s commonly regarded as the most energetic
nation in the world; but I never saw anything to equal the general level
of zeal, intelligence, public spirit and vigour maintained by the public
service of this country.' Nothing could gratify him so much as the
belief that he had in some degree lightened their labours by simplifying
the rules under which they acted. Still, taken individually, they were
average Englishmen, with rather less than the average opportunities for
general intellectual culture; and, like every other small society, given
to personal gossip, which was not very interesting to a grave and
preoccupied outsider. I find him on one occasion reduced to making
remarks upon a certain flirtation, which appears to have occupied the
minds of the whole society at Simla; but as the prophecy upon which he
ventures turned out to be wrong, there is a presumption that he had not
paid proper attention to the accessible evidence.

He naturally, therefore, found little charm in the usual distractions
from work. The climate, though it did not positively disagree with him,
was not agreeable to him; and he found the material surroundings
anything but comfortable. 'I have here found out what luxury is,' he
said to a friend in Calcutta on his first arrival; 'it is the way in
which I used to live at home.' The best that could be done in India was
by elaborate and expensive devices to make up a bad imitation of English
comforts. 'As for the light amusements,' he says, they are for the most
part 'a negative quantity.' When he is passing the winter by himself in
Calcutta, he finds evening parties a bore, does not care for the opera,
and has nobody with whom to carry on a flirtation--the chief resource of
many people. He has, therefore, nothing to do but to take his morning
ride, work all day, and read his books in the evening. He is afraid that
he will be considered unsociable or stingy, and is indeed aware of being
regarded as an exceptional being: people ask him to 'very quiet'
parties. He sticks to his 'workshop,' and there he finds ample
employment. He was, indeed, too much in sympathy with Sir G. Cornewall
Lewis's doctrine that 'life would be tolerable but for its amusements'
not to find a bright side to this mode of existence. A life of labour
without relaxation was not far from his ideal. 'The immense amount of
labour done here,' he says, 'strikes me more than anything else. The
people work like horses, year in and year out, wi