despatch, dated the 30th of April, 1898, from the Tokio correspondent of the Times, which was on its way to England at the time of Lord Kimberley's speech : Three convictions may be now said to have taken firm hold of a large section of the Japanese public, and to be gaining ground daily. They are that Russia is marching steadily to a place of overshadowing power in the Far East, that China's integrity must be preserved, and that England and Japan are bound to join hands for the prevention of the former result and the attainment of the latter. regard to these points political parties are united. With The best alliances, Mr. Brodrick has informed us, are often those that, are least talked of, and it is a notable fact that although reasons have been given for not expecting either Germany or the United States to join us in an alliance for the defence of mutual interests in Eastern Asia, not a word has been said against the likelihood and practicability of an Anglo-Japanese alliance. An alliance with a power capable of putting a strong fleet and a well-equipped, welltrained, well-officered, and well-provided army of 530,000 men on a war footing in a few days, and with magnificent harbours near to the seat of war, would be an enormous advantage in case war was forced upon us in the Far East by Russia's advance on Peking or by her attempted occupation of Korea. But it is not only the interests of Japan and ourselves that would be affected if Russia's policy of expansion were carried out in Eastern Asia. It is true that the interests of European continental Powers in that region are small in comparison with their interests in Europe, yet those small interests are capable of rapid and enormous growth in the near future; thus, as Mr. Brodrick believes, 'while we might appear very often to be proceeding alone in these matters, we were very often voicing the opinion of more Powers than appeared on the surface.' And, in reference to Lord Salisbury's advice to the Chinese Government not to consent to a Russian railway being extended to Peking, as such a line would lead to Russian domination over the Government at the capital and to the ultimate break-up of the Chinese Empire, Mr. Brodrick declared he thought it not impossible that we would find that other Powers who might not actually speak in the same tones would not be found to be backward in showing that they shared our opinion if any occasion should arise.' As long as Russia continues her policy of expansion at the expense of her neighbours, and as long as France is craving for glory and vengeance, war will continue to hang like a thunder-cloud over Europe and Asia, and the threatened nations of both continents must make ready, and keep ready for its outburst. Prophecies are apt to bring about their own fulfilment, especially when uttered by a Power that can bring it about. If the prolonged armed peace is, as the Czar has stated, becoming so intolerable as to render war inevi table, should that war break out first in the Far East the advantageous opportunity would have come for the Triple Alliance to end the intolerable armed peace by joining in the fray, carrying the war into their enemies' camps, and forcing them to reduce their armaments to a reasonable extent, and to pay such heavy indemnities as would amply recoup the enormous outlay caused by the attempted furtherance of their restless ambitions. If Russia means war, she means war, and must risk the consequences. She has been the spoiler of every one of her neighbours, and there is not one of them who might not profit by her far from homogeneous Empire tumbling to pieces. With the possible, if not probable, ruin that such a war might entail on her, it is therefore almost a certainty that she is merely attempting to attain her historic aim by bluff. If she means bluff, the more we retire before her the further she will advance. Anyhow, it will be the utmost folly for us to allow Japan to be driven to the wall by Russia, and thus lose the only friend we can certainly count on in the defence of our interests in the Far East. HOLT S. HALLETT. A HINDU HOME A DOG-CART meets me at the station, very much like any other dogcart, but lightly constructed of bamboo, the cause whereof will soon be apparent, and beneath the skeleton frame depends a net in which you place your dressing-bag or anything you want on arrival. There is no luggage cart, and the rest of your baggage comes behind, drawn by a pair of bullocks. These patient beasts defy the competition of the railroad, and perform the bulk of the carrying trade of our Indian Empire. There is a formal welcoming. That is a matter of course. A smooth-faced gentleman, called an agent, expresses in very good English his master's pleasure at the arrival of the guest of guests, the long expected one, the superlatively welcome, for whom, had not the thing been Anathema Maranatha, he would have slain a herd of fatted calves. But really, considering the atmosphere around, this is too bold a metaphor. Let us return to safer ground, all uneven though it be. The patient bullock has many merits, but his cloven hoof, his rigid adherence to routine, and the drip of multitudinous drops from the umbrageous branches of the sacred banian, wear deep ruts and occasional, perhaps not very occasional, holes in the road, so that driving a dozen miles amounts to exercise, and is comparable at least with that obtained by the liver brigade in the park. Along the way one passes innumerable bullock carts, and countless foot passengers, the women at least always carrying something, from a baby to a bundle of sticks. They walk along firm and erect, and since only females of the lower castes frequent the roads a fact I think imperfectly appreciated-they march uncovered as to their deep breasts, of which they are, to their credit, no more ashamed than were the Homeric heroines we all agree to sincerely admire. Well, along the road, the pony, an indifferent trotter, for here nature is in the habit of asserting herself and natural tastes predominate, the pony, I say, canters along the road, getting over the ground-which is the main business after all of the ponies— at a very good pace, till at the sixth mile we meet the Raja mounted on-an elephant? Oh dear no!-on a bicycle, and but that an attendant with a broad gold sash over his shoulder runs in front, and another behind, you might almost take him for common clay upon a bike. But when he descends from this invention, you find him, albeit young, say twenty-five, the very cream of courtesy, as in excellent English, and with equal dignity and simplicity, he repeats the welcome he had put into the mouth of his representative at the station. Then, leaving the bicycle to one of the gold-sashed attendants, he gets into his own dog-cart, and drives his guest the remaining six miles to the palace. When we get into the town the road narrows. We pass between hedges of bamboo which, now that the rains have some time since ceased, are dry, brittle, yellow or white. These are the hedges which keep out the gaze of the curious, of whom I am one, and around every homestead is its little garden entered by a gateway, no small part of the whole, and behind is a thatched, or, as the case may be, a tiled dwelling-house, in which contentedly, incuriously, and not unhappily, the people of this rural township pass their uneventful lives. Soon we pass through the richer quarters of the town, where dwell the relatives of the Raja, men who dower their daughters with tens of thousands, men whose fortunes soar into heights, in which lakhs of rupees, that is to say hundreds of thousands, are, albeit with respect and with abated breath, mentioned. Now, India is a large country, and it has been my good fortune to know it in many of its multifarious aspects. Yet I believe many who think they know their India pretty well will learn with surprise that at the palace, when we get there, the Rani is, from a domestic point of view, monarch of all she surveys, and her Brahmin husband no more the head of affairs, whatever influence he may exercise, than was the Prince Consort the head of affairs in England during his brief and beneficent life. In fact, the Rani has the privilege of choosing and changing her husband. She does not exercise the latter privilege. It is only another proof of the virtue and excellence of Hindu women that here, in a comparatively small fragment of India, say something between ten and twenty thousand square miles, where women of the upper classes possess this right, they hold very much the high ideal of matrimony which distinguishes the orthodox Hindu system in which a woman exercises no choice in the disposal of her person in marriage. The palace is a large irregular structure, and the courtyard a square, of which two or three sides are occupied by buildings; but what visitor to strange and unfamiliar scenes ever thinks the house of equal interest with its occupants? First, then, the Rani. She is short-no Indian women are tall, though their perfect symmetry and dignified demeanour may deceive you into that belief. She wears a robe of red silk with gold embroidery. Upon her ankles, which rarely show through ample drapery, are silver anklets, heavy, hollow, and resonant. Her ears are pierced, not as those of English women, for the lobe is all but severed from the ear by so large a rent that in it is placed a golden wheel studded with rubies, not less than an inch in circumference, and at least as big as the ear. It is odd, but it is the fashion, and positively it is not the least unpleasing. Yet her daughter wears small golden earrings in her pretty little ears, and in them is just room for five rubies closely set in a small wheel which merely rests upon the lobe of the ear. Aged fourteen, this girl is of course married? Well, she is; but here, in this land where the new woman, in all the essentials of her position, is not new but old, not forward but modest, not advertising but retiring, not dissatisfied but content, her marriage, and it is the marriage of her people, was a mere empty ceremony, which left her as soon as she became a woman, a married woman, but bound to live with her husband? Oh no! but free to choose the actual partner of her life. Of course, in great families like these a marriage is an alliance, and the girl probably consults the feelings and adopts the wishes of her relations, but none the less the spirit which animates our English marriages is not wanting. Here, at any rate, women are a most important, if not the most important, factor in the social economy. Inheritance runs in the female line. A man's heirs are not his, but his sister's children. It is not surprising that where conjugal unions are unfettered, women are exceedingly good-looking. The daughter of the Rani might hold her own in any company. Full grown at fourteen, as at that age are the daughters of the East, she possesses the, in India, not uncommon charm of a perfect figure, lithe, slight, and supple, yet not wanting in development, and her costume is perfect, inasmuch as it modestly veils, while it heightens, the charms of the wearer, whose dark brown eyes, light brown skin, pearly teeth, clear-cut features, vivacious and playful expression, present a personality which Alma Tadema would have loved to portray, lightly moving in flowing drapery over the tesselated pavement of the pillared hall. And the pavement is tesselated, and the hall is pillared, and the pillars are golden fluted, and the roof is red, fretted with gold, and beyond it the rain-water falls into a marble reservoir in which the ladies bathe, and farther on, in the gloom of a long corridor, a pale light flickers before an idol, and there is the temple and the household divinity. The Rani is the mother of the Raja, and his position he derives from her, not from his father. She chose his father, after whose death she filled the vacant place with the father of the charming girl, and of four younger children. She invites me to breakfast to-morrow, for though her guest I occupy a separate garden bungalow, consisting of a verandah below and a bedroom above, access to which is gained by a perpendicular ladder. She says, 'If you do not like our food, of course you will not eat it, but it would be such a pleasure if you would really, so far as may be, actually take your meals within our |