Alipore was dear to him because there he spent the best years of his life, with the woman for whom he had an un bounded love and admiration. There was not such another being in the world. As long as she was by his side, nothing could come amiss to him : the cares and fatigues of the day made no impression on his spirits. When the state of her health had laid him under the stern necessity of sending her to England, he wrote : " I miss you in every instant and in cident of my life, and everything seems to wear a dead still ness around me. I come home as to a solitude." After she had gone he cared not to dwell at Alipore, and he deter mined to sell the property.
Mrs. Fay thus describes the woman who won the great heart of Hastings : " Mrs. H herself," she writes, " it is easy to perceive at the first glance, is far superior to the generality of her sex though her appearance is rather eccentric, owing to the circum• stance of her beautiful auburn hair being disposed in ringlets, throwing an air of elegant, nay, almost infantine simplicity over the countenance, most admirably adapted to heighten the effect intended to be produced. Her whole dress, too, though studiously becoming, is at variance with our present modes, which are certainly not so : perhaps for that reason she has chosen to depart from them—as a foreigner, you know, she may be excused for not strictly conforming to our fashions ; besides, her rank in the settlement sets her above the necessity of studying anything but the whim of the moment. It is easy to perceive how fully sensible she is of her own consequence. She is, indeed, raised to a ' giddy height,' and expects to be treated with the most profound respect and deference." Driving through what Macaulay, with considerable poetic latitude, calls " the rosy lanes of Alipore," we come across a primitive cabin, little more than a roof of grass to keep the sun and rain out, for this is all that is needed. At the door is a woman grinding corn ; about her are a group of scantily-clad men discussing the state of the crops and the hardness of the heart of the village money-lender. The
carman, carrying a load of timber to the great town, leaves the bullocks by the roadside and joins in the conversation. A stalwart peasant who is walking with his son—whose graceful olive-brown figure is marred by no clothes—has also stopped for a few seconds to exchange greetings. It is a picturesque and peaceful scene. The people are both blithe and gentle. The passions of the Oriental, like those of children, are on the surface. But the combination of passion and softness in the Indian peasant has a great charm, when one has learned by the observation of twenty years that their lives are laborious and frugal, and that their vigour is hardly less than their kindness to the old and the young. Happy are they, and happy they will remain till their minds are poisoned against their rulers by a seditious press. Then athwart the mind of the Indian ryot may arise, as it arose in the mind of the French peasant, the idea that he is one of a multitude, starved and fleeced ; and then he may in his wrath do what the French peasant did. Let us never forget that when reverence for authority perishes among the masses, it will be an almost superhuman task to keep peace in India. " It is a noble empire," said that dis tinguished traveller and diplomat, Baron Hubner, to me the day he left India, "and it is well worth keeping ; but do not lose it by introducing what you please to call Liberal ideas." As we leave the hamlet the lane grows narrower, and lofty bamboos and tall palms line its sides, and gieat banian trees spread a green roof over all. By a graceful palm is a well. A bullock cart drawn by oxen with wide-spreading horns has halted by its side. The driver with his shaven head, and his spouse in her scarlet cotton robe, gaze at us with curiosity as we drive past. Waves of conquerors have swept by and been forgotten, but the bullock cart continues a symbol of the immortal East.