India Impressions. By Walter Crane. (Methuen and Co. 7s. 6d.
net.)—Mr. Walter Crane contrived to see a good deal of Indian cities, landing at Bombay on December 7th and leaving Ceylon about three months afterwards, and he tries in this book to make us by the help of his pen and pencil see something for ourselves. Some of the illustrations appear to be from photo- graphs ; but there are many small sketches—impromptus we may call them—which we owe to Mr. Crane's own hand. Commonly be is content to play the part of a sightseer, one, it will be under- stood, of well-trained powers of observation. An artist with this opportunity of travel has naturally much that is interesting to tell us,—we note, for instance, Mr. Crane's testimony to the skill of the Indian workman. He can restore and reproduce in a way that a Western could not pretend to emulate. About political matters Mr. Crane does not say much, nor does he make us wish that he had been more copious in his deliverances on this subject. He attributes the poverty of India to the fact that " thirty millions and upwards are extracted from the country without any equivalent return." He means, we presume, pensions, allow- ances, and similar expenditure. This expenditure, of course, is a necessity where a country is ruled, so to speak, from outside. Has Mr. Crane any plan for ruling it from inside ? Can, he point to any time when India was governed more economically and with greater regard to the interests of its people P And would he be surprised to hear that the revenue of the Mohammedan rulers of the country three centuries ago was little less than that of the British of the present day ?
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