extraordinary since the villager is surrounded by a dreamland of
plenty. Everywhere you see fields flooded deep with millet and wheat.
The village and its old trees have to climb on to a knoll to keep
their feet out of the glorious poppy and the luscious sugar-cane.
Sumptuous cream-coloured bullocks move sleepily about with an air of
luxurious sloth; and sleek Brahmans utter their lazy prayers while
bathing languidly in the water and sunshine of the tank. Even the
buffaloes have nothing to do but float the livelong day deeply
immersed in the bulrushes. Everything is steeped in repose. The bees
murmur their idylls among the flowers; the doves moan their amorous
complaints from the shady leafage of pipal trees; out of the cool
recesses of wells the idle cooing of the pigeons ascends into the
summer-laden air; the rainbow-fed chameleon slumbers on the branch;
the enamelled beetle on the leaf; the little fish in the sparkling
depths below; the radiant kingfisher, tremulous as sunlight, in
mid-air; and the peacock, with furled glories, on the temple tower of
the silent gods. Amid this easeful and luscious splendour the villager
labours and starves.

Reams of hiccoughing platitudes lodged in the pigeon-holes of the Home
Office by all the gentlemen clerks and gentlemen farmers of the world
cannot mend this. While the Indian villager has to maintain the
glorious phantasmagoria of an imperial policy, while he has to support
legions of scarlet soldiers, golden chuprassies, purple politicals,
and green commissions, he must remain the hunger-stricken, overdriven
phantom he is.

While the eagle of Thought rides the tempest in scorn,
Who cares if the lightning is burning the corn?

If Old England is going to maintain her throne and her swagger in our
vast Orient she ought to pay up like a--man, I was going to say; for,
according to the old Sanscrit proverb, "You can get nothing for
nothing, and deuced little for a halfpenny." These unpaid-for glories
bring nothing but shame.

But even the poor Indian cultivator has his joys beneath the clouds of
Revenue Boards and Famine Commissions. If we look closely at his life
we may see a soft glory resting upon it. I am not Mr. Caird, and I do
not intend entering into the technical details of agriculture--"_Quid
de utilitate loquar stercorandi?_"--but I would say something of that
sweetness which a close communion with earth and heaven must shed upon
the silence of lonely labo