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

for perpetual fresh presentations); and (4) that it should admit of wide, rapid, and gratuitous diffusion. It is surely matter of congratulation that every one of these requirements is satisfied completely by melody. The third and fourth are of course intimately connected; for the power of a melody to get into the air and traverse a country and a continent in a few months depends on its being definitely remembered. To the ordinary eye many lines in a picture or building might be just different without affecting the individuality of the work whereas the ear will not suffer the alteration of a note in a beloved melody, and it may be safely affirmed that no one ever possessed so definite an idea of any visible object, at which he was not absolutely gazing, as hundreds of thousands can summon up at any moment of their lives in the case of musical productions. The very word Volkslied bears witness to this definite knowledge, and to the power of transmission from individual to individual and from generation to generation which it implies.

There is little fear that through a recognition of its ideal (and in great measure actual) extent the musical world will be divided against itself. The influence of an educated minority must always be sufficiently strong: would that it were always rightly used! The fact that an army of executants stands between the creative artist and his public subjects music in one way to a special disadvantage; for among these, in addition to many who merely crave for the excitement of novelties and the satisfaction of conquering difficulties, there are always some, possessed of cleverness and dexterity but lacking simplicity and reverence, who rank talent above genius, who eagerly welcome opportunities of personal display, and who lead away audiences capable of enjoying beautiful music into applauding mere show. We may hope, however, that these cases will become rarer, and that the love of the art has its roots too deep to be permanently distorted or coerced. The people get few chances, but their instinct, healthy even where lacking refinement, has served and will serve as a sound basis for high and rapid development. Their verdicts do not extend beyond the comparatively narrow limits of their comprehension; but the comprehension is most genuine, and their positive judgments have been again and again confirmed and eventually taken up into the accepted body of opinion. Music does not stand more apart in its cosmopolitan character than in the excellence of its popular results. The beauty of the Volkslieds of the European nations has been and still is universally acknowledged by the best musicians, and many of these (as opposed to most early efforts of other arts) may be fairly called perfect. Persons who are beyond the reach of any cultivation are at all events safe from false and superficial cultivation, and in the present day the difference between music for healthy enjoyment and music for accomplishment and display is pointed by the difference between such fine melodies as the Marseil