CAN ENGLISHWOMEN LIVE IN INDIA? MRS. TOOLEY, who is interviewing notable Englishwomen in Edinburgh for the Woman at Home, put a question something like this to Lady Muir, the wife of Sir William Muir. Lady Muir not only maintained that Englishwomen could live quite well in India, but she asserted that for her own part she did not even find the climate trying:

"I lived for thirty-eight years in India, and had very good health. My husband did not get the long furloughs which are the fashion now, and we just took one month's holiday to the hills; that was all. Nowadays, I am told, the ladies go up to the hills as early as March, and remain throughout the hot season."

"But you must surely have found it very trying, Lady Muir, to stay down during the hot weather?"

"I should have found it much more trying to go to the hills and leave my husband to frizzle and stew on the plains by himself with no one to attend to his comforts," quickly replied Lady Muir, and I gave up the argument, for her ladyship is an old campaigner, and has a supreme contempt for modern self-indulgence. When she was in India she adopted the habits of the country, rising at five o'clock in the morning and retiring not later than ten at night. All her household concerns were over by the dejeûner at half-past ten, and she could spend the rest of the day in reading and resting. "It is a great mistake," she said, "for ladies to take their European habits to India. When I hear of ladies who do not rise until nine o'clock in the morning, and remain up until long past midnight, I do not wonder that they cannot endure the climate of India, and are obliged to leave their husbands and run off to the hills on the first warm day in spring. I was in India for twenty years, and never went up to the hills except with my husband when he had his yearly leave."

In reply to my question as to whether she had not had some curious experiences during her long residence in India, Lady Muir told me that for nearly two years at one time she was the only lady at the station where Sir William was Collector, adding, "I was never so happy in my life, just attending to my home and my children. The only change I had was an occasional visit to my parents at Futtypore, fifty miles away. Yes," continued her ladyship, "there was a great fascination about living in India, and I think that children who have been born out there always want to go back. When Lord Salisbury's telegram came, recalling Sir William to London to take a position upon the Council for India, it was a grief to You cannot think what it was to me to give up everything at once. We liked the people, you know, and spoke their language, and tried to sympathise with their native customs. We never had English servants about us."

me.

THE COVENANTER NOVELIST.
AND HOW HE ROSE TO FAME.

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD CROCKETT is the subject of a very interesting interview-sketch by Mr. Sherard in the Idler. The novelist is introduced to us as "a splendid athlete, a broad-shouldered giant of six-foot four, with blood tingling in his cheeks, and a mercurial activity and exuberance in every fibre of him." As yet he is only thirty-four years of age. Born at Little Duchrae, in Galloway, his earliest recollections are of the frequent struggles of his people with the River Dee, when its suddenly rising waters used to sweep off the new-mown hay from the fields. His first literary diet was meagre :— There were not many books about the farm. Our people were strict Cameronians, Covenanters, and I was brought up in the faith. Most books are forbidden to the Cameroniansnovels, the poets-even Shakespeare... Such books as there were, were books about the Covenant.

He used to hanker after romance. The first novel he os "The Young Marooners," in which a boat was on and dragged away by a devil fish:

I think back with pleasure on our Scotch Sabbaths. A great deal of nonsense is spoken in England about the Scotch Sabbath. I enjoyed my Sabbaths immensely.

A cousin of his, the original of the "Stickit Minister," introduced him to the poets. He lent him Shakespeare and Milton, which the boy smuggled into his bedroom under his clothes. A bursary of £20 a year, and subsequent journalistic work, kept him while at Edinburgh University. He was a frequent contributor to Lloyd's and the Daily Chronicle. When he was nineteen, the late Dr. Jowett secured him a travelling tutorship, which took him all over Europe and through Siberia. From twenty-three to twenty-five he studied theology, supported himself by journalism, and worked in the slums in Edinburgh. Shortly afterwards he settled as Free Church minister at Penicuick, where he married and has remained ever since. His house is full of books, many thousands of volumes in fact, including several rare and most valuable works. From the first he spent his money freely on books. He considers that "the bang-wentsaxpence Scotchman of the Englishman's imagination is a very rare type indeed. As a rule the Scotch are inclined rather to extravagance."

The sketch is illuminated with engravings of the novelist's portrait, residence, and children, as well as of scenes described in his novels.

THE QUEEN'S WEDDING DRESS.

DAYRELL TRELAWNEY writes in the Minster on "Some Royal English Wedding Dresses.” His description of the dress worn by Her Majesty on the occasion of her marriage is the chief passage of interest :

This beautiful gown was almost completely veiled with priceless Honiton lace-not, however, made at Honiton, but in the secluded little Devonshire village of Beer. The lace flounce which draped the skirt was four yards in length, and nearly a yard in depth. Over two hundred lace workers were employed upon it for eight months, while the bridal veil (also of Honiton) took more than six weeks to complete, although only a yard and a half square, the greater portion being composed of lace net... The bodice-which was cut low on the shoulder, in what, I believe, was called Victorian shape, because it was introduced by the young Queen-was of extreme simplicity, merely finished above the arms by large rosettes and ends of white ribbon, with the same rosettes repeated on the elbow sleeves, which were draped with Honiton lace. A close coronet of white flowers rested on the hair, to which the veil was attached behind, leaving the face free. magnificent rivière of diamonds circled the neck, and completed a wedding-dress suited in its rich simplicity at once to a reigning sovereign and a youthful bride. The satin for this dress was made at Spitalfields. The beautiful lace, which cost £1000, will always be regarded as an heirloom; for the design on the completion of the work was immediately destroyed.

Α

The making of the lace kept employed during the winter 200 lace-workers who would otherwise have been destitute.

MESSRS. GEORGE PHILIP AND SONS have just published for the London Missionary Society a sheet map for the wall of the Religions of the World, showing the stations of the Society. It is mounted on linen, furnished with rollers, and costs 1s. 6d.

IDEALS

OF SANITARY REFORM:
WHAT SIR BENJAMIN RICHARDSON WANTS.

A VALUABLE article is contributed to Longman's by Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson on "Past and Ideal Sanitation." It opens with a rapid survey of the extraordinary advance of sanitary science and its application during the lifetime of the writer. Emboldened by these successes, he outlines a series of improvements in the appliances for the prevention and cure of disease, which will keep reformers busy for a generation or two.

A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF SEWAGE.

Sir Benjamin is sadly dissatisfied with the present unconnected local arrangements for the disposal of our sewage. He insists on the need of a plan of "national main drainage," and to this end would utilise our railways!

We have nothing to do but to construct along the sides of all our lines of railways a series of tunnels in iron tubing or brickwork as may locally be most appropriate or convenient; to let this main conduit or sewer start near to the commencement of every place where there are houses that require to be drained, and lie by the side of the line; and to let the sewage from the houses be pumped into the main course and carried off, so as to be collected at distant points or conveyed by side conduits to spots selected for its utilisation, that the land all over the country may receive the benefit of it for fertilisation, away altogether from the residences of men, and in a manner perfectly harmless to the health of communities. For such ready transit the levels are all laid, and there is such ample open and unused space for the maine, it would be no more difficult to lay them down than it has been to lay out our telegraph lines.

Another plan would immediately follow,-that, namely, of utilising the railway levels for supplies of water at any distance from towns, so that our great lakes could be used as sources of water supply to towns all along a line. there would be a kind of arterial and venous system in every place.

Thus

Rubbish should be disposed of by burning everything that fire can consume.

My ideal is that in all communities there should be, according to the numbers statistically required, hotel hospitals, comfortably, and for the richer class, even elegantly furnished and fitted with everything that is necessary for the sick in any form of disease. These hotel hospitals should be conveniently planted for the service of every one, so that if a person is ill he shall be able to find a room in one of them where he can be looked after by his own medical adviser and friends.

No private house would then become a centre of infection or scene of death; and the reform could be carried out at less than the cost of the present inferior management of the sick in their own homes. For contagious diseases the writer has modelled a special system of hospital, which he hopes shortly to see realised :—

Instead of taking such cases into the upper rooms of private houses, I would have light, elegant, small hospitals, placed at proper distances on the tops of special houses, with proper lifts for taking the sick into them; with every facility for free ventilation through them; and, besides, gas fire shafts for drawing up and purifying the air from the sick-rooms.

HOW TO VENTILATE OUR TOWNS.

To plan the streets so as to let the wind get along them, and to line them as far as may be with vegetation are the two secrets of urban ventilation. The usual course of the winds must be considered in laying out new streets :

In England the current is, I believe, for a great part of the year in one direction-namely, from the south-west to the north-east-so when we look at our trees, borne down by the winds, we see them bent north-easterly, that is to say, opposite to the most common current; or, if we observe the vane on a church held in a fixed position from rust, we see that it usually points south-westerly.

In places which are situated low, and in valleys, it would always be of advantage to bring in the air from neighbouring heights, and now that we have the admirable mechanical principle of pumping in air from any height, and of compressing it in reservoirs, there ought not to be a town or village which, however unfortunately situated, should not be thoroughly ventilated by mechanism in addition to natural pressure. The air might come to you and into your parlours from cloudland.

The Eiffel tower might, according to Sir Edwin Chadwick, be thus utilised. Ventilating towers might be built quite as easily as tall chimneys.

66 THE UPPER LONDON THAT IS TO BE. "Upper London" is no celestial counterpart of the terrestrial metropolis: it is a vision of urban ventilation artistically secured :

These

This would consist in doing away with the chimneys of existing houses, and in making beautiful terraces which should run along the tops of the houses and be united across the streets by arches, from which could be suspended electric lights, intersecting all parts of the city or town. terraces would form pathways for foot passengers; for men engaged in the distribution of letters; for men engaged in the extinction of fires, should they break out; and for bearing the erection of furnaces, at proper distances, into which all the smoke emanating from the houses could pass for complete combustion and clearance of the air. Along such terraces I should suggest that flowering plants should be placed so that the upper part of the town should, in fact, be a garden of beauty, with all that is requisite to render life more cheerful and open both above and below. That this great reform will come I have no kind of doubt.

COOK AND BUTCHER REPLACED BY CHEMIST.

Diet, too, will be transformed. For drink, nothing is needed but pure water. As to food :—

The conclusion I have been brought to is practically that men can live most healthily on a very light animal diet in combination with fresh fruits and green vegetables, and can learn to look on the cereals-grains and pulses-in the same way as if they were animal substances.

Repugnance to animal flesh as food "increases with every step of civilisation." And why use the laboratory of the living animal to prepare vegetable food for us when we have chemical laboratories?

There will, in time, be found no difficulty in so modifying food taken from its prime source as to make it applicable to every necessity, without, I repeat, the assistance of any intermediate animal. In the presence of such a development, foods of the best kind will become the cheapest of all products.

Sir Benjamin, in conclusion, notes with satisfaction the changed attitude of the clergy. If they will only remember that sanitation is part of the religion of the Old Testament, and "if they become as teachers bold representatives of natural sanitation, they will soon rank among the first sanitarians of the world," and prepare in home and school for the general adoption of true sanitary ideals.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF RECREATION.

A PLEA FOR HEALTHY GAMES.

MR. CHARLES ROBERTS writing on the "Physiology of Recreation" in the Contemporary Review, gives some interesting information and makes some valuable suggestions as to the amusements of our people from the point of view of the physiologist. He thinks that women can play at most of the games that men amuse themselves with, but their inferior strength renders it impossible for them to compete with men on even terms after they are ten years of age. He says:

The average differences between fully-grown men and women of the age of 25 years are: women are about 5 inches shorter of stature, 24 lbs. lighter in weight, and 36 lbs. weaker in strength. The average drawing-power of men being 81 lbs. and that of women 46 lbs., the ratio of the strength of women to men is as 1 to 1.82-or, in other words, an average man of 25 years has very nearly double the strength of arms of a woman of the same age. It is obvious, therefore, whether for labour or for recreative games requiring strength, that women are physically inferior to men. Moreover, there are anatomical changes at puberty which place women at a disadvantage. Women cannot walk or run as fast as men, and their lower limbs being attached at a wider angle to the trunk are more liable, if subjected to much strain, to deformities in the shape of flat-foot, knock-knee, bow-leg, and spinal

Mr. Roberts, it will be seen, puts cycling very low down on the list, apparently from a mistaken idea that cyclists necessarily cultivate the hump. If Mr. Roberts cycled himself he would put cycling a great deal higher up on the list. He laments that children don't know how to play unless they are taught, and he suggests that

the Education Department should require teachers of both sexes to pass an examination, theoretical and practical, in children's games as an essential qualification for their duties. Unfortunately, we have almost forgotten our old English games, and I know of no book which sufficiently describes them for the use of teachers and children. A recent French commission on physical education has, among other things, collected and described a considerable number of children's games, many of which I recognise as English games with French variations. We have need of a similar commission in this country, but failing this, a committee of men and women interested in the subject might investigate and report on games suitable for school use, and bring pressure to bear on the Education Department to introduce them into training colleges and schools.

Another suggestion which Mr. Roberts makes is that churches should be more utilised for recreation than they

are at present. As I have been metaphorically stoned in the market-place for suggesting that empty Churches might be utilised as indoor playgrounds, I have great pleasure in quoting the following passage:

Of the outdoor exercises which are within almost every boy's and man's reach are rowing, swimming, and walking; while of the indoor exercises dancing, billiards, dumb-bells, and singing are within most people's means. It is most unfortunate that the admirable game of billiards should have become associated with the public-house, but this is a proof of its attractiveness. A divine is credited with the saying, when he adopted a brighter and more cheerful set of tunes for his hymns, that it was no use letting the devil have all the best tunes, and I would say likewise, there is no use letting the devil have all the best games. Directly or indirectly nearly the whole of our best games are associated with the publichouse, and it is time they should be retrieved and placed on an independent footing. The Church might well do for games what it has done for music and singing.

FRENCH SURGERY.

IN the Revue de Paris last month Dr. Pierre Delbet contributes a remarkable paper on hospital surgery, in which he pleads hard for the methods pursued by surgeons of the present day.

He declares that the surgical ward has by no means the infernal aspect which the outside public imagine it to possess; and adds that, however unlikely such a statement may sound, suffering is the exception rather than the rule, most of the patients who have undergone operations being cured in a few days without pain and without increase of temperature. He asserts that chloroform and the new antiseptic treatment have almost put an end, not only to the mortality formerly attendant on many operations, but that they have caused fever and pain to disappear.

Some hopeless and very painful maladies yet afflict humanity, but they are not those which can be cured by surgery. Most patients are resigned to the decisions of the doctors; tears and cries are rare.

Domestic servants, says M. Delbet, are much more afraid of hospital treatment than the average Parisian. The latter really like a time of rest in a hospital ward. Indeed, those afflicted with varicose veins try not to be too rapidly cured; but a hospital is, before everything, a place where cures ought to be achieved, and at the present time a patient who enters the surgical ward has as much chance of being looked after as a millionaire who is nursed at home.

The author-whose paper is evidently a reply to criticisms-denies that useless operations are ever undertaken. He admits having heard people say that their friends had been cured at home without an operation of exactly the same ailments as were treated in a hospital by aid of the knife. But, he asks, how is the outsider to know that the cases were exactly similar? Moreover, surgery itself has learnt many lessons. It now not unfrequently happens that surgeons refuse to perform operations which they do not think necessary.

The treatment of the goitre, for instance, has undergone a radical change. It was at one time customary to remove these excrescences, and under modern antiseptic treatment no ill effects were at first discernible; but thirteen years ago a Genevan doctor made the curious observation that patients so treated gradually failed from some defect of nutrition, and now goitres are no longer cut.

Some readers may perhaps be repelled by Dr. Pierre Delbet's evident inclination to abuse anti-vivisectionists, but his article is powerful and interesting.

THE ORIGIN OF A NAPOLEONIC IDEA.

HOW AN AMERICAN REBUILT PARIS.

Ir is usually accepted that Napoleon the Third was the author of the idea which led to the Hausmannising of Paris. The reconstruction of the capital of France, which was one of the greatest achievements of the Second Empire, is now discovered to have been due not to Napoleon in the first instance, but to a young and unknown American with whom he foregathered during his sojourn in the United States. This statement is made on the authority of Napoleon himself by Albert D. Vandam in the extremely interesting papers on "The Personal History of the Second Empire" which he is contributing to the North American Review. Mr. Vandam's uncle had asked Napoleon on one occasion for a post for one of his friends. Napoleon, after talking of some other things, suddenly returned to this subject and said:-

66

'You asked me just now for a Government situation for one of your protégés who is possessed of considerable talent; but if he has talent, why does he not use it properly, instead of wasting it in a Government office at the rate of 1,200 francs a year?" For a moment or so my uncle was at a loss for an answer, for he had asked himself the same question many a time in connection with the various candidates he had recommended to his Majesty.

"I suppose, sire," he said, at last, "that in spite of his talents, he is not clever." "Put it that way if you like," remarked the Emperor; "I should say because he has got no imagination; for cleverness and imagination may in this instance be synonymous. From your description of the young fellow, I fancy he must be like a young fellow I met when I was in the United States-alike in every respect save in the possession of a strong imagination. Your young friend knows geometry, mathematics, surveying, and the rest; he has an inkling of architecture; and all that knowledge, which argues a considerable application on his part during his college days, he wishes to place at the disposal of the Government in exchange for a stool and a salary of 1,200 francs at the Ministère des Travaux Publics (Board of Works). Well, the young American to whom I refer, and to whom I owe the idea of the wholesale transformation I am attempting, knew all these, though probably not so well as your young friend. But he did not apply to the United States Public Survey Office to help him to get a crust of bread on a stipend which would have provoked the scorn of nine-tenths of the working men in America. He wanted to live, not to vegetate. He was bent on making a fortune; and a twelve-month after my first meeting with him he was worth a couple of millions of dollars. He was poor and looked poor, so poor as to be frequently behindhand with the weekly payment at the boarding-house in New York where we both stayed. But he never lost heart. One day he came in, an hour late for dinner, but with a big roll of paper under his arm. 'I am very sorry to be late, but I have got hold of my fortune to-day,' he said in the way of apology, pointing to the papers, which turned out to be the complete plans of a city for 40,000 inhabitants, with its churches, its public squares, its monuments, etc., etc, including even an exchange. It looked like a fairy city, but the plans were nevertheless carefully worked out; it was the city of the future, such as I intend to have in France, if I live long enough. The young fellow had, however, done more than merely to draw an attractive city on paper; he had bought the site of it-of course conditionally-entered into contracts with builders, sanitary engineers, marble masons and landscape gardeners, and, provided with those documents, applied to a couple of big bankers with a keen eye for possibilities. They were going to form a syndicate, and the works were to be begun at once. That same evening I had a long conversation with the young fellow. So your town will rise like Thebes at the sound of Amphion's lyre?' I asked smilingly, for all this was very new to me. Mythology may be reduced to practice sometime,' he auswered, but I do not suppose we

shall be as magical as all that. One thing, however, is very certain. The whole of my plans will be started on the same day, and if possible will be completed within a few weeks of one another. We are not going to follow the example of Europe and build a street or half-a-street of houses at a time.'' Then the Emperor sat still for a moment or two. "You are considerably older than I am," he said at last to my uncle: "yet you may outlive me. When in days to come people tell you that Napoleon III. transformed Paris, you in your turn may tell them that he owed the idea to an American of whom Europe has probably never heard; for on the evening to which I refer, I made up my mind to do what I am doing, if ever I got the chance."

OUR YELLOW RIVALS.

No. 3 of Svensk Tidskrift, always one of the best of the Scandinavian magazines, opens with an interesting paper on "The Coming Struggle between the White Race and the Yellow," the gist of which is the unpalatable theory that one evil day, perhaps not far distant, the man of the Almond Eyes will be pitting his strength against that of Whiteskin, and, unless Whiteskin look to himself and beware in time, will ultimately wrest the sceptre from him and be ruler, or, what is almost as bad, co-ruler with him of the world. As yet, Whiteskin is lord. But the growing power of Japan is a serious question already with the Russians and the Englishmen in Asia, and the threatening attitude of China will be but slightly affected by her recent disastrous quarrel with the sister country. We may even expect, according

to the writer of the article, that the blow John Chinaman has sustained will put new life and fire into him, and rouse him from stagnation, even as France under the Third Empire, when on the very brink of ruin, was roused by the whipping she received from Germany into making of her defeat a stepping-stone to the higher things which she is now once more, under the dangerous indolence of her twenty years of peace, permitting herself to lose hold of, while new defects in her national character develop undisturbed and unheeded. The lugubrious prophecy is substantially backed up by the observations made by Emil Metzger, who, resident in Java, has had opportunities of studying the yellow man at home, and has come to the conclusion that, when once our civilisation has broken through China's traditionswhen once the Chinese have learnt the value of being in touch with the sister nations-have learnt from us the much they have yet to learn-their dogged perseverance and tough strength will do the rest, and Whiteskin will be no longer lord.

In the same number, Harald Hjärne has an excellent article, impartial and sensible, on the NorwegianSwedish Union Crisis, which he concludes thus: "It is the mission of sound Conservatism to avoid pompous supererogations and to prudently permit the difficult questions to ripen, while Radicalism in palace or hut, in the interests of progress or of reaction, has a predilection for abrupt overthrows, and is inclined to indiscreetly take the very nature of things by surprise. The outcome of the Union Crisis will show whether old Sweden has really degraded itself into le pays de la médiocrité, according to the epigram of a foreign looker-on, or is still able to endure with honour a severe political trial. At all events may we, Swedes and Norsemen, spare ourselves the real humiliation of, after so many sharp experiences, taking example from the Danes and Schleswig-Holsteiners, who disputed so long over their antiquated treaties that at last one, wiser and stronger than they, came along and relieved them both of the bone of contention."