church of like rank and status with our | dies historical phenomena. But we hazard Episcopal one." Is not that a gigantic the counter assertion (with a strong bias in "rival plan of doing"? and its proposer has not told us how "culture approves" of it. We have only his individual opinion that such is the verdict of cultivated thought on the point in question. Said we not truly, that his repudiation of practical schemes breaks down; and that the link of connexion between the scheme he actually submits, and the culture which he teaches, is so vague as to be imperceptible? Again, we find Mr. Arnold frequently generalizing from data which do not warrant his inferences; and it is the tendency of all comprehensive generalization to become vague in proportion to the breadth of the area it covers. Thus in his remarkable classification of British society into the three grades of the Philistines, the Barbarians, and the Populace, while he has successfully named and acutely criticised the first of the three, and may be almost said to have minted a new term for current use in the English language, it is not likely that his second term will be either appreciated as accurate or adopted to any extent. On the whole it is a mistake to divide society by sharp lines of demarcation into classes founded on intellectual differences. In no case is the risk of false classification greater, as we deal with a type of existence of which the forces are so manifold, so protean, and so many of its phenomena latent, while their sources are so obscure. Each caste or class in society shades into that which is contiguous to it by fine and almost imperceptible gradations; they sometimes intersect each other, and often meet in the same individual. This fact has not escaped the notice of so observant a critic as Mr. Arnold. But we doubt if he has given due weight to it, or if he sufficiently recognises the presence of the Barbarian element among the populace, and of the Philistine element amongst his barbarians. If the crossings and blendings of these types are very numerous, the success of his classification is weakened. And if the variability of the type is admitted to the extent which we think it must be admitted, the distinctive features of the three classes, as they now exist, would need to be much more marked, to warrant Mr. Arnold's classification. As a further instance of rash generalization, we are told of "a law" which "forbids the rearing outside of National Establishments of men of the highest spiritual significance." The accuracy of this estimate will depend on the ideal of spiritual significance which the student of history forms, and also on the glass through which he stu favour of Establishments), that there are as many minds of the highest spiritual signifi cance outside of all Establishments as within their venerable precincts. The explanation of the law he has discovered, which Mr. Arnold gives, is, that Nonconformity is "not in contact with the main current of national life." The explanation is as inconclusive as the law. Surely the current that sweeps outside of Church Establishments is as broad, as various, and some. times as deep as that which flows within their banks. All the facts, we are afraid, do not tally with this theory; and in those individual cases to which Mr. Arnold's statement applies (and it applies to many), the real explanation of the defect is not remoteness from the main stream of national life, but an inability fully to comprehend that stream, and to sympathize with the mixed elements of which it is composed. It may seem ungracious towards a writer who has done so much to illustrate and to advance some of the choicest forms of cul ture, to object to the terms he has made such frequent use of in teaching these. But Swift's phrase, "sweetness and light," which Mr. Arnold thinks the most appropriate to describe the twofold tendency of culture toward the Beautiful, and toward Intelligence, is far from felicitous. Sweetness has a flavour of mere sensation, with which we would willingly dispense; and light is not sufficiently discriminative if it is to be confined to the action of the intellect. There is moral as well as mental light. be At the beginning of this article we refer red to the relation in which the doctrine of Ideal Culture stands to kindred problems; and there are at least two other questions closely related to the one with which we started, "What is the chief end of Man?" They are these "Whence have we come?" and "Whither do we tend?" We may able to answer the first of the three, without. obtaining a philosophical reply to the other two; but we cannot pursue the course which that answer indicates, without some approx imate solution of the others. And every doctrine of culture which ignores them, or pronounces them insoluble, is to that extent defective in moral power, if it does not lack all moral leverage. We need some doz vnoɛws. What force is to urge the soul forward in this career of many-sided life? What is to facilitate the progressive harmo ny of its powers? Is it true, as Mr. Arnold represents Empedocles as saying "Once read thy own heart right, Man gets no other light, Search he a thousand years"? Must the force proceed from human nature itself, and its relation to this present state of being? or must it not rather spring from a perception of our Origin and our Destination? If we perceive that we have emerged from the Infinite, not as atoms developed by the slow evolution of an eternal Force, but as beings cast in the image of the Creator, and destined to immortality, we have a motive for the culture of our powers that is inexhaustible. If, on the contrary, we merely stand by the side of the stream of human existence, or float on its upper surface, wholly ignorant of its origin and of its issue, we may drift with the current, but we can have no motive to advance. It would be a matter of indifference to us where we stood along the margin of a line, both ends of which are lost in the darkness of the Infinite. But as we need inducements and stimuli to urge us forward, we must know the points from which and to which we tend. Where can we find a motive to progress, if not in the ambition to reach "the measure of the stature of the perfect?" When we remember our origin and discern our immortality, we continue the laborious quest for knowledge, we willingly renounce beliefs that have proved their immaturity by our advancing growth. Every branch of philosophic study, of scientific labour, or of artistic toil, yields us some new element with which to carry on the education of our powers. We venerate the past and strive to learn from its rich accumulations, but we aim at a larger and more mellowed culture than any that the past has bequeathed to us; while we remember that Man himself is "greater than anything that educates him," greater than any object that surrounds him in the universe of finite existence. ART. VIII.-PUBLIC WORKS IN INDIA. 1. Reports of the Proceedings of the Govern- "ROADS for India?" "Why, India is Such was the evidence tendered to a Committee of the House of Commons, which happened not long ago to be engaged inquiring into the wants of our Eastern Empire-the witness in this instance being a member of Parliament enjoying the reputation of knowing India well. By the assertion that India is itself a road, this gentleman meant to imply that the sun-dried soil and empty water-courses found there during the rainless months of each year afford every requisite facility for the movements of its inhabitants. To him, and to a once considerable but now scarcer class who think with him, there seemed nothing amiss in a condition of things which compelled the cultivator, when carting his produce to market, to undertake a journey across country in fox-hunting fashion, or at best along roads of a description so rude as to entail a certain waste of time, and a considerable risk of accident. For, notwithstanding frequent invocations of his gods, and many stimulating twistings applied to the tails of his oxen, the driver might consider himself lucky who reached the end of his journey without sustaining injury in cart or bullocks-racked to pieces in ruts which immersed wheels up to the axle-tree, or goaded to death in struggles to cross passes hardly practicable for unladen animals. The setting in of the annual rains of the tropics, which saturate the loamy soil and flood the bridgeless rivers to an extent prohibiting the passage of travellers, and which, in fact, is the signal for the owners of carts to remove the wheels and store them in dry places throughout each June, July, and August-this complete suspension of the traffic of the country might at all events have seemed capable of evoking an admission of the necessity of some remedial measure. But no! In the minds of certain Anglo-Indian praisers of past times, this very consequence of a want of roads appeared to offer a conclusive proof that no roads were nedeed. We trust we are correct in saying that views of this retro-active nature are no longer prevalent among us; and that they need now be considered only in the light of causes which explain the faint progress works of improvement have hitherto made in India. Of late each fresh Secretary of State for India-and during half-a-dozen years we have had about as many occupants of the office has lost no opportunity of stating his conviction of the importance of roads and canals for his charge. And, doubtless, each has used efforts to give his views effect. Some progress, too, has actually been realized in this direction. But much, very much, work yet remains to be done. Districts as large as half-a-dozen English counties put together, and possessing a soil more fertile than is to be found in Europe, are without roads for the conveyance of their crops to market. Others, equally rich and extensive, are liable to periodical visitations of famine, owing to the want of water, which might with care be led along channels, to irrigate their fields. In such parts of India a year of drought means a year of death. | East, it must be acknowledged that forced No doubt the task of meeting these many requirements is no easy one. The field of labour is so vast: the means immediately available for work appear so inconsiderable. Nature seems there so all-powerful: Man so feeble, so liable to be soothed into sloth by the enervating influences of climate. The very extent and intricacy of the official machine by which an order is conveyed from the lips of the Minister in London to the ear of the man who is to work it out in India, would alone interpose serious risks of delay, if not of absolute abortion. And the Minister must find it no easy matter to hit off a happy medium between the execution of imperfect projects, pressed for his adoption by enthusiasts within or schemers without, and the no less mischievous alternative of inaction to which the faulty system of Public Works* finance or the advice of over-cautiousness of constituting a marvellous small counsellors might well drive him. He cannot adopt the course pursued in the case of the grand mosques, temples, and tanks which mark the reigns of former rulers of India. Shah Jehan might unhesitatingly order every labouring man and every beast of burden within a given circuit, to be impressed into the task of damming up an artificial lake for irrigation, or of opening a way across a mountain pass. But Queen Victoria could not venture on so Eastern a form of procedure. Compulsory labour has an evil sound in the ear of an Englishman. He cannot be brought to consider its application in other countries as in any degree excused by the fact of its having not long ago existed in principle in his own. Yet in justice to our predecessors in the * In describing works of improvement we shall hereafter adopt the comprehensive designation of Public Works used in Anglo-Indian official language, and of which we give the following interpretation by Major Chesney:-"In India the term Public Works has always been applied to every kind of building operations undertaken by the Government, and includes, therefore, the construction and repairs of all State buildings, civil and military, as well as the prosecutions of roads, railways, and irrigation works."-Indian Polity, p. 357. fraction of a great human whole lying at the absolute disposal of his sovereign. An order to labour on behalf of this master seems to him a very reasonable exercise of power. Nor must it be imagined that labour was exacted after the fashion of the hard taskmasters who exist in English minds in association with this state of things. Those who have mixed much with the natives of India know that in their treatment of servants they are kind and considerate. The word "slave" has no proper equivalent in their language. "Son of the house" is the term generally use to denote the African who at times may be found in the domestic establishment of a Mussulman-slave in so far that he was bought in the market-but wearing his bonds lightly, as may be imagi ned from the kindly epithet accorded to him. To meet slavery in its English sense, one must pass the mountains of the Hindoo Koosh, and seek for it in Balkh or Bok hara. In carrying out this compulsory process, the Mogul Shahs observed in a fair degree the dictates of humanity and the prejudices of religion. Labour was demanded only during the season when agricultural opera tions in India are at a stand-still, and mode rate wages, or rations of food, were allowed to the workmen. Nor were the less substantial luxuries of sweetmeats and fireworks wanting to reward them for the successful completion of their task and sweetmeats and fireworks are, to the working man of India, the same source of gratification that fire-water is to an English navvy. To men thus gathered together there was no great hardship in being compelled to sleep under a rainless sky; and shelter, if necessary, might almost anywhere be found in the temples or houses of fellow caste-men, or be easily improvised with branches of trees and coarse matting. But widely different as was the Indian system of old from the oppression practised in the land of Egypt, either in the days of Pharaoh or of Mohammed Ali, its adoption at the present time is of course out of the question. Such works as we require must be made by volunteers, for whom the wages we offer shall present a sufficient source of attraction. And on this score we need have little cause to fear, seeing the readiness with which workmen flock to the operations of the Indian railways. The difficulties in the way of providing public works for India are of a different nature. To understand them, it is necessary to keep in view the peculiar position which the British government occupies in that country. Her Majesty's Viceroy at Calcutta, in addition to his functions as chief magistrate of her Eastern dominion, has to perform the less showy duties of land-steward over an estate larger than France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Italy and the United Kingdom, put together. And to increase the difficulty of dealing with so unmanageable a property, he is compelled, by the usage of public business in India, to enter personally into almost every affair which concerns it. A question of such small importance as the construction of a few miles of road, which happens to have been proposed by the officials of some remote village, is liable sooner or later to find its way to the desk of the GovernorGeneral; and on arrival there it is no longer in the shape of a simple plan and estimate for carrying out the proposal, but is swelled into a bulky budget, composed of criticisms and counter-calculations of engineers, of voluminous commentaries by collectors of districts, and of able but embarrassing résumés of these discordant documents, prepared by energetic under-secretaries, possibly endowed with a talent for epigram. The results of this system are such as we might expect them to be much writing, little working. The energies of the Indian Public Works Department are chiefly occupied in drawing up plans on paper, or in combating objections offered to them. Indeed, the temptations presented to all concerned, to display their powers of perception, and of picking holes, are so great as to be nearly irresistible to men sitting in offices in India, where during most of the hours of daylight the climate renders out-of-door occupations impossible, and where the cheaply paid swarms of publicoffice clerks are naturally enough disposed to beget the work which is needed to justify their employment. Then too, as we must all know, there is in the minds of most men a latent conviction of a capacity for engineering. As almost every Englishman conceives himself a competent judge of a horse or a bottle of wine, so do our countrymen seem to consider themselves fitted, with few exceptions, to pronounce sentence on any proposal embracing bricks and mortar. Members of the Civil Service of India, thoroughly conversant with questions affecting their proper duties, as Collector of a district or Commissioner of a province-questions of so abstruse and so hard-named a nature as to be unintelligible to ordinary Englishmen these gentlemen appear often to care less for the credit fittingly accorded to their knowledge of Ryotwarree Tenures or the Hindu Law of Adoption, than for a reputation they seek to acquire for a certain acquaintance with earthwork and masonry. In short, almost every official in India is more or less of an amateur engineer, ready to cavil at any plan placed before him, and in occasional instances equally prepared to suggest an alternative scheme of his own. Then, too, death, disease, or a desire to run home to England, are causes always operating to bring a rapid succession of fresh incumbents into Indian offices; and each new man comes to look on the acts of his predecessor with a critical eye-unable, possibly enough from inexperience, to grasp at once the view it may have cost the out-goer many years of toil to master. So that the general result may be summed up in this form-that at least twice as much time is consumed in that stage of a public work which is described in official returns by the words "under consideration," as would suffice for its effectual construction. Nor do the drawbacks to the operations of the Public Works Department of India end here. Even in the case where these protracted preliminaries have ended in an order for breaking ground, there yet remains an uncertainty as to funds being available to meet the cost of execution.* A bad year's *This state of things has not yet been so suffi rents, a short crop of opium, an outcry for | lightful set-off in the shape of work in the economy-these, and many other contingen- field. Indeed, it would be hard to conceive cies, are at any time capable of cutting off a more wholesome or happy existence than the necessary supplies of money; so that the that passed by one of these officers during officer in charge of a work is often compelled his annual turn of camp life in the districts to carry it on in a most unsatisfactory man- under his charge. Provided with a couple ner. Unable to count on any sums beyond of suites of tents, so as to permit of one set the allowance doled out to meet the wants being sent in advance to be ready to receive of the year in which he finds himself, he is him at the end of the morrow's journey, he deprived of aids which in undertakings of is enabled to carry on his duties with as this nature are essential to reaching the end much regularity as if he were staying at his in view, either speedily or economically. head-quarters. About an hour before sunContracts he can hardly venture to enter rise he swallows the cup of tea and biscuit into, unless these be provided with breakage which constitute the "small" breakfast of clauses on behalf of the Government, such as India, and at his tent-door finds a horse no contractor would accept, save on terms being led before it in readiness for him. If of an extravagant sort. The plant and ma- the stage before him be a long one, or if chinery requisite to assist and cheapen his works on his way require inspection, be operations he at best can only acquire gets at once into the saddle, and moving piecemeal, whereas the greatest service these clear of the falling tents, the piles of bagaccessories afford is often to be found during gage, the prostrate forms of much-roaring the earlier stages of work. The very labor- camels, and other litter incidental to the ers whom he may with much trouble have confusion of striking camp in the dark, he gathered together from distant places, for jogs quietly along until the dawning day operations in a thinly-peopled locality changes the drowsy sort of foot-pace his nag these very men, when leaving at the out- has observed through the darkness into a burst of the rains, for their fields and farms, skittish inclination now exhibited for a run can meet with no assurance from their emover the firm far-reaching plain that lies ployer, that their services shall be required ahead. And it is really wonderful to no on the re-opening of the working season. tice the intelligence which the little Arab horses, used in India, do display in seizing an opportunity of this kind. The animal which allowed itself to be kicked along sleepily through the dark hours before dawn, no sooner feels the cheering influence of the coming day, than, shaking his bit saucily, and assuming a jaunty style of action, be invites the man across him to a frolic together over the flat. A couple of Persian greyhounds are likely companions of the morning's march, and as hares are plentiful, it is hard if man, horse, and dogs do not get one or two good runs on the road. From the day the first sod of a canal is turned, or the foundation of a bridge laid, until the time he is able to report his task complete, it is with him one long struggle to make the most of imperfect means; while, to aggravate his evils, his mind is kept in constant anxiety regarding every shilling expended in his district. He is held to be responsible not only as a designer and a constructor, but also as a paymaster and accountant. It would not be surprising were men in this position to lose all zest for their duties, and rest satisfied with attending to official correspondence, and a vigilant superintendence of their ledgers and treasure-chest. It would be hard to blame them were they to show themselves little inclined to see works of importance set agoing in their districts. To the credit of the officers employed in the Public Works Department of India, it must be said that, in spite of many disheartening influences under which they are placed, they almost invariably work with all their heart both in-doors and out of doors. And if the office labours be at times uncongenial to an active man, it must be admitted that against these duties there is a de ciently remedied by the recent system of Public Works' loans, as to permit of its being described in the past tense. If the officer be not pressed for time, he probably does not leave his tent till day, break; and then starting, gun in hand, and with a horse led after him, he makes his camp-followers beat a broad belt of the bush, field, or swamp that borders his way, and so manages to get a fair bag of quail, bustard, snipe, duck, hare; if he cares to stalk, he can in most places find herds of antelope or spotted deer. And when at length the sun has worked some way up sky, and the pangs of the stomach begin to prevail over the claims of sport, he gets across his horse, and canters hungrily home to his camp. Yes! we may safely use the word home. For everything about the place looks thoroughly comfortable and well-ordered. At his tent-door stands a groom ready to lead his horse off to the line of the |