s in no way due
to her scrupulous exactitude in particulars, for if this had been the
book's chief feature it would have failed. She has a clear and
spirited style; she knows enough of India to be able to give a fine
natural colour to the stirring scenes of the Sepoy mutiny, and to
execute good character-drawing of the natives, as they are to be
studied among the various classes in a great city. And whenever her
good genius takes her off the beaten road of recorded fact her
narrative shows considerable imaginative vigour. The massacres at
Meerut and Delhi, the wild tumult, terror, and agony, are
energetically described; and her picture of the confusion inside Delhi
during the siege is admirably worked up, remembering that she wrote
forty years after the event, at a time when the people and even the
places had very greatly changed. The storming of the breach at the
Kashmir gate by the forlorn hope that led the English columns is
dexterously brought into an animated narrative; and although that
story has been much better told in Lord Roberts's autobiography, we
need not look too austerely on the crowd of readers who find history
more attractive under a thin and embroidered veil of fiction.

A still more recent novel, entitled _Bijli the Dancer_ (1898), should
be mentioned here, not only for its intrinsic merits, but also because
the author has boldly faced the problem of constructing a story out of
the materials available from purely native society, the stock themes
and characters of Anglo-India being entirely discarded. Bijli is a
professional dancing girl, whose grace and accomplishments so
fascinate a great Mohammedan landholder of North India, that he
persuades her to abandon her profession and to abide with him as his
mistress. This arrangement is correctly treated in the book as quite
consistent with the maintenance of due respect and consideration for
the Nawab's lawful wife, who occupies separate apartments, and,
according to Mohammedan ideas in that rank of society, has no
reasonable ground for complaint. Yet Bijli, though she has every
comfort, and is deeply attached to her lord, grows restless in her
luxurious solitude; she pines for the excitement and triumphs of
singing and dancing before an assembly. So, in the Nawab's absence,
she takes professional disguise, and sings with a lute in the harem
before his wife. To those who would like to see a Mohammedan lady of
high rank in full dress, the following descri