reigns brightly, even in the lustre of a sunset. The sun has gone down behind the trees on the margin of the open country, and casts a soft crimson radiance upon the fleecy clouds that swim above; the air cool and bright and clear; the vegetation dark red with autumn tints, harmonising with the tawny brown of the stiff clay land, and orange of a gravel road over which passes a team and waggon. We commend to the observer's study the sky in all its delicate and beautiful colouring.

Mr. Dobson's picture of the Nativity, styled "Bethlehem," needs our attention. It shows some fine points of design, especially that of a kneeling shepherd; the infant Christ himself is charmingly treated, lying back playing with his fingers as infants will. In Mr. Simeon Solomon's "Moses," the mother of the deliverer of Israel is taking farewell of him before he is deposited among the bulrushes. The sister of Moses waits beside holding the basket, and, standing upright, peers over her mother's arm at the child. Their faces, although, it appears to us, a little too dark, are full of expression and characteristic tenderness. The colour throughout this picture is extremely good, the varying textures of the dresses excellently rendered, and the accessories all displaying thought and originality. "Early Morning in the Wilderness of Shurr," by Mr. F. Good all, is a large work, representing an Arab sheikh addressing his tribe before they break up an encampment at the hills of Moses, on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. This is solidly and powerfully painted, has much variety of character in it, and appears to have been executed, either on the spot, direct from nature, or from faithful sketches of nature. Mr. John Brett's elaborate and delicate study from the margin of a plantation, where a hedger is mending a wattled fence, does him infinite honour for the care and fidelity with which he has rendered all the herbage and wildflowers about. Some fine roses are delicious in colour and freshness; and, although believing the hyacinths that

are in the front to be a little positive in blue, we say so under the correction of so cunning a renderer of nature as the artist. This picture is styled, from the figure it contains, "The Hedger." Unquestionably this figure is thin in execution, and does not come out so solidly as it should.

Mr. A. Solomon's "Drowned, Drowned," is a large picture, showing the arrival of a party of rakes from a masquerade, in costume, at the foot of Waterloo Bridge, just as a waterman has rescued from the river the body of a girl, an unfortunate, who has cast herself away in despair. We are to suppose that the foremost of these men has been the cause of the wretched girl's ruin; and now, coming suddenly upon her corpse, thus dragged, foul and dripping, from the river, he stands aghast and horrified at the spectacle, checks instinctively the advance of a female companion, who, clinging to his arm, comes gaily along, heedless of her own fate. Behind is another man similarly accompanied, his companion coquetting with him. A policeman kneels before the dead girl, casting the light of his lanthorn on her face, so that it is clearly seen. The waterman points out to a bystander the place he brought the body out from, and is dilating upon the event and his own share in it especially. A girl with a basket of violets upon her head stands behind, looking commiseratingly upon the lost

one.

There is a fine perception of character shown in the treatment of this last figure. She is one of those hard. women, whom misfortune has made undemonstrative, to say the least, if not cold-hearted; so she only stands by, and seems to give but a general look of sympathy to the spectacle before her. If the artist had treated this subject with more complete fidelity,—that is, actually painted the background on the spot it represents, and heedfully rendered the locality, and, above all, the effect of cold early dawn rising over the city, the awful stillness of which would have given a solemnity to the event, we should have had a far more moving picture than the present,

which has undeniably been executed in the studio, and therefore does not render the subtler qualities of nature, which, rightly rendered, would have been an immense help to the motive of the whole. As it is, the picture is grimy rather than forceful, and heavy rather than clear. This prosaic method of working has, in short, injured the poetry of the subject.

The omission of the two upper rows of pictures from this gallery is really a great improvement, and gives a notable appearance of size to the rooms.

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tures placed on those rows of yore could never be seen, and were ever the misery of their painters, who, naturally enough, complained bitterly of the result of their confidence in the justice of the hangers. The very small number of miniatures also is a novelty, which we fear tells of

the havoc made by photography amongst the professors of the agreeable little art. The Octagon Room contains only prints. Among the sculptures, Baron Marochetti's "Portrait - marble statuette" of a child, although not particularly original in design, has a manly breadth of treatment about it that is agreeable. Mr. Thomas Woolner's bust of Sir William Hooker is a noble specimen of artistic skill in the very highest order of art-faithful, finished, naturalistic, yet delicate and vigorous to an unequalled degree. The same artist's three medallion portraits of Messrs. Norman, Crawford, and A. A. Knox, are fine examples of sound treatment. Mr. A. Munro has several portraits in marble, displaying his usual pleasing and graceful style of execution.

A GRAVE event has befallen Indiathe gravest, I believe, in its consequences, whether for good or evil, that has happened since the rebellion. A Governor, who promised to show himself the best that has ruled in that country since the days of Lord William Bentinck, whose trusted subordinate he was once, has been, through his own indiscretion, suddenly recalled, and is believed to have anticipated that recall by resignation.

Through his own indiscretion. There is no blinking the fact. As Governor of Madras, Sir Charles Trevelyan was subordinate to the Council of the GovernorGeneral of India, sitting at Calcutta. A financial scheme for all India had been put forth publicly, in a speech of great power, by a gentleman sent out from this country for the express purpose of taking charge of Indian finance, and a bill founded on that scheme had been introduced, with the sanction of the Governor-General, into the Legislative Council. Sir Charles Trevelyan, deeming that scheme and

bill mischievous and fatal as respects the Presidency over which he was Governor, not only remonstrated against it, and drew up a scheme on wholly opposite principles, which he embodied in a minute, and which obtained the assent of his colleagues, members of the Madras Council, but, without consulting them, without previous sanction from his official superiors, on his sole responsibility, sent that minute to the public press. Nor is it possible to deny that in the tone of the minute, as well as in the fact of its publication, there is much that is inconsistent with the requirements of public duty.

But there is a discretion which may lose a country. There is an indiscretion which may save it. I believe that Sir Charles Trevelyan's indiscretion was such. I need not say I am sure, had he not believed this, he never would have committed it.

Let us look the fact in the face. It is proposed to impose at once three absolutely new taxes upon from 150 to 180 millions of people. It is admitted

by the proposer that there are "abso"lutely no data upon which any reliable

say

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"calculation can be made of their result." I say that the history of mankind affords no instance of such an experiment, carried out on such a scale. Î that it is perfectly impossible for me to conceive of its succeeding under such conditions. I say that the deepest gratitude is owing to the first man who comes forward and shows under what conditions, within what limits, it cannot succeed, and therefore should not be tried. Now I do not wish to be misunderstood. Mr. Wilson left this country, not perhaps amid such a chorus of universal good opinion as the applause of farewell meetings and dinners might lead one to think, but still with the reputation of a very able, very hard-working, and very experienced financier. I think his scheme a very able one. I wish to see it tried, on a safe and limited scale. hope it may succeed, so as eventually to be applicable on a larger one. Even were it to fail, I believe him to be entitled to our very great gratitude for devising it. Anything more absurd, anything more wicked than our financial administration of India hitherto, it is impossible to conceive. We have so ruled a land of the utmost fertility, capable of producing everything under heaven, with a practical monopoly of growth as respects several articles in great demand, teeming with a docile and industrious population, as to have a deficit in thirty-three years out of the last forty-six (1814-1860), a surplus only in thirteen, the net total deficit amounting to nearly sixty-four millions. Mr. Wilson comes, and says: This shall be no longer. All thanks to him for so doing. He says: I will do no further towards sapping the productive powers of the country at their very root by adding to the weight of the land-tax. I will tax production in its fruits, and consumption in its enjoyments. Right again, most right. But when he comes to the specific measures for applying these principles-a tax on incomes, a licence-duty for trades, a duty on tobacco --then the whole question of specific merit

is opened up as to every one of these taxes, and the application of every one, and the figure of every one. A tax may be admirable as respects ten millions of people, detestable as respects the ten next millions, their neighbours. Admit if you like—and I sincerely trust it is so--that Mr. Wilson's taxes are perfectly adapted for Northern India, which he has seen, what possible ground can there be for supposing that they are equally adapted to Central and Southern India, which he has not seen?

Let us test this by a comparison. In the year 2060, North American conquerors have established their dominion over the whole of Europe, minus part of Russia, a few small European states remaining here and there as their tributaries, but all the present distinctions of race, language, habits, religion, remaining the same, and the relation between conquerors and conquered being complicated by the fact that the former are Mormonites, whose creed is abhorrent to European notions. They have not shown themselves able financiers; the surplus revenues of every most flourishing state have mostly vanished upon its annexation; yearly deficits have been, for a length of time, the rule. After a dangerous rebellion, a shrewd Yankee is sent from Connecticut to set the finances of America's European empire straight. He takes a rapid run via Southampton and London, through Belgium and North Germany, returns to Hamburg, the capital of the empire, and three months after arrival, puts forth a new budget, imposing three spick and span new taxes on the whole population, from the North Cape to Gibraltar, averring beforehand that he cannot calculate what they will bring in. Whereupon, a subordinate official, of very great European as well as American experience, who only rules over France, Spain, and Portugal, gets up and says: "Your scheme won't do in any way for the countries under my charge; I undertake for them to restore the balance between income and expenditure without new taxes, by merely reducing expenditure." Now, judging of the twenty-first century by the lights

of the nineteenth, should not we hold that both might be quite right within the sphere of their own experience; but the shrewd Yankee most probably quite wrong in attempting to tax France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, half Germany, half the British Isles, not to speak of the Scandinavian countries, from his three months' experience of Southern England, Belgium, and half Germany? Why do we not see that what would be folly in the twenty-first century is folly in the nineteenth ?

I believe, for my own part, Sir Charles Trevelyan had thoroughly calculated the cost of his own indiscretion. I believe he thought, and thought rightly, that the only appeal against the monstrous folly of Calcutta centralization which could save the country committed to his charge, lay to public opinion. I believe that, to make that appeal, he voluntarily sacrificed, not place and power alone, which he could well afford, but reputation. I believe that the true answer to that appeal on the part of his ultimate superiors in this country would have been-not to recall him, as they have done; not to send him to Calcutta, as Mr. Danby Seymour foolishly advisedbut to have hurried a bill through both houses, declaring the Madras Presidency, for a twelvemonth at first, exempt from the jurisdiction of the Council in India, and to have cast upon Sir Charles the full responsibility of making good his, own pledges; or, better still, to have at once authorized him by despatch to act upon those principles, and then to have come before Parliament with a bill of indemnity for themselves and for him.

For, if we will look into the heart of the matter, which Mr. Bright alone has done hitherto, the fault of all this lies in the insane concentration of power in the Calcutta Council.

If any one were to put before us the problem: How are 180 millions of people, speaking twenty or thirty dif ferent languages, following four different. religions (themselves split up into innumerable sects), varying almost ad infinitum in race, colour, customs, modes

of life, thought, and feeling, to be governed by 100,000 men of another race, colour, and religion, and of strikingly different customs, modes of thought and feeling, from all the rest?-I suppose the very last solution which would occur to any one would be this: You shall establish a legislative and administrative body at one extremity of the country, which shall have supreme control over the whole, so that there shall be, as far as possible, one law, one police, one system of government taxation, affecting the whole of these 180 millions of men, and reducing them, as far as the dominant 100,000 can succeed in doing so, to unity and nationality. Now this is precisely the task which England has set before herself in governing India. One might have thought that the late rebellion would have roused her to a sense of the mischiefs attending its fulfilment; since that rebellion was only put down by means of such remnants of local autonomy as still subsist in our military organization, whereby the native armies of Bombay and Madras were rendered available to subdue the rebellious native army of Bengal; or by means of such temporary autonomy as was allowed to Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab, and was exercised on a smaller scale, in fact, in a hundred separate localities, by every individual English official who was not carried away by the flood. Yet the lesson seems to have been utterly thrown away, and our whole empire is to be staked on the cast of a die, since Mr. Wilson himself practically admits that his three new taxes amount to no more.

It is not indeed four independent governments which India wants, but twenty or thirty-to be entirely selfruled within, with power to federate for economical purposes, but with no other subordination except direct to the mother-country. Possibly, the power of making peace and war might be vested in a supreme governor-general; but since India is no farther from us now in point of time than were the West Indies thirty years ago, it seems difficult to believe that even this can be

strictly necessary; indeed half our Indian wars ere this, I suspect, would have been saved by the absence of such a power. I believe it is impossible to calculate the wondrous development of local activity and life which such a decentralization would call out; the vigour of root which European intellect might then show forth, striking deep into a soil which it now only languidly trails over, in the constant expectation of being transplanted from high to low, from bleak to sunny, from clay to sand.; the improved processes of government which emulation would then realize. I believe that Sir Charles Trevelyan's self-sacrifice will bear its fruits; that Indian centralization will reel and crumble beneath the very weight of his fall; that men will no longer be satisfied with a mock uniformity of rule, which requires, for the success of its experiments, that such a man should be driven from his post. The autonomy of the Presidencies is the least result which I expect from his indiscretion. God grant that it may not have to realize itself through the preliminary process of a rebellion, in precisely that portion of India which passed almost scatheless through the last!

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This is not the time to discuss, in their application to India, the three great methods of equalizing income and expenditure-reduction of expenditure; increased taxation; or increased expenditure for reproductive purposes. have confined myself hitherto simply to one point-the utter absurdity of supposing that an entirely new system of taxation can be enforced all at once throughout all India. I do not wish to complicate with details that simple. point, self-evident when once perceived, only not perceived, I'venture to think, through that political short sight which renders some men actually incapable of perceiving things on account of their very evidence-just as, I take it, the limited vision of the mole renders it incapable of realizing the bulk of the elephant. With the highest admiration for Sir Charles Trevelyan's character, I

am far from approving of many of his acts since his assumption of the government of Madras; his conduct towards one great Indian family in particularto judge from a recent pamphlet by Mr. J. B. Norton-painfully recalls old Leadenhall-street officialism. But I am

bound to say that, as respects this financial scheme, even in matters of detail, there is strong reason to think that Sir Charles Trevelyan is, for Madras, right altogether. A landowner in his own Presidency writes thus (15th March), knowing as yet only Mr. Wilson's scheme, and not Sir Charles's opposition to it :

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"You will have read Wilson's great

speech. . . . Its delivery will mark an "Indian epoch; but his scheme of "native taxation is another affair. I "hope that will not also mark an "epoch. I go thoroughly along with "the principles, adopt every one of "them where practicable; but how can "they be practicable in Madras, where "the European collectors and assistants

are the sole reliable instruments in "each province for assessing the licence "and income tax? Trust the duty to "the amlahs, and see if the natives "will pay. In Madras, the artizans and "small shopkeepers are, as a rule, too

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poor to pay. Wilson has planned an "admirable machine, and has to learn "that he is without the power of setting "it in motion."

Again, as to Sir Charles's undertaking to meet expenditure by retrenchment, I can only add that an Indian officer of great experience in military administration in Bombay, and as free from rashness by temperament as he is by age, has expressed to me the confident belief that the thing is perfectly feasible-not in Madras, about which he knows little, and Sir Charles may be fairly supposed to know much-but in Bombay, which, it has been publicly stated, has never yet paid its own expenses.

If it be asked, Why should Mr. Wilson's taxes be good for Northern India, bad for Southern? the answer should be quite sufficient, For the same reason that taxes or charges which