cials; and because it stands out in
quiet relief among tales of fierce wars and savage mutiny; it neither
chronicles the heroic deeds of Englishmen, nor does it devote even a
single page to the loves, sorrows, or comic misadventures that break
the monotony of a British cantonment.

_The Chronicles of Dustypore_, by H. S. Cunningham, takes us back
again from the sombre, half-veiled interior of an Indian household,
into the fierce light which beats upon English society at some station
in the sun-dried plains of the Punjab. We have here a sketch, half
satirical, half in earnest, of official work and ways, with one or two
personages that can be easily identified from among the provincial
notabilities of twenty years ago. The book, which had considerable
success in its time, will still provide interest and amusement for
those who enjoy an exceedingly clever delineation of familiar scenes
and characters; and it is in the main as true and lively a picture of
Anglo-Indian life as when it was first written. Here is the summer
landscape of the Sandy Tracts, a region just annexed to British
administration after the usual skirmish with, and discomfiture of, the
native ruler:

'Vast plains, a dead level but for an occasional clump of palms or
the dome of some despoiled and crumbling tomb, stretched away on
every side and ended in a hazy, quivering horizon that spoke of
infinite heat. Over these ranged herds of cattle and goats,
browsing on no one could see what; or bewildered buffaloes would
lie, panting and contented, in some muddy pool, with little but
horns, eyes, and nostrils exposed above the surface. Little
ill-begotten stunted plants worked hard to live and grow and to
weather the roaring fierce winds. The crows sat gasping,
open-beaked, as if protesting against having been born into so
sulphurous an existence. Here and there a well, with its huge
lumbering wheel and patient bullocks, went creaking and groaning
night and day, as if earth grudged the tiny rivulet coming so
toilfully from her dry breast, and gave it up with sighs of pain.
The sky was cloudless, pitiless, brazen. The sun rose into it
without a single fleck of vapour to mitigate its fierceness ... all
day it shone and glistened and blazed, until the very earth seemed
to crack with heat and the mere thought of it was pain.'

Such is the environment in which many English of