallel pas- maturity" is a sufficient indication of sages that at the time when these nasty in- what can be done by an unscrupulous pen sinuations were penned the expression, in the way of suggestive indecency. "Girl of the Period," did not mean what, by a natural latitude it has now come to signify, but simply meant the ordinary English girl, pur sang, whom we are accustomed to see in our homes.

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Each journalist to his métier. But the phenomenon reaches the aspect of a good joke when the Saturday Review, of all journals, turns round and abuses the daily press for what it is pleased to call "Newspaper The lampoon, as may be imagined, did Sewage" in its last number. The daily not stop at the young girls. Young and papers last week reported - omitting its old, married and unmarried, all womankind worst details - - a criminal action containing was dragged through the gutter. The name certain shocking allegations; and the reof Englishwoman, we are told in the Satur-port of this case has outraged the fine senday Review of August 8th, "too often sibilities of the Saturday Review. After means a woman who is not ashamed to sup- gasping out his repugnance to 'inhuman plement her husband with a lover, but who lusts and unspeakable horrors," our philosis unwilling to become the honest mother ophical traducer of women and essayist of of that husband's children." The well-bred the Divorce Court thus formularises conwoman of our age acts Potiphar's wife to cerning his daily brethren: "Perfectly the family physician. "His influence over conscious that there was a good market for that idle woman is unlimited; and if he their nastiness, with great care and circumchooses to abuse it and turn it to evil issue, spection they provided their nastiness ache can." "The unnatural feeling against cordingly. They have their reward in the maternity existing among fashionable wo-consciousness of having done their best to men is one of the worst mental signs of corrupt public morals, to violate all feeltheir state, as their frequent inability to beings of decency in decent people, to make mothers at all is one of the worst physical results." So far the married women; of her who, not getting married, gets old, we are told that she 'began her career of flirtation with the son of a duke, and ends The Saturday Review could not more it with the son of a shopkeeper, having be- succinctly have summed up its own princitween these two terms spanned all the several ples and the result of its own practice. It degrees of degradation which lie between has for some months pandered to the prugiving and buying." In plain English, this rience of profligates and sceptics, knowing should mean that she dishonours herself in "there was a good market for nastiness." the first instance freely, but is at last com- It has also achieved the end of "violating pelled to purchase paramours at a price. all feelings of decency in decent people," But none of the Saturday Review's articles and of " rendering our pretended care for are complete without the touch of Holy-morality a scorn in the estimation" of the well-street art. On August 1st it wrote heathen; for a native paper of India transupon" Spoilt Women"-surely an innocent lated the " Girl of the Period," and pointed enough subject, comprising the enfants to this type as the self-confessed outcome gatées of our drawing-rooms. But even of British Christianity. What cared the here we get the inevitable spice of nasti- Saturday Review as long as the market for ness; the demi-monde is violently dragged nastiness was supplied? But now, the marin; and we are assured that our pretty ket being overstocked, the Saturday Review wayward beauties who ask a man to put cries out against that which may shock down a teacup, or get up and ring the bell," unpolluted women" and "the susceptible

bad worse, to encourage the innocent to sin, and to render our boasted civilisation and our pretended care for morality a scorn and disgrace in the estimation of even savages."

innocence of boys and girls." Never was judgment more fittingly self-applied; never was the old tu quoque sentence more forcibly brought home - Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.

From The Leader, 19 Dec.
THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR.

It seems to be thought in some quarters that we have given him a cordial welcome because he is a Southerner and a Democrat, and, as such, opposed to the policy which the Republican party deem necessary for stamping out the embers of rebellion in the Southern States-that, in point of fact, our hospitality is nothing but a fresh outbreak of sympathy with the defunct Confederation. Of course nothing can be more untrue or more absurd than this notion. It is natural THE career of Mr. Reverdy Johnson since enough that reminiscences of the great civil he has been Minister of the United States war should still exercise an overpowering in England has been pleasant to us and influence on the American mind. But to us must have been very agreeable to him. He who have not the same reason for rememhas appeared without reserve at our social bering it, that contest is past and done with. gatherings. He has complimented us and To us the Southern Confederation is, in our institutions, and all that belongs to us, Transatlantic phraseology, a thing utterly in the most flattering way. He has made "burst up;" and its short existence has himself popular amongst us by his genial completely ceased to influence our course of manners and his graceful courtesy; and he action in regard to the United States. We has given us a still further and more solid have never regarded Mr. Johnson in any ground for satisfaction by the conciliatory other light than as the accredited represenmode in which he has applied himself to the tative of a people with whom we desire to settlement of a very troublesome dispute, be on friendly terms; and, as one of the and by the emphatic assurances he has re- most respectable of the New York journals peatedly given us that every cause of quar- has had the candour to point out, we have rel between ourselves and the United States every right to regard him in that light, conhad been removed through the negotiations sidering the manner in which his appointcarried on between himself and Lord Stan- ment was unanimously, one might almost ley. On the other hand, we have done our say enthusiastically, endorsed by the Senbest to give him a hospitable reception, in ate. Whatever may happen, our conscience the full belief that any attentions paid to is clear on this point; and we cannot help him would be received by the people he rep-thinking that, in their calmer moments, the resents as an indication of our friendship to- Americans will themselves admit that, wards them; and it is certainly not a little against us at any rate they have no ground annoying and discomfiting to find that there for complaint. They may not, however, is some ground for apprehension that we forgive Mr. Johnson so readily, nor is it, may, after all, have been living for the last indeed, so clear that from their point of few weeks in a sort of a fool's paradise. It view they have no cause for annoyance at is difficult to form any accurate estimate of his conduct. It is all very well for us to the real amount or intensity of the irritation say "let bygones be bygones, bury the past which is said to have been caused in the in oblivion, and let us shake hands all round United States by Mr. Johnson's conduct in and say no more about it." But then we England. The newspapers of that country are not the party who is or thinks himself do not to anything like the same extent as aggrieved. Most of us are now of opinion those of England represent the opinions of that we failed, and very foolishly failed, the really influential classes. They are far to discharge the duties of our neutral posimore apt than our own journals to make tion during the civil war; that we shall have themselves the organs of superficial feelings, to pay damages for our default; and that to appeal to the most excitable part of the the sooner we do it, and get the matter population, to express temporary and tran- over, the better for us. Mr. Johnson's besient impulses rather than settled convictions haviour has gilded the pill we have to swaland intentions, and, in a word, to give them-low, and we are properly grateful to him selves up to a "sensational" treatment of any topic that may come to hand. Still, after making every deduction on that score, we can hardly doubt that a good deal of genuine resentment is entertained towards us, and that we are held to have added to our previous offences by helping him to humiliate his own country.

for this. The people of the United States, on the other hand, are firmly convinced that they have not only suffered material loss, but that they have endured at our hands outrage and insult. Their real" Alabama Claim" is not so much compensation for the loss, of the vessels that Captain Semmes sent to the bottom, as a solatium of some