when opportunity is vouchsafed them. The late Maharani Surnomoyi
of Cossimbazar managed her enormous estates with acumen; and her
charities were as lavish as Lady Burdett-Coutts's. Toru Dutt, who
died in girlhood, wrote French and English verses full of haunting
sweetness. It is a little premature for extremists to prate of autonomy
while their women are prisoners or drudges.

Superstition.--Modes of thought surviving from past ages of
intellectual growth are the chief obstacles in the path of
progress. Mr. Banerjea's tales contain many references to magic--a
pseudo-science which clings to the world's religions and social
polity. It is doubtful whether the most civilised of us has quite
shaken off the notion that mysterious virtues may be transmitted
without the impetus of will-power. Latin races are haunted by
dread of the Evil Eye; advertisements of palmists, astrologers and
crystal-gazers fill columns of our newspapers. Rational education
alone enables us to trace the sequence of cause and effect which
is visible in every form of energy. Until this truth is generally
recognised no community can eradicate the vices of superstition.

The "unrest" of which we hear so much finds no echo in Mr. Banerjea's
pages. It is, indeed, confined to a minute percentage of the
population, even including the callow schoolboys who have been
tempted to waste precious years on politics. The masses are too
ignorant and too absorbed by the struggle for existence to care
one jot for reforms. They may, however, be stirred to blind fury by
appealing to their prejudices. Therein lies a real danger. Divergence
of religious ideals, to which I have already alluded, accounts for
the tranquillity that prevails throughout Bihar as compared with the
spirit of revolution in Bengal proper. The microbe of anarchy finds
an excellent culture-ground in minds which grovel before the goddess
Kali. But the unrest cannot be isolated from other manifestations of
cosmic energy, which flash from mind to mind and keep the world in
turmoil. Every force of nature tends to be periodic. The heart's
systole and diastole; alternations of day and night, of season
and tide, are reflected in the history of our race. Progress
is secured by the swing of a giant pendulum from East to West,
the end of each beat ushering in drastic changes in religion,
economics and social polity. It is probable that one of these
cataclysmic epochs opened with the victories wrested fro