of the staff available, which was practically limited to the corps of military engineers in the Company's service; and the policy of the Court of Directors being opposed to admitting any other persons to the service direct from England, a class of European and East Indian lads was established at the College, for supplying a staff of assistant engineers on the works. Another class also was formed, of European soldiers, to which reference will be made presently. Meanwhile, the staff of the college, consisting of young officers with a necessarily imperfect acquaintance with the vernacular, were unable to teach the native classes who knew no English; these classes were therefore handed over to be instructed by the college moonshees, whose technical knowledge was of the most limited description; the soldier class had for instructors some ex-noncommissioned officers; and the whole attention of the superior staff was given to training a small class of East Indian and European lads who have been brought up in India, with whom are joined a few natives who have learnt English at the Government, schools, and come up with bursaries whereon to support themselves while going through the course. This diversion of an Indian college from its natural use of educating the people of the country to one for training an exotic class of English engineers has certainly its ludicrous side, but it must in fairness be added that this engineer class-imperfect and incomplete as the means of instruction may be— has produced some excellent public servants. But any system would do this. If you were to stand in Oxford Street, and take every tenth man that passed by, you would get some useful persons for any class of business. And the success of the Roorkee engineers is probably explained in part by the fact that young men brought up in India, in a purely official atmosphere, the children for the most part of government officials, seeing and hearing about nothing but public business, and having none of the distractions of English life, become early imbued with the spirit of official zeal, and are prepared to take life seriously, and to devote themselves to the business in hand from the outset. Still, against this must be set the necessary disadvantages of a bringing-up in India; and with all England to choose from, the maintenance of the very expensive English department of the Roorkee college, for training the candidates supplied from a very limited field of selection, certainly appears an anachronism. On the other hand, the development of the native classes of Roorkee appears to be a reform promising results beyond those at first apparent. It has been objected to our system of education in India generally, that it runs too much towards the purely literary side of learning, and tends to make the unpractical Indian still more unpractical. There is no need in England to enlarge on the importance of science teaching as a part of education; its advocates can make themselves sufficiently well heard; but the importance of extending a knowledge of physical science among the people of India can hardly be insisted on too strongly,

and Roorkee is the place where this teaching may be most readily set going. The conversion or adaptation of this college into a great science college for the people of India, and especially for training native engineers, is therefore, I submit, a measure in a high degree desirable. I would only add that, in carrying out the details of the scheme, the plan in force at the English government school of naval engineers, where a part of each year is spent on practical work in the dockyards, and a part only in the class-room, would be, mutatis mutandis, particularly suitable for the Indian engineer pupils.

There remains to mention one matter which, although it may savour of detail, is really very important for the character of our administration. Intermediate between the upper or engineer' service, composed, as has been explained, of Europeans with a thin sprinkling of native members, and the ill-paid native subordinate establishment, which gets its very elementary training at the vernacular department at Roorkee, there comes a large branch, technically known as the upper subordinate ' establishment, but mainly European. This European part is recruited from the British regiments serving in India, the selected men going through a short course at Roorkee; they can rise eventually in the department to warrant rank, while a few receive unattached commissions. Here and there this class produces a working engineer who is simply invaluable-an honest, intelligent, hard-working man, who likes the Indians and is liked by them; who gets to know their ways and the art of getting good work out of them; and who, looking to end his days in harness in the country, is devoted heart and soul to the business he is employed on. But as a class it must be said that this has proved one of the least satisfactory parts of our Indian administration. As a rule, the people of India see but little of our European soldiery, who are kept together in barracks away from towns, and whose native followers form a special class living very much by themselves; and the solitary specimens sent out into the country as public work overseers do not, as a rule, impress them favourably. Unable to make themselves properly understood, violent and harsh towards the people about them, and with habits of living repulsive to a people scrupulously clean and nice in their ways, it is to be feared that the European overseer too often damages gravely the character of his countrymen in the estimation of those whose only means of judging is from this solitary specimen. If, on the other hand, he is on good terms with his native subordinates, the friendship is usually one based on mutual dishonesty. He has yielded to temptation, and is playing into their hands the game of peculation. The condition of these persons is equally to be deplored on their own account. Even for a man of education, the life of solitude often enforced by circumstances in India, is irksome enough; but to the European soldier, accustomed to the gregarious habits of a barrack, and without resources in himself,

to be sent, as is the fate of so many, to utter solitude in some roadside bungalow, or to take charge of the tanks or embankments in some outlying fever-stricken district, is a positively dreadful fate. The poor fellows accept their lot for the sake of the emoluments, which to the private soldier appear enormous, but in a very large proportion of cases they take to drinking. And from this cause, from their exposure to unhealthy climates, and the want of medical aid when sick, and from not knowing how to take care of themselves, the mortality among this class during the last thirty years has been something appalling, although it may not appear in the tabulated returns, for these men die away from hospitals and doctor, beyond the ken of inspectorgenerals and sanitary commissions. Equally remarkable is the number of dismissals for dishonesty or other misconduct. Every officer who knows anything of the facts deplores the evils which they indicate, but no remedy has been applied, and only one can be effective. Barrack sergeants might still be maintained in European stations, where they will have some society of their own class and be under the restraint of discipline; and European subordinates may be necessary and useful in workshops and other places, where they live under supervision and are collected several together, with proper accommodation, and medical attendance when sick. But the cruelty and the scandal to the credit of the European character involved in sending these poor fellows on solitary detached duty, to drink themselves to death in outlying jungles, should be put a stop to, and for all outposts European subordinates should be replaced by native engineers. The salaries now given to the former class would suffice for the proper remuneration of a respectable class of Indian engineers. For although called upper subordinates,' the pay of the seniors of this class overlaps that of the junior engineers.

I have thus endeavoured to establish the following points. First, that the different European services in India are now undergoing a great change, the full effect of which has not yet become generally apparent, but which, unless some comprehensive remedy be applied, must involve either a great deterioration in the advantages they have hitherto conferred, or, if that is to be averted, a heavy and increasing burden on the finances of the country. That in any case the burden on the pension list must largely increase in the future, if the present organisation of the European services is maintained. That the only satisfactory way of dealing with the difficulty is by a large prospective reduction in the junior grades of European officials, so that the rate of advancement to higher posts may be largely accelerated, and the services at the same time reduced in cost. And, lastly, that this plan fortunately fits in entirely with one which on other grounds now commends itself to attention the larger employment of the Indians themselves in posts of responsibility. I have here dealt mainly with the covenanted civil and engineer services; but the same

principle is applicable to all other public departments, and it has already been carried out with excellent results in the army. And if it be said that it is but an insufficient measure which would be mainly directed to opening the lower appointments of the service to Indians, this may be admitted; but it is better to make a beginning of some sort than to be merely talking about some greater but vaguer scheme. Any plan that would open the higher appointments at once to Indians is subject to the objection that it would involve an interference with the vested rights of the existing members of the service, whose prospects are already much worse than they might reasonably have expected when they gained admission to it. Further, in most public departments the Indians qualified for high promotion do not at present exist. Like the Europeans, they must be trained by degrees; and if a humble beginning, that which is here proposed is at least a safe one. If the people of India show themselves fit for subordinate office, they will establish an indisputable claim to further preferment, and a great step forward will be made towards the final object, always to be kept in view, of entrusting them eventually with the administration of their own country.

GEORGE CHESNEY.

ON MUSIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM.

(Concluded.)

ἀλόγῳ πάθει τὴν ἄλογον συνασκεῖν αἴσθησιν.

THOSE who are at one with me in regarding pleasure as the present criterion of music's value may now be willing to go on and consider the question, whose pleasure? and this brings me to the most important part of my subject. Both surface and depth have to be considered in our measurement, for it seems as impossible to deny the epithet good to the music which gives some degree of durable enjoyment to large numbers of human beings as to that which gives a greater degree of more durable enjoyment to a smaller number. I hope the words I have used will at once exclude the idea of the trifling strains, the hack-work of bandmasters and dance-writers, which are so common in theatres and places of public entertainment, and which may often be said not to awaken one spark of interest in any single listener: that music is popular which arrests the people's attention and compels their recognition, not that whose greatest success is momentarily to tickle their ears. Now it may seem that the definition of good as what gives some degree of durable pleasure contains nothing new or peculiar, and might be safely applied to all manner of other things besides music. This is true, but the novelty and peculiarity lie in the legitimate results of its application to music. In the estimation of other arts, as the world now stands, such a definition applies so obviously only to the few that we scarcely stop to think about it: in music our census will extend to every nook and corner of the land. Music is emphatically the people's art. Some of the reasons for this are in obvious connection with much that has been already said, and some still await discussion. If we were asked à priori to imagine the characteristics of a 'people's art,' we should require (1) that some elementary instinct for it should be deeply ingrained in the human organism, so that it should be capable of profoundly stirring. the most diverse natures; (2) that it should be independent of logical processes and ranges of ideas beyond the ken of the vulgar and uneducated; (3) that it should be capable of extremely definite representation in memory (because the majority have no time or opportunity