looked upon the success of the little performers.

To improve the administration of justice, efforts had been made to establish courts, with regular forms resembling those existing in British territory; but there did not seem to be sufficient appreciation of the importance of having well-paid judges placed in a position to be at least somewhat independent of the Nawab's court. One of the gravest accusations brought against native states in India is, that the ruler and his favourites can do exactly as they please; that they can crush all opposition, violate the honour of any woman, ruin any man, and, in general, gratify their wishes, however unwarrantable these may be. Though a step in the right direction, the mere creation of courts of justice does not meet this evil so long as the judges can be displaced at will; and to place native judges in very independent positions might be to make them independent fountains of corruption and oppression. I saw that the chief court of Júnághar followed a regular course of procedure, but cannot vouch for it in other respects, nor do I know of anything against it. The advantage which has been conferred on India by the fair administration of justice by Englishmen of high character is incalculable; but I doubt if the value of that administration is at all properly appreciated by the natives of India. They distrust native judges altogether, and never like personally to go before such an administrator unless he happens to be of their own caste; but still very many of them would prefer to see native administrators of justice appointed in preference to English ones. In almost the same breath an educated native will betray a desire that all the judicial appointments of India should be filled by his own countrymen, and express his profound dis

trust of every native who is in such an appointment. By his own countrymen he really means himself, and gives vent to his very natural desire to obtain for himself (at any cost to the country) a place of what to him would be high emolument. But when he speaks of his brethren in office he draws on his own knowledge, and sometimes on his imagination.

The jail in Júnághar was quite a model affair; but I have noticed of late years that jails in India usually are, whether in native states or in British territory. A jail is a very easy thing to keep in a nice showy condition; and as visitors almost always look at it, even the worst prince likes to have his prison in that condition. The late Guik war of Baroda had a beautiful jail, and I saw there the ex-prime-minister of that state, Bhau Sindiah; but a few weeks afterwards Bhau Sindiah died under rather suspicious circumstances, and, according to popular rumour, he was pressed to death in a sikunja, or contracting-wheel. A much better indication of the progress of modern civilisation in Júnághar was the Alfred Hospital, which had been founded in commemoration of the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to India, and was relieving hundreds of patients, under the superintendence of Anundass Morji, a licentiate of the Bombay Medical College. The splendid specimens of Bothriocephalus latus, Tania solium, and Filaria medinensis which he had extracted from his patients were particularly striking, and showed that tape and guinea worms flourish in Júnághar. I made some interesting notes regarding this hospital, but unfortunately (or fortunately) for my readers I cannot lay my hands upon them. A similar fate has overtaken other Júnághar statistics which I collected; but probably my general impression will be quite suf

ficient for the British reader, and it was that a slow but steady improvement was going on in Júnághar

The principal men of this state were either Muhammadans or Nágar Brahmans. After the Nawab himself, the chief noble was his brotherin-law, the Jemadar Bhauaddín, a very handsome and active but somewhat dissipated-looking man, who, both by reputation and in appearance, struck one as a sort of oriental Earl of Rochester. His influence with his Highness and in the state generally was very great. I should not think he was a man to do much business that he could get any one to do for him, but that was from love of pleasure rather than from lack of capacity; and, indeed, to uphold his position must have required no little tact and ability. His right-hand man was Salahindi, a pure Arab, of large strong frame, who alone of the Muhammadan nobles appeared to take much interest in public affairs, and who acted as a sort of Minister of Public Works, that being the department to which he chiefly devoted himself. In Bhauaddín you came in contact with a polished and agreeable courtier, who probably could be something the very opposite of that if occasion required; in Salahindi you had a soldierly, practical man of visible shrewdness and good sense.

The Nagar Brahmans are an exceedingly powerful caste in Júnághar, as in all Kathiawar, and have monopolised the political management of by far the greater part of the peninsula. There are about 1500 families of them in Kathiawar, and three-fourths of these are devoted to secular pursuits, especially to the art of government; while the remainder, who devote themselves to religious duties, are specially called Brahmans-but all are of Brahmanical caste. As a priest

hood they have no weight in the country; but they have a great deal of importance from their ability as administrators, and from the way in which they have got the affairs of the chiefs into their hands. The Kocaní Brahmans, or those of the Southern Koncan, are considered the cleverest and the most restless and pushing of the Brahmans of Western India; many of them have light-coloured eyes; and they have a tradition which might be interpreted as indicating (though they would utterly repudiate such an interpretation) that at some former period their blood had mingled with that of shipwrecked European mariners. But Vishnú Venayek, a very clever young Kocaní Brahman whom I had with me, and who was very desirous of obtaining some more permanent employment in Kathiawar, soon found that there was no hope for him there, so closely was everything held in the hands of the Nágars, and so averse were these to any other caste finding employment in the country. There are, however, a number of Kocaní and Deccaní Brahmans in the employment of the British Agency, and in states administered by officers appointed by the Bombay Government; and I noticed that these regarded the Nagars with much jealousy, and took every opportunity of finding fault with the condition of states under the charge of these latter. The enemies of the Nágars derive the name from nág, the Indian word for a cobra, the most venomous of all snakes; but they themselves have a more complimentary derivation. No doubt they have a good deal of the wisdom of serpents; but they also struck me (and I have had a great deal of intercourse with them) as having something of the harmlessness of doves, in so far as manners and kindness of disposition go.

Runcharjí, the celebrated former Dewan of this state of Júnághar, was a Nagar Brahman; and his praises have been sounded by so many persons of very different character, that he must have been a man of

high qualities. Mrs Postans, describing him in her 'Western India in 1838,' spoke of his "purity and high-mindedness," of his dignity and grace, of his liberal opinions, and of his remarkable acquaintance with Eastern history. General Jacob, in his General Report of 1842, said that Runcharji was "the nearest approach to an educated native gentleman the country contained; his tastes and habits of thought were above his age." He was one of the first in giving effectual aid to the suppression of infanticide; and Dr Wilson, in his History of the Suppression of Infanticide in Western India,' says of him that he was one of the best-informed natives whom we have met in India. He had even a knowledge of Arabic, a language to which few of his caste ever pay any attention."

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The Dewan of Júnághar, when I visited Kathiawar, was also an exceedingly courteous, dignified, and intelligent gentleman. This was the Azum Gokuljí Sumpatram, also a Nagar Brahman. At this time he was absent at Rájkot, in attend-ance on the young prince, the Nawab's son and heir; but I met him at Rájkot, and had before made very friendly acquaintance with him. His disposition was very kind and pleasing, his knowledge great, his piety unaffected; and, in the course of much intercourse with him relating to business affairs, in which there was some temptation to depart from strict rectitude, I never saw in him the least shadow of guile, or anything which would be deemed unworthy of the highest class of English gen

tlemen. Even those who found most fault with the state of Júnághar had nothing to say against his personal character; but they alleged that he was only nominally Dewan, and was put forward in that position in order to give respectability to an administration that otherwise would not bear looking into. In a certain sense this was no doubt true. Gokuljí saw evils existing around him which he was powerless to remedy, as Runcharjí had been before him, and every man in high position is similarly placed in all parts of the world; but I do not believe, and have not the least reason to believe, that his dewanship was a nominal one, or that he held it on any other than legitimate conditions. I also had much genial intercourse with, and formed a high opinion of another Júnághar official, Narsing Prasaad, who was also a Nágar Brahman, and had the advantage of having previously served in the English agency. No one can accuse me of an undue regard for native states or native officials; and, for many reasons which cannot here be entered into, I look with disapproval on the whole process, as now pursued, of pushing forward natives into Government employment in British India; but in Kathiawar, if some of the native states were backward, and showed an undue adherence to time-honoured vicious customs, there were quite as serious faults in the method of dealing with them pursued by the Rájkot agency and the Bombay Government. This is a subject, however, which belongs to Kathiawar in general, rather to Júnághar in particular.

Mr Kinloch Forbes, of the "Ras Mala," who both knew the natives. of India and loved them well, has said that "we should recollect, in regard to the Hindus as a people, that they are almost as

different from ourselves as the laws of nature will permit one set of men to be from another." This was a true enough statement for his time, though an extended knowledge of the Chinese and of other races has since indicated that there is a wider and deeper (though still by no means an impassable) gulf between ourselves and many peoples than there is between us and the Hindus, or any members of the Aryan race. Yet undoubtedly, there is sufficient difference between us and the Hindus to form a serious difficulty in the way of that understanding and relianceship which is the basis of all friendly and happy intercourse. I would not say that the fault is theirs, and still less that it is ours; rather it rises unavoidably from the intractability of human nature, and its incapacity for making rapid transitions without losing much of what is most admirable in it. But Mr Forbes wisely puts in the qualification that it is "as a people" that the Hindus are so different from us; and, making due allowance for superficial differences of manner and mode of thought, there are among them admirable men, who

can be met with a feeling of perfect confidence on that somewhat indefinitely bounded yet very real elevation of calm good sense, of unselfishness and kindly sympathetic feeling, of enlarged and unprejudiced intellect, of devotion to immediate practical good combined with a desire to further the higher possibilities of the human race, of a natural unaffected courtesy, and of all the collateral qualities which create the real nobility of the human race, that nobility which it is one of the peculiar glories of England to have heartily recognised as an ever-enlarging circle which can be entered from every quarter, from every clime and condition of life, and whose golden gates, though they may occasionally for a moment admit the gilded lackeys of civilisation, and other pretenders of higher or lower origin, and may also be held closed for a time against suspicious-looking wandering strangers, who would possibly be at once admitted into the courts of heaven, yet are unalterably closed - persistently from the beginning, or at last in the end-only against the hopelessly unworthy.

DURING many long years Hermann Fabricius had lost sight of his friend Henry Warren, and had forgotten him.

Yet when students together they had loved each other dearly, and more than once they had sworn eternal friendship. This was at a period which, though not very remote, we seem to have left far behind us a time when young men still believed in eternal friendship, and could feel enthusiasm for great deeds or great ideas. Youth in the present day is, or thinks itself, more rational. Hermann and Warren in those days were simple-minded and ingenuous; and not only in the moment of elation, when they had sworn to be friends for ever, but even the next day, and the day after that, in sober earnestness, they had vowed that nothing should separate them, and that they would remain united through life. The delusion had not lasted long. The pitiless machinery of life had caught up the young men as soon as they left the university, and had thrown one to the right, the other to the left. For a few months they had exchanged long and frequent letters; then they had met once, and finally they had parted, each going his way. Their letters had become more scarce, more brief, and at last had ceased altogether. It would really seem that the fact of having interests in common is the one thing sufficiently powerful to prolong and keep up the life of epistolary relations. A man may feel great affection for an absent friend, and yet not find time to

write him ten lines, while he will willingly expend daily many hours on a stranger from whom he expects something. None the less he may be a true and honest friend. Man is naturally selfish; the instinct of self-preservation requires it of him. Provided he be not wicked, and that he show himself ready to serve his neighbour-after himself -no one has a right to complain, or to accuse him of hard-heartedness.

At the time this story begins, Hermann had even forgotten whether he had written to Warren last, or whether he had left his friend's last letter unanswered. In a word, the correspondence which began so enthusiastically had entirely ceased. Hermann inhabited a large town, and had acquired some reputation as a writer. From time to time, in the course of his walks, he would meet a young student with brown hair, and mild, honest-looking blue eyes, whose countenance, with its frank and youthful smile, inspired confidence and invited the sympathy of the passer-by. Whenever Hermann met this young man he would say to himself, "How like Henry at twenty!" and for a few minutes memory would travel back to the already distant days of youth, and he would long to see his dear old Warren again. More than once, on the spur of the moment, he had resolved to try and find out what had become of his old university comrade. But these good intentions were never followed up. On reaching home he would find his table covered with books and pamphlets to be reviewed, and letters from