of
it, is to him as a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. He would
like to see the clergy merely scholars and men of sense set apart for
the conduct of divine worship and the encouragement of all good and
kindly offices to their neighbours; he does not wish to see them
mediums and conjurors. He thinks that in a heathen country their
paltry fetishism of misbegotten notions and incomprehensible phrases
is peculiarly offensive and injurious to the interests of civilisation
and Christianity. Of course the Archdeacon may be very much mistaken
in all this; and it is this generous consciousness of fallibility
which gives the singular charm to his religious attitude. He can take
off his ecclesiastical spectacles and perceive that he may be in the
wrong like other men.

Let us take a last look at the Archdeacon, for in the whole range of
prominent Anglo-Indian characters our eye will not rest upon a more
orbicular and satisfactory figure.

A good Archdeacon, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit gay and bright,
With something of the candle-light.

ALI BABA.

No. V

WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT

[August 30, 1879.]

He is clever, I am told, and being clever he has to be rather morose
in manner and careless in dress, or people might forget that he was
clever. He has always been clever. He was the clever man of his year.
He was so clever when he first came out that he could never learn to
ride, or speak the language, and had to be translated to the
Provincial Secretariat. But though he could never speak an
intelligible sentence in the language, he had such a practical and
useful knowledge of it, in half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could
pass examinations in it with the highest credit, netting immense
rewards. He thus became not only more and more clever, but more and
more solvent; until he was an object of wonder to his contemporaries,
of admiration to the Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several
_Burra Mem Sahibs_[A] with daughters. It was about this time that he
is supposed to have written an article published in some English
periodical. It was said to be an article of a solemn description, and
report magnified the periodical into the _Quarterly Review_. So he
became one who wrote for the English Press. It was felt that he was a
man of letters; it was assumed that he was on terms of familiar
co