which the
Hindus are in an overwhelming majority? But in the life even of Calcutta
features are not lacking to remind one how persistent are the forces of
resistance to the whole spirit of the West which Mr. Gandhi mustered in
Delhi to protest against the purpose of the Duke of Connaught's mission.
Had not a great part of Calcutta itself also observed the _Hartal_
proclaimed by Mr. Gandhi during the Prince's visit?

On the surface it seems difficult in Calcutta to get even an occasional
glimpse of the old India upon which we have superimposed a new India
with results that are still in the making. In Bombay, though it proudly
calls itself "the Western Gate of India" the glow of Hindu funeral
pyres, divided only by a long wall from the fashionable drive which
sweeps along Back Bay from the city, still called the Fort, to Malabar
Hill, serves to remind one any evening that he is in an oriental world
still largely governed as ever by the doctrine of successive rebirths,
the dead being merely reborn to fresh life, in some new form according
to each one's merits or demerits, out of the flames that consume the
body. On Malabar Hill itself, in the very heart of the favourite
residential quarter whence the Europeans are being rapidly elbowed out
by Indian merchant princes, the finest site of all still encloses the
Towers of Silence on which, contrary to the Hindu usage of cremation,
the Parsees, holding fire too sacred to be subjected to contact with
mortal corruption, expose their dead to be devoured by vultures.
Calcutta has no such conspicuous landmarks of the East to disturb the
illusion produced by most of one's surroundings that this is a city
which, if not actually European, differs only from the European type in
the complexion and dress of its oriental population and the
architectural compromises imposed on European buildings by a tropical
climate. The Marquess of Wellesley built Government House over a hundred
years ago on the model of Kedleston, and it is still the stateliest
official residence in British India. Fort William with Olive's ramparts
and fosses is still almost untouched, and with an ever-expanding
Walhalla of bronze or marble Governors and Viceroys and
Commanders-in-Chief, and at the farther end the white marble walls and
domes of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hall--the one noble monument we
have built in India--at last nearing completion, the broad expanse of
Calcutta's incomparable Maidan is, even more tha