ing taken in hand and led.
That its power is not essentially destructive but beneficent. That
there is in it almost inexhaustible capacity for helping plant and
beast and man. And that it is a friend and anxious to help us.

The Hindus have been right all along in worshipping it. Their
worship, with tropical luxuriance, may have developed to
extravagant lengths. But the instinct which promoted this worship
was perfectly sound. The river bears within its breast great
life-giving properties, and in worshipping the river the Hindus were
half-consciously expressing their sense of dependence on these
life-giving properties, and of affection and gratitude to the river for the
benefits it conferred. Mere fear of its destructive character--fear
alone--would not produce the desire for worship. They did and do
fear the river, but behind the fear is a feeling that it _can_ be
propitiated, that it _can_ be induced to help man and does not want
to thwart him. And here they were perfectly right. We are at last
learning the way by which this may be done, and now see clearly
what the Hindus only vaguely felt, that the heart of the river is right
enough--that once it is tamed and trained it can bring untold good to
man.

This the Artist will readily discern. He will enter into the spirit of
the river. He will read its true character. Refusing to be terrorised by
its more tremendous moods, he will exult in its might, and see in it a
potent agency for good. In these ways the river will make its appeal
to him; and responding to the appeal, the Artist will see great Beauty
in the river and describe that Beauty to us.

* * *

Beyond the river, before we reach the mountain, we have to pass
over absolutely level cultivated plains, without a single eminence in
sight. To most they would appear dull, monotonous, uninteresting.
There is no horizon to which the eye can wander and find
satisfaction in remote distance. There is no hill to which to raise our
eyes and our souls with them. The outlook is confined within the
narrowest limits. Palm trees, banyan trees, houses, walled gardens,
everywhere restrict it. The fields are small, the trees and houses
numerous. Nothing distant is to be seen. To the European the
prospect is depressing. But to the Bengali it is his very life. These
densely inhabited plains are his home. They have, therefore, all the
attraction which familiar scenes in which men have grown up from
childhood always have. A Bengal