near to Mr. Trollope's, one would perhaps choose M. Victor Cherbuliez.

There is nothing in any of these novels so melodramatic as the trial scene in Paul Clifford. But there is much excellent work in connection with lawyers and law courts, and, to make a selection where all are of so high an average merit, perhaps Is he Popenjoy? is the most readable of all Mr. Trollope's works. It is shorter than many, its characters are all new, and it was published when Mr. Trollope's narrative style was at its best. But it would be as easy to abstract an encyclopædia as to abstract a novel of Mr. Trollope's. Never was there so great a master of detail. If he introduces you to a family, it is not enough that you should know the Head of the House: you must know a good deal of the family history, and be on bowing terms at least with some of the collateral branches. He is careful to inform you of the acreage of the family estate, whether it is profitable or not, how far it is mortgaged, and whether a town house is kept up as well as the country seat. The extraordinary thing is that you can remember this mass of detail. Ten, twenty years after reading the novels the embarrassed state of the Gresham finances is quite easy to recall. The Tregears lived in the country, and therefore did well on four thousand a year; the Longestaffes had three times that income, but were always embarrassed because they would keep up all their places and a house in town as well. One even remembers that Mr. Longestaffe put his coachman into a wig, with some idea that this important step might help him to a peerage. It is the same with the law work. If a case is introducedor, rather, arises-in the course of his story, you must know the leading counsel on both sides, and he takes care that you cannot confuse them. You must be made acquainted with the points for both sides of the case, and taken in detail through the more important cross-examinations.

Nobody who has once read it can forget the cross-examination of Lord Fawn in The Queen v. Finn; that amazing piece of work which tore into shreds the case for the Crown. Nobody can forget that Baron Maltby tried Lady Mason, or can confuse Mr. Justice Staveley with his brother of the Exchequer.

It is the same in city, in country life, in politics, and in cathedral towns. It is impossible to confuse Tringle the millionaire with Melmotte the millionaire. Mr. Cohenlupe sat for Staines; although Mr. Cohenlupe was quite a subordinate figure in The Way we Live Now, it is out of the question to forget the name of his constituency. One knows it as assuredly as if he talked 'House of Commons' all through a long dinner-party. Even the very young men who belong to the Bear-garden' are distinguishable one from another-which is not always possible in real life.

His hold is not so complete over the political world. There is a

difficulty in remembering who held the subordinate parts in some of the Governments. But this is the only part of Mr. Trollope's work where the plates are a little blurred. Elsewhere, his detail is as clearly cut as possible. We remember exactly how many children Archdeacon Grantly had, and how many thousands a year income. The Vicar of Bullhampton and the Dean of Brotherton were both combative men, but are no more to be confused than one intimate friend is to be confused with another intimate friend. Mr. Emilius, Mr. Groschut and Mr. Slope are all advertising clergymen; but who could mistake Slope for Emilius? John Crumb is as different as possible from Sam Brattle; Squire Amedroz a different creature altogether from Squire Dale or Squire Carbury. Lord de Courcy, Lord Brotherton and the Marquis of Auld Reekie are all invalidish gentlemen with bad tempers; and each is as different from his brother-noble as Lord Trowbridge is from all three.

To remember all this is not a question of memory: it is the result of Mr. Trollope's method. Other writers have gone deep into detail-Lord Lytton for example, and Mr. Dickens. But nobody remembers the detail of Lord Lytton's work; and the detail of Dickens's work is remembered only after long study-the result of downright affection for the man, although it is thirty years since he left us. With Mr. Trollope it is different. His detail is remembered— cannot, in fact, be forgotten-even although it is often in appearance trivial. Every piece of detail is important and consistent with its neighbour. Even the fact that the Marquis of Mountfidgett 'bought a great many marble statues' (which was the Duke of Omnium's contemptuous way of describing a man with a cultivated taste in the fine arts) does not escape one's memory; and the Marquis of Mountfidgett is a character merely alluded to in The Prime Minister as a man who asked for the late Marquis's Garter and did not get it.

To say all this, if it be true, is to claim a very high place for Mr. Trollope as a master of plot and narrative; and a very high place is undoubtedly his by right. If we insist on denying that Mr. Trollope was an artist, we must at least admit that his photography was consummate; but if we are tempted to relent, and describe him as an artist, we are at once restrained by remembering the indignation with which Mr. Trollope himself repudiated the idea that he was any more of an artist than a bootmaker.

WALTER FREWEN LORD.

THE NATIVE INDIAN PRESS

WE hear a good deal of the much misunderstood Indian climate, something even in these stirring times of the much misrepresented Indian Government, but nothing of the completely ignored Indian Press, by which I mean not the Pioneer, the Englishman, the Madras Mail, the Times of India, and the like great Anglo-Indian organs of Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, but the papers published by Indians for Indians, whether written in English, as often happens, or in any one of a dozen or more of the many languages of the Indian Peninsula. Yet by means of these journals alone is information as to Indian, English, and world politics disseminated among the masses of India. Indeed almost exclusively to them do the educated Indians owe their news; for natural, and for the most part financial, considerations incline them to prefer their own, to the alien and expensive, Anglo-Indian newspapers. It may be stated at once that the Indian Press, though critical, is not, with rare exceptions, disloyal, that great ability is evidenced by the articles published, and often an independent judgment, which does great credit to editors, who know too well exactly what line will be taken by almost all of their subscribers. I do not think, however, that my opinions on the Indian Press will be as welcome as extracts and abstracts whereby that Press can speak for itself. The subjects of which it treats are of course multitudinous, the method of treatment varied, and not seldom the reader sees the real India side by side with the latest notions from the West, in an equally interesting and informing juxtaposition.

Not long since in a Bombay paper, alongside admirable leading articles on politics, finance, and social reform all relating to very real movements, was an account of a crime attempted close to the magnificent capital of Western India. A boiler-a boiler on which a factory was dependent for its motive power-was out of order. The operatives in charge, seeing a wayfarer pass, offered him breakfast, and then put him inside the oven, to propitiate the evil spirit by whose influence things had gone wrong. The traveller objected so vigorously that, though he was badly burnt, science remains to this day in ignorance as to the efficacy of a completed sacrifice of

this character in the case of internal derangements of boilers-a subject with which, of late, we have all grown strangely familiar. Again, regard for a moment the native princes, what wonderful men they are! There is one, and he is one of many, of whom a very experienced statesman said: 'Of all things in the world, he most reminds me of a clever permanent Under Secretary of State.' It was the aptest possible description; but the prince's aspects are kaleidoscopic. Vis-à-vis of the Englishman he takes this colour; but see him in his pride of place as the sacrosan ct ruler of his people. Clothed in a simple loin-cloth at one moment, for the performance of religious ceremonies, blazing in jewels and cloth of gold at another, for some semi-secular function, he is, alike by his personal qualities, no less than by his birth and rank, the right man in the right place, totus teres atque rotundus. Of all the versatile inhabitants of this planet surely the ruling princes of our Eastern Empire are the most versatile, and the quality is widely distributed in India. The more salt in the silver cellar. That is all the difference. There is plenty of it in the Press.

To describe its attitude in respect of the war in South Africa would take a whole article, but it may be said without fear of contradiction that not a single newspaper in the whole country despaired, in the dark days when we were repeatedly encountering that species of check which, when we meet it ourselves, we call a 'reverse.' On the contrary, never before in its history did the Indian Press brush aside all smaller issues, forget all its disagreements with the Government and its servants, and offer up one loud, continuous, and evidently sincere prayer for the speedy arrival of that victory, which they never doubted would be ours. Never have denunciations of Russia been more frequent, and never have we heard less of the treasure vainly poured, out upon the frontier' than at this epoch. The only complaint made was that Indian troops were not allowed to share the present dangers and eventual triumphs of the campaign. It can therefore be easily imagined with what satisfaction the news was received that an Indian contingent and an Imperial Service Corps were to be despatched to China, and ruler after ruler vied, each with the other, in renewing those offers which circumstances made it impossible for the Government to accept on a former occasion. It must, however, be confessed that while the Indian journals were loyal to the backbone in hoping for a speedy and successful termination to the war, they adopted, as regards the circumstances leading to and preceding the outbreak of hostilities, what has become known as a 'pro-Boer attitude,' however inappropriate such a description may be in the case of those who are heart and soul for British victory. However, the great point is that the editors one and all fought as good a fight on our side with their pens, as the men whose trade is fighting would have fought with their swords, had they been given the chance of

flinging away the scabbard, and rushing with the English to the front.

The famine is of course one of the chief subjects on which editors and contributors write, and they have written so much as to make the task of abstracting their views somewhat difficult. Yet the main lines are easy to indicate. All allow that the Government has made efforts on the whole as successful as they are gigantic and unprecedented, but many, most perhaps, protest that the causes of famine are not to be sought solely in the capricious and unfavourable character of the seasons. They adopt to a considerable extent the views expressed by Mr. R. C. Dutt, late President of the National Indian Congress, to the effect that over-assessment, or in other words rack renting, by Government of its ryots, or tenants for the most part with permanent occupancy rights, is to a great extent at any rate the cause of these disasters. Now this too is a position which may be shaken, but can hardly be carried by a passing assault. Yet since the gravamen of the charge lies in its being levelled at our administration, it is an awkward fact that only in native States which we do not administer, has there been any actual failure to feed the hungry. It is the fact that of British provinces and districts this famine has been sorest in those which are most lightly assessed, the Central Provinces, and in Bombay, which has been held up as an example to others. Again, critics of this class talk as if famines had been invented by the British, whereas they were immeasurably more disastrous and probably as frequent before we had covered the peninsula with a network of communications. At any rate in Bombay between 1647 and 1878 there were fourteen famines sufficiently severe to have earned descriptions by native historians, who thought them hardly worthy of record unless half the population of the affected districts was wiped off the face of the earth. There was no effort to fight famine in those days. It was a visitation, and the stricken succumbed.

However, the Indian papers freely admit that the Government gave its money, and the labours and lives of its officers without stint, and was very sensible of the charity of the British public evidenced by the Mansion House Fund. At the risk of weary reiteration, and with little hope of succeeding where Lord George Hamilton and Lords Curzon and Onslow have apparently failed, it may again be stated that this fund is not intended to feed those whom the Government of India sends empty away, for there are none such, but to provide comforts for the weak and caste-ridden, which could not properly be debited to the public exchequer, and to help the distressed agriculturists to face the world again after the famine. They know this in India, and the Hindu of Madras says, 'The British sympathy now extended to our suffering people deserves our enduring gratitude.' At Ahmedabad, lately visited by Lord Curzon, one of the worst famine