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from the Medina came to the present, and their Majesties rolled away, and troops and crowds broke off, every corps to its tents, its own quickstep playing. "My Love is like a Red, Red Rose" and "Scotland for Ever" striving to beat down "The Double Eagle" and "Garryowen," till the pipes took up the tale, and the sheepskins banged on all quarters of the horseshoe jheel.

th, who wouldn't give me a rupee though I had mounted guard at his door for two whole days. Make way! make way!"

However, there was Dumbri presenting arms to his Majesty, and vowing he would never present arms again to ordinary sahibs, not for all the rupees in India. Which was very much what the British soldier had said, in the spirit so close on republicanism that it abhors lesser stars. It was on the King's guard at Delhi, and a pro-consul and escort drove by. "Ho! we don't take no notice of these 'ere governors now."

And Dumbri, of course, was there in the crowd. Who is Dumbri? Why! half Upper India know the mad beggar who mounts guard outside your house from time to time, So after the King, and past with a great wooden harque- old mad Dumbri, the crowd buss covered with regimental surged home, talking always in badges and bad coins, and a the same strain of the Badshah beggar's gourd slung like a and the great Tomasha,1 that cartouch-box over his shoul- never the world had known ders. Dumbri may be a mad- before. One other topic, too, man, or he may only be a was a common one, and showclever beggar, or he may be ing, perhaps, how the great an agent of some of the under- machinery of government ground workings that rumble pinches as it grinds. Never, under the Indian volcano. said the old country folk, had Only the Thuggi and Dacoity the police been so mihrban, so know that; but anyway, if you kind. It was no longer "Hut are a wise man you will keep jao," and "Get away out of in his good books. Not long this," and "Serve you right ago a colonel of a regiment if you do get run over!" had refused to pay blackmail, but "Would you be so good and sent the indignant Dumbri as to move along," and away; but the next day, at the "Grandfer, mind the motor," polo tournament, as the said and the like. "No doubt," colonel tried to make his way as one old farmer said, the through the crowd, lo! there Badshah had given orders to was Dumbri presenting arms the police to treat his subwith his harquebuss, and shout- jects properly; it was only real ing, "Make way! make way! Badshahs who thought of poor for the mighty colonel of the folk in the streets.'

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At the Badshahi Mela, the royal fair, in the bezla of the Jumna, the whole people from far and near marched by sept and clan and religion past their Majesties, who sat for them, in their crowns and robes, on the Masamman Tower on the walls of the Mogul Palace, so that all the folk from the country might see the king in his golden crown," which they did to their hearts' great content, and cheered a8 never the East had dared do before. Then in the palace above roamed what the reception babu in a native state would call "the illustrated guests," the royal suite and all the officers of the services there assembled, with many a foreign visitor, over the grounds that had seen half the glory and the tragedy of the old empire, under the Hall of Audience, round the peacock throne with its world-famed boasted motto, and the marble fretwork of the Diwan-i-am, whose maker

never dreamed of the fairy voice that should describe it as "too cunning for words." By the gateway whence poor Douglas of the King's Guard had ordered away the first of the mutineers from Meerut who clamoured to see the Mogul, a Fusilier guard waited to present arms to such of "them răjahs" and others as might be so entitled, and cinematographers reeled their spools in readiness. What if, by the working of some old law of nature, these same spools had reproduced a procession of Shah Jehan in all his glory, printed from some negative of time; or, perhaps, the procession of Hodson bringing in the old king from the Tomb of Humayun! And then over it all the biggest portent of any in Delhi that day, . . . the six great wireless masts within the palace, that some men call the last word of the English. . . . The wireless system that now rings India, on its way to reach round the world, following the British drums, which follow the sunset round the world each even.

...

In the streets all the school children had been provided with a medal bearing the heads of their Majesties, and showed them off eagerly, and even away in the village schools a similar distribution had been made. In all the streets the veterans paraded their intense satisfaction-for had not his Majesty actually spent over an hour going down their ranks, speaking to almost every one, and making kindly

remarks in their own language? It is good to cherish the men who have carried the eagles, and the Badshah had not forgotten. "When," said one triumphant old man, who had been serving as a macebearer, "did a king in the Mogul days ever allow such as me to come within a hundred feet of him, but this Badshah has shaken hands with me, and called me faithful, and the Queen has given me a medal; was ever such a Raj before?"

Then quietly in the corners the other party, or rather parties, sad enough, too, some of them. Here, perhaps, the fanatical genuine child of Islam, grieving over the glory of past dynasties, horror-struck that the cross should flourish where the crescent had failed. Learned, benevolent, respectable, but bitter at heart always. Sir Alfred Lyall saw and felt it clearly at the earlier celebration when the Queen of England became Empress of India.

"Near me a Musalmán, civil and mild,

Watched as the shuttlecocks rose and fell,

And he said, as he counted his beads and smiled,

'God smite their souls to the depths

of hell!'"

Or utterly distinct in feelings and aspiration, the true fanatical Brahmin, who has really and truly brought himself to believe that the English are the ruin of everything good and great in Hindostan. Such are the men that the gurukuls are aiming at turning outmen after the discipline of

Ignatius Loyola, with their wills sunk in one great wrongspirited cause. Such are the fanatics whom none can lead, and from whom there is no protection for the English official. Happily such spirit as yet permeates but the few. Its worst feature is that it is absolutely genuine. To them the great Raj and its high aims and the enthusiasm inspired in the crowd are anathema.

Yet another party looks on with mixed feelings-viz., the leaders of that clever, welleducated party who demand self-government for India and India for the Indians, and even dream of so frightening the English that fear shall grant what reason withholds. Clever, often well meaning people enough, versed in the talk of the political meeting-hall, and possibly really believing that they and their fellows could control the forces they would conjure up. Possibly, too, they really forget that their hand has never kept their head for a thousand years, and that the northern hordes eagerly look for the day when once again the plains of Hindostan shall lie bare to the raider. But the

English know it well, and wait patiently till in the fulness of time they shall have educated a better and sterner people to the difficult task of self-government. At any rate they, the Bengali and the Maratha Brahmin, may have realised that to tip over the British Raj is a big proposition and not to be lightly entered on. They have, too, perhaps realised

how real is the security that the great police provides for them as they kept the roads at Delhi for high and low, and behind whom the British bayonets keep the ring.

Here in their chagrin we may leave them, and the crowd that

mark one more stage in the appointed task of nursing the East to prosperity and selfreliance.

"O men of the wandering sea-borne race,

Your venture was high, but your wars are done,

stood to watch the English Ye have rent my veil, ye behold my

King come to imperial Delhi and its rose-red palace, to

face;

What is the land that your arms have won?"

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCLVII.

MARCH 1912.

VOL. CXCI.

COLIN CLOUT, COME HOME AGAIN!

"Whilest thou wast hence, all dead in dole did lie:
The woods were heard to waile full many a sythe
And all their birds with silence to complaine :
The fields with faded flowers did seem to mourne,
And all their flocks from feeding to refraine:
The running waters wept for thy returne,
And all their fish with languour did lament.
But now, both woods and fields and floods revive,
Sith thou art come."

-COLIN CLOUTS COME HOME AGAINE.-Spenser.

THROUGH the grey and heavy air,
Through the January rain,

When old England nipped and bare
Shudders with the load of pain
Wept upon her by the eyes

Of sunless, sun-remembering skies:
When the soul of man is fain
Suddenly abroad to fare,
Questing, questing every where
The soul of beauty to regain,
Dreaming like a boy to snare

The great free bird no lure can chain,
Following in a dull despair

That cannot pierce their brief disguise
Random flights of pallid lies

VOL. CXCI.-NO. MCLVII.

X

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