y let loose into a pastrycook's shop with
unlimited credit. The dainties provided, in the way of legislative
business, are attractive in kind and boundless in quantity. The whole
scene impresses him beyond expectation and calls out all his powers. One
frequent subject of remark is the contrast between the work and the men
who have to do it. The little body of Englishmen who have to rule a
country, comparable in size and population to the whole of Europe
without Russia, seem to him to combine the attributes of a parish vestry
and an imperial government. The whole civil service of India, he
observes, has fewer members than there are boys at one or two of our
public schools. Imagine the Eton and Harrow boys grown up to middle age;
suppose them to be scattered over France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and
England; governing the whole population, and yet knowing all about each
other with the old schoolboy intimacy. They will combine an interest in
the largest problems of government with an interest in disputes as petty
as those about the rules of Eton and Harrow football. The society is, of
course, very small and mainly composed, as every society must be
composed, of commonplace materials. Writing to Miss Thackeray during the
outward voyage, he says that he will trespass upon her province and try
to describe his companions. Among them are a set of 'jolly military
officers 'who play whist, smoke and chaff, and are always exploding over
the smallest of jokes. They are not like the people with whom he has
hitherto associated, but he will not depreciate them; for they know all
kinds of things of which he is ignorant, and are made, as he perceives,
just of the 'right kind of metal to take India and keep it.' In a letter
to Venables, written a few months later, he describes his position as a
sort of 'Benthamee Lycurgus,' and sets forth the problem which he is
trying to solve in an official document then in course of preparation:
'Given corrupt natives, incompetent civilians, and a sprinkling of
third-rate barristers, how to get perfect judges.' His estimate, indeed,
of the merits of the Indian services, considered collectively, was the
highest possible. He speaks of them not merely with appreciation but
with an enthusiasm such as might have been generated in other men by a
life passed in India. In his last speech to the Council he said (and it
was no more than he said in private), 'I have seen much of the most
energetic sections of what i