in Mr

ter on Rural Rides Cole's book was written by the late Mr F. E. Green, who projected a Life of Cobbett, but died without accomplishing more than this chapter. Mr Green had an intimate knowledge of the labouring people of the English countryside, and it is clear that he fully entered into Cobbett's delight as he rode down the rutty lanes, crossed the windy heaths, lingered in the woodland rides, and discoursed unceasingly to his young son, Richard, riding by his side. His descriptions of the face of the country are beyond praise. They are not the descriptions of a poet, or of a scientific traveller, or of a sentimentalist, but of a born countryman.

"We leave Tenterden at five o'clock in a fog so thick that the low-lying land looks like the sea out of which emerge the tops of trees. Quitting Appledore, we cross a canal and enter Romney marshes. Miles of verdant plain stretch around us. To the south-west sky and sea become one with the English Channel. Behind us the hills of Kent emerge into the brooding clouds. Sea-gulls follow the ploughman, as he turns up the stubble, but most of the land is old pasture. Here graze large herds of Sussex cattle and immense flocks of

marsh sheep. Most of the cattle are bred at the upland farms. They are calved in the spring, put into the stubbles for the first summer, then brought into the yard to winter on rough hay or barley straw; and the next two summers they

spend in the rough woods or in the forest, or at work, and then they come here to be fattened. This marsh abounds in cattle and sheep, and the sight is most beautiful! On the plough-land they get more than five quarters to the acre, and the green marshes are covered with meat, and yet the people live in wretchedness. Here is exemplified the truth of my observation: rich land and poor labourers. At Brenzett it was with great difficulty I got a rasher of bacon for breakfast, and I could not get an egg. And yet out of the window I saw numberless flocks and herds fattening, and the fields loaded with corn."

So he fares on, rejoicing at one moment because every prospect pleases, indignant at the next because man is so very vile. He has no mild reprobation for any offender, only the fiercest invective.

There is in the men calling themselves English country gentlemen' something superlatively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel, the most unfeeling, the most brutally insolent; but I know, I can prove, I can safely take my oath, that they are the most base of all creatures that God ever suffered to disgrace the human shape."

One might almost believe him slightly prejudiced against English country gentlemen. But on the next ride he is highly applauding one of the despicable class.

to be proud of. He knows how to plant trees. But he should plant locust trees instead of ash, for the locust will make as good hop poles in five years as the ash will make in ten."

He had the most unerring eye and the most descriptive tongue that perhaps were ever united.

"Duncton is a very pretty village, and its fine apple-trees lie sheltered from the boisterous south-west winds. The church is a very small one, twenty feet by thirty feet."

One sees that village of Duncton as though one stood there. Every kind of weather suited him, the rain nearly as well as the sunshine.

"It has been a real soaking day, but what does it matter? I've seen labourers eating bacon, a woman bleaching home-woven cloth; another working at straw plat, and a pig in every labourer's sty. I am wet through; but the corn all round here is a fine crop, and Swedish turnips are grown in abundance."

The big, shrewd, upstanding farmer had a passion for bird music. Even the richness of the soil in Lincolnshire could not blind him to its very grave defect in the scarcity of birds.

the oak-buds begin to look reddish, and not a day before, the whole tribe of finches bursts forth into song from every bough." When he tells of singing birds, his own voice becomes lyrical.

"The thrush begins just before it is light; next the blackbird; next the larks begin to rise; and from the long dead grass come the sweet and soft voices of the white-throats."

A seat in Parliament was the inevitable consummation of Cobbett's polemical energies. Even the 'Political Register,' that powerful and prophetic organ of his own, was not sufficient until united with the "most sweet voices" of the electors of Oldham-so unlike the white-throats to listen to. He was a much healthier man when working on his own land, mowing grass against the labourer, and beating him; he was a much happier man riding with his little Richard under the hazel boughs, and hearing birds sing, than when he finally took that long-desired seat in the House of Commons. He did not go there to listen, but to be heard. His very first speech opened with the well-known words—

Unhappy as the people were, it would be monstrous to lay their griefs at the door of a constitutional monarch, and it is at least probable that Cobbett knew very little about George IV. He certainly knew much less about him than the Duke of Wellington did, who gave the following estimate of his character: "He was indeed the most extraordinary compound of talent, wit, buffoonery, obstinacy, and good feeling-in short, a medley of the most opposite qualities, with a great preponderance of good-that I ever saw in my life."

Cobbett, for all his shrewd ness, had very little philosophical sense. Perhaps it ought not to be expected from a man whose life was one long combat, bravely sustained, but leaving him no interval of calm, no spiritual leisure. It was not a combatant who said the most profound thing ever yet expressed concerning the eternal struggle not between right and wrong only, but between might and right. "C'est la force et le droit qui règlent toutes choses dans le monde; la force en attendant le droit." (Might and right govern all things in the world; might till right is ready.) To this it is only too likely that Cobbett would have replied, "That shows how little you care."

When his own time was near he did not know it. His health failed from the late hours and

Mr Cole remarks that "though an apostle of the old order, he gave strength to the rising tide of protest within the new. He could not give to the new working class a constructive gospel ; that could only be adumbrated as yet by the forerunners of Socialism. But to every movement of protest against the misery and cruelty of the times -at least, to every movement that could touch his imagination by positive contact-he could lend, and did lend, out of his abundant strength. man helped more to build up the confidence of the workers in their own power, though many saw more clearly how, under the changed conditions, that power would have to be employed."

No

In the absorbing interest of the story he has unfolded to us, we almost forget the teller, Mr Cole. This is perhaps the truest compliment appreciation can offer. In the list of the authorities he recommends to those who would study Cobbett's times more closely, he mentions that "there is no good account of the Reform Movement as a whole." We cannot imagine any one better fitted to supply this want than Mr Cole.

A GOOD deal has been heard in India during the last two or three years on the subject of the "Indianization" of the Indian Army, by which is meant the putting of Indians to do the work now done by British officers in the Indian regiments, and in due course, perhaps, in the higher ranks. There is nothing very new in the idea; the novelty lies in the source whence the proposals come. It was no new thing in the days of Sir Henry Lawrence and General John Jacob, the two original thinkers on the ultimate military problem of India. It was very much discussed

by some of the younger soldiers in India at the time of His Majesty's visit in 1911. Then was the golden opportunity to Indianize on our own terms, selecting those whom the military authorities thought possible and suitable, at a time when concessions of this type were anxiously searched for to mark the occasion. It was the time when the Victoria Cross was first opened to Indian soldiers.

But that golden opportunity was missed, and later we have found a demand for it from that section of Indian politicians who think it desirable and easy to open the Government services to the middleclass intelligentsia as a matter

of a remunerative career. The same people eagerly demand that ocean-going ships which trade with India shall draw its officers from the same classnay, even that India shall have its own fighting navy. It is a worthy enough conception, and the only question is to what extent it is practical politics. To what extent can the intelligentsia of India furnish fighting leaders of character, and to what extent can any other class produce them?

When the question was mooted fifteen years ago, perhaps the feeling in more advanced Army circles was to the effect that while all the other services of Government were open to a young Indian, the grades of the Army equivalent to that of a British officer were not, . . . that the landowning gentry, in many ways the most desirable material of any in India, benefited least from our rule, and alone were not admitted to that profession for which they were the most fitted. But the present demand is not quite inspired by that point of view. It comes principally now from the political class, who think that India can manage herself, or, even if it cannot, it can and should draw the personnel of her own services from her own youth. And again let it be