The Prince in India, and to India. By Samba Chandra
Muckhopid- hyfiya. (Triibner.)—We should say that this was an interesting revela- tion of thoughts and feelings that prevailed among the natives of India, if we felt sure that an Oriental ever does reveal his thoughts and feelings. Some expressions, however, are, we may feel tolerably certain, genuine enough. Our author says :— " I do not expect, as the immediate effect of the late visit of the Prince, any sudden or sweeping reforms in administration ; these may come in due course ; all I anticipate—and this I have a right to expect —is a visible improvement in the tone of the Government, and of English, and ultimately Anglo-Indian, society towards the hundreds of millions of Asiatics subject to England. We believe in the reality of tone, in the existence of an atmosphere either suffocating or refreshing. Tone may exasperate, atmosphere may conciliate. Always important, in our case tone is all-important, for after all that is urged regarding the ill-success or unpopularity of British rule in India, the worst, the chief, almost the sole blister is caused by—a tone."
Another fault of ours, about the reality of which we may be pretty certain, is that we are not magnificent enough. There ought, thinks our author, to have been other great ceremonials to welcome the Prince and give him an imperial prestige than the one which accompanied his investiture with the Order of the Star of India. "I think," he adds significantly, " Indian money would have been better spent in such a valuable Taniasha than in feting the Sultan in London." Generally the author's exposition of native feeling is profoundly interesting and expressed with great force. We may add that he shows as keen an understanding of our own politics, when his subject happens to bring him into contact with them, as could any writer of our own.
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