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encircling their tusks, golden bracelets on their ankles, and gold and silver bells tinkling as they walked, was very remarkable. They all saluted by trumpeting and waving their trunks in the air, as if they thoroughly enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of the parade.

The message of the King assuring the people of India of his respect for their dignities and rights, of his interest in their advancement, and devotion to their welfare, was received with tumultuous applause. This display of pomp and splendour, far exceeding anything witnessed at the coronation at the heart of the Empire, would be out of place anywhere but in India; but there, accustomed as they are to the barbaric splendour of the native princes, it was necessary that this imperial function should not be inferior to any that the great Indian dependency had ever witnessed. Lord Curzon's knowledge of Oriental character

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enabled him to organize the most imposing pageant the East had ever witnessed to signalize the act by which British ascendency over one-fifth of the human race was formally reaffirmed."

More and more is the sense of the unity and solidarity of the British Empire throughout the world taking possession of mankind. Every candid mind must agree with Lord Rosebery that it is the greatest secular agency for good which exists on the earth. Its might, as Dr. Parkin has remarked, is not used to oppress, but to uplift subject races. It stands for law and order and liberty in every land; for peace and prosperity and Christian institutions.

This is emphatically illustrated in the case of England's African and Asiatic dependencies. The kraal of the barbarous Hottentot or Kaffir has been transformed into a Christian village. The intestine wars, the oppres

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It suggests the ivory palaces, the gilded temples, the gaudy idols, the broad leaves of the palms and the bananas, the sky-piercing Himalayas, the vast surf-lined coast, the dark skins and the snow-white robes of the natives, the rice-fields and the tanks, the elephants and palanquins, "the bazaars, humming like bee-hives, and the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bundle of iron rings to scare away the hyenas and other dangerous animals.

The real beginning of British ascendency in India was in 1757, when on the banks of the Indus, where the foot of an Alexander had faltered, a merchant's clerk conquered an empire. With three thousand troops, on the plains of Plassey, Robert Clive routed an army of sixty thousand, and laid the foundation of our Indian Empire of 250,000,000 souls. The almost uniform success of the English Company attracted alliances with the native chiefs, and gradually the British rule became extended over the whole country. And especially since the suppression of the Mutiny, all Christendom has overwhelming reasons for gratitude that the sovereignty of England extends over India.

India is a country as populous, and in some large regions more populous than the most thickly-peopled parts of

NATIVE INDIAN TROOPS.

Europe. Let us think of Europe without Russia, that is, of all that system of countries which a few centuries ago formed the whole scene of civilized history, all the European countries of the Roman Empire plus the whole of Germany, the Slavonic countries which are outside Russia, and the Scandinavian countries. India may be roughly said to be about equal both in area and population to all these countries taken together. This empire, which we now govern, is considerably larger and more populous than the empire of Napoleon when it had reached its utmost extent. It is a crowded terri

tory with an ancient civilization, with languages, religions, philosophies, and literatures of its own.

The Indian army, we all know, does not consist of English soldiers, but mainly of native troops. Out of 200,000 only 65,000, or less than a third are English. At the time of the Mutiny there were 45,000 European troops to 235,000 native troops in India, that is, less than a fifth.

lies the great truth-speaking, justiceloving, Christian civilization of the home nation, ever with its Edmund Burke, or kindred moral genius, to voice the deeper sentiment of the people for righteousness and mercy. What a noble breed of men the pro-consuls she has sent out to rule a realm like India -men heroic in courage, supremely loyal to duty, enlightened in intellect, devout in feeling, an honour to humanity, their biographies a more than modern Plutarch! Blessed the nation that has such constellations of worthies with which to fire the soul of its more generous and aspiring youth!

We have pleasure in quoting the following graphic paragraphs from an

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"How one must praise," says Dr. Tiffany, an American writer, "the magnificent way in which England administers her Indian Empire. She is the legitimate successor of Imperial Rome. Ruthlessly may she conquer, but in the train of conquest follows the broadest, the wisest, the most. humane and tolerant statesmanship the world has ever witnessed. To be humbled by her is to be exalted by her. For back of the greedy, unscrupulous mercantile adventurers and halfpirates that are the first aggressors,

article in The Outlook, by William Frederick Dix:

Delhi, the chief city in the Punjab, in India, flashes prominently into the public eye on account of the great Durbar-the proclamation of King Edward as Emperor of India. Delhi, the capital of the great Mogul emperors, whose splendours lasted through five reigns; Delhi, the ancient city, the largest and commercially the most important in the country, filled with the richest historical and legendary associations, is the Rome of India. Delhi's origin is lost in obscurity; in the tenth century its fame had spread far and wide, and during the great Mutiny it was the chief strategic point of all India. Unless it could be taken, the em

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A CROWDED BAZAAR.

pire never again would be held by the English; and when, after the desperate attack that demolished the Kashmir Gate, it at last fell, the moral effect brought about the end of the rebellion. Emperor of India! Think what it means! Lord of a continent stretching from tropical Ceylon to the untrodden and icy peaks of the Hima

layas, rising twice as high as the highest Alps; suzerain of the proudest princes in the world, the rajahs and maharajahs of India; the titular master of glittering armies, of jungles and deserts, villages and teeming cities, of a land over which seven great religions hold sway-Brahmin, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Mohammedan, and Christian !

The Durbar at Delhi is the proclamation of the controlling power of England as represented by her present King; and the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, has planned the most brilliant ceremony ever held during the new regime.

So new life comes to the picturesque city; its streets blossom with the flower of Indian chivalry; nawabs in brocade and cloth-of-gold, in garments of glittering kinkob, with plumed turbans and gem-studded arms, throng the streets; chariots and elephants bravely caparisoned, richly harnessed white bullocks, and superb horses, make the scene mediæval in its picturesqueness, and merchants display costly fabrics, jewels, and armour, and reap a golden harvest.

But Delhi in its usual life, and as I saw it, lies dreaming of days still more glorious. A profound peace has settled over it, and at night, when the

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