King Henry. Injurious man! We see it all.

Earl of Arundel. Not all, my liege. Besides, there is nothing so unknightly as interrupting a man in the middle of his discourse. It is as bad as running full tilt at him behind his back.

King Henry. Proceed with thy malice.

Earl of Arundel. Now the wolves in that country were pious wolves. Indeed the piety of wolves is a phenomenon which philosophers have strangely overlooked. Some lived in caves and were called hermitwolves; and even those who lived together were so good, that the taste of mutton was merely a tradition for them. But they were wise though pious, (thank goodness, Father John is not here!) and they bethought them that mutton was a most nourishing diet for wolf. So, one day, after the great wolf-gathering, which is held once a year, when the wolves impart to one another the hoarded wisdom of that year, the principal wolves went to the shepherds and spoke thus: Simple shepherds, there is no end to your simplicity. Have you not perceived that the fleeces of your sheep are becoming thinner than they used to be, and that, as we hear from common report, the taste of mutton has much degenerated in these latter days? Now there is a holy oil abundant in foreign parts, regions which are only a few thousand miles away from this country, and you, good shepherds, who count no labour a labour in vain when it is to improve your flocks, should undertake this journey, and bring back this oil, that you may anoint your sheep with it. Thus will their fleeces grow thicker, and the taste of their flesh be made more savoury.

'Leave your sheep with us. Abhorring mutton as we do, they will be unharmed in our hands; and we are well practised in the use of the crook by which we bring the young

VOL. LXXX.NO. CCCCLXXV.

Now amongst these seven simple shepherds there were some whose simplicity was very near allied to cunning. Simple people, my liege, often have a simple kind of cunning.

King Henry. Philip of France's cunning is of the simplest kind. My good brother is not so much loved, after all, in his dominions that he can leave them safely without his sacred presence. And then there are those Knights Templars of his, whom I love; for they love not him.

Remind me, Earl, if all goes well with us, they shall have more territory in the Vexin.

Earl of Arundel. How marvellous swift is your highness's apprehension, and what great themes our poor little fable seems to provoke in the royal mind!

Need I finish my fable and tell how, when the seven simple shepherds came back, wth a scant measure of the holy oil, they found but little fleece remaining on what sheep were left to them? Strange to say, too-miraculous indeed, for miracles are happily plentiful in this fortunate age the wolves, who still were pious and had not tasted any meat, could discourse wonderfully upon the various flavours of mutton; nay, what is still more wonderful, some of the least cunning of the shepherds found on their return that they had no sheep whatever to look after, for the flocks had become strangely intermingled.

King Henry. I will not go, Arundel. What are the Saracens to me? Is any Saracen so bad as my children-all, save John and Geoffrey? Not as children, though, but as vassals; for, as I said anon, a son cannot be ungrateful to his father.

Oh, Arundel, what a councillor, what a comrade, thou wouldst be, if thy heart were but a little warmer! Better have my passions-for I am sometimes provoked to wrath, I own

F

it-than your coldness. Why you follow me, why you ever condescend to trouble yourself to give good counsel, is not from love; no, no, not from love; make no gesture of denial, an thou wouldst be true; but I amuse you. You say to yourself you are the keeper of a wild beast, whose roarings and tearings serve to pass an idle hour. That is what you say to yourself, and, perhaps-traitor if so-to your fellow peers. And then it pleases you to know well the great affairs of the world, and to mock at the folly which mostly guides them. I know

you.

And yet even you, Arundel, coldhearted as you are, must sometimes pity me, beset as I am with foreign enemies, and domestic traitors-ever the target too for priestly curses. When they have nothing else to do, they curse me in every monastery. Earl of Arundel. That must be very often then, my liege.

King Henry. I, too, who should have had such love for loving children; such joy in the welfare of my people; such delight in the sweet joys of home.

What did you say, Sir Earl? Earl of Arundel. The night is nipping cold, and makes one cough. There is no meaning in a cough, my liege, though we wits are often suspected when we but sneeze, as other mortals do, of sneezing with some purpose.

King Henry. Flout as you like, there is no joy I say in life, but that of being loved. That's why I always spare my enemies. Cæsar, you know, was loved.

Earl of Arundel. Yes; though not so learned as your highness, I have heard that he was loved-especially by Brutus.

King Henry. I am aweary of all things, and of most people, Arundel. What is there worth caring for in this world of ugly shadows? I will fret my heart no more, let what will happen. You shall have no further

cause to mock at me for aught that is ungentle or unbefitting the composure of a king.

Hark! I hear the galloping of horse. Go forward; see what it is. (Ex. Arundel, who shortly afterwards returns accompanied by a Messenger.)

Earl of Arundel. A message from Count Richard.

King Henry. A scroll?

Messenger. No, Lord King; I am charged with a weighty message, fit only for the hearing of your highness. King Henry. Say on.

Messenger. First, then, Richard, Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy, greets his father and his sovereign, with loving wishes for his royal honour and his health.

King Henry. At last!

Messenger. The Count further bade me say that he humbly sues for his royal father's love and amity.

King Henry. He need not ask for what is always given. No more?

Messenger. The Count demands that fealty should be sworn to him by all the vassals of your highness.

King Henry. Ha! a light request. Messenger. Also that Prince John should not return to England. Ireland demands his care; or, if not Ireland, Palestine.

King Henry. Ha!

Messenger. Then, that your highness should at once release the Count's affianced bride, so long withheld from him, the Princess Adelais.

King Henry. Ha!

Messenger. That your Highness should return to the liege duty that you owe to France, your lawful suzerain, for Aquitaine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Normandy.

King Henry. Ha! what a judge of duty!

Messenger. That your garrisons in Aquitaine should be dismantled.

King Henry. Yes! pare the lion's claws: it is wise to do so ere you treat him like a dog.

Messenger. That you should straight pay down twenty thousand marks for

King Henry. Twenty thousand sons of devils! Immeasurable caitiff! villain, liar, slave of the worst of masters-lost in the abundancy of treason! Thou deservest to be hanged, if only for the folly of bringing such a message to me; and hanged thou shalt be. Arundel, see that it be done forthwith-the nearest tree. Messenger. of herald!

The sacred character

King Henry. There are no heralds, carrion, there can be none, between a father and a son.

(The Messenger is borne to the rear by the Earl of Arundel and Attendants.)

King Henry (to himself). They talk of the patriarch Job and his patience! Why all his sons died from the falling of a house: the walls swept in upon them by a mighty and most righteous wind. Righteous, at least, it would have been, had they been my sons. He had a wife though!

Why I remember-'twas at Westminster the whole night long, and many nights, to and fro, I bore the froward child (for Richard was ever froward) soothing his frowardness. And proudly too I clasped my burden to my breast, for the child would only then be quiet in his father's arm. And now it comes to this! The monks are right, the good monks -all other evils-cold, penury, the rigid, slavish rule, the abstinence, the sleek tyranny of my lord the abbot, the subtle loathing of enforced companionship-all, all are but too slight a counterpoise to weigh against the immortal joy of being sonless.

Father John can read his books, and tell his beads, and mumble o'er his missal, secure from parricidal injuries. Father John, Arundel, where are ye? Listening, I doubt not, to the last words of that abomin

able traitor. They all are ready to forsake me now. Arundel, I say. Earl of Arundel. I'm here, my liege.

King Henry. Soothe me with your gracious presence. Is it not is it not, I say, a loving, peaceful, dutiful message? Say that it is, and that I welcome it too roughly. Be wise, fair Earl, to prove how light are others' woes, and how magnanimous is your composure to endure them.

Earl of Arundel. The messagepaints, in its own dark colours, the heart of him who could send it. I am not so inhuman as to say aught to justify the sender. (Aside.) Now shall I be hanged myself for having stayed the hanging of this stupid wretch.

King Henry (meditating). Delay the execution.

Earl of Arundel. It is, perforce, delayed, my liege. I did not find a suitable gallows-tree; and such a villain should be made a manifest example of.

King Henry. Think you so, Arundel? If some other wild beast were to send an insolent message to the king of the beasts, and were to choose a foolish jackal as a fitting messenger, I suppose the royal animal would not put his paw upon the abject creature.

The Earl of Arundel. Fables, my liege, are such difficult things to construe. For my own part, I always find that I draw the wrong moral, the unintended moral, from them.

King Henry. Why, it was but just now you cloaked your satire against me, and those crusading fools of France, and Burgundy and Flanders, in a most perspicuous fable.

I almost think I will not have him harmed.

Earl of Arundel (aside). Now for a little persuasive contradiction! (Aloud.) But then the example, my liege. Is every low-born fellow to beard your highness, and to shelter himself under the plea of being a messenger or a herald ?

King Henry. The example! Would to God that it were an example much followed by our own lieges. Here is a poor wretch, Arundel, mayhap with a loving wife and loving children; for these serfs, poor in all else, have sometimes possessions of this homely kind which kings in vain might sigh for. And he puts all, all, in jeopardy to do his master's in

solent behest.

The example is a good example. Dismiss him straight, and give him largesse. Let them not say that Henry of England has grown miserly in his premature old age, and does not know how to reward a faithful servant of his son.

Besides, Arundel, the towers of Canterbury are faintly reddening in the rising sun, and the sight of them brings many thoughts into my mind which are not those of vengeance.

How mad were those few fatal words of mine at Bure. A curse upon the place. Each of those words fecund of ill as the Cadmian dragon's teeth-brought into life, not one armed man, but an army 'gainst me armies of monks; of disobedient children sheltering themselves behind the church; of traitorous vassals, wanting only some holy excuse for most unholy rebellion. And, Arundel, I did not mean those words: thou knowest I did not mean them. Hadst thou been there, it could not thus have happened. But it takes a wise man to understand madness; and fools, thrice-sodden fools, interpret words but not the heart that utters them. A monarch should have none but sages round him, or men like thee, good Earl, who look before and after, and understand the man they serve.

We will dismount and walk bareheaded to the shrine-assist in all humility at matins. Nay, do not smile as you are wont. Happily you cannot school your face as you can school your tongue, fair Earl. It is not policy, as by your smile, you'd say it is remorse. (They all dis mount and, bare-headed, enter Canterbury.)

Earl of Arundel (to Father John). Perilous, though wise, is oft a little disobedience. Now had I hanged that man, I should for ever have been banished from our master's sight; but now I am 'good Earl,' 'fair Earl,' soon it will be 'kind Earl.' They say that you wise monks have three maxims which lead to abbacies and bishoprics more surely even than prayer, and fasting, and humility.

Father John. If they are not scandalous, I would fain hear them, most pious Earl.

Earl of Arundel. Read your Breviary often in public: always speak well of his reverence the abbot: and do your duty in a middling way.

Now if I had done my duty in an over-dutiful way, I should have had to spend the remainder of my days in France. And I love not that country, for though the men are witty, and the women are gracious, the potations are somewhat thin; and the food and drink of Saxon churls (therein the conquerors mostly borrow from the conquered) keeps our Norman wit from being too rampant.

Father John. Silence, vain man; hear you not the chaunting of the matins? (They enter the cathedral.)

E have already mentioned that

generally understood any part of India other than the three capitals, Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The justice of the proceeding by which these particular cities are graded above Allahabad, Labore, Lucknow, and other provincial capitals, is not immediately apparent. They are, certainly, sea-ports and great centres of commerce. They have been British possessions longer than the great cities of the North. But Delhi was a flourishing citythe capital of Hindostan-when Calcutta was but a hamlet. Delhi and many another city northwards are still, regarded from the native point of view, of much importance; and it is somewhat of a paradox to speak of these cities, with their many thousands of inhabitants, their ancient palaces and mausoleums, and their centuries of historical grandeur, as one would of little Peddlington with its population of three hundred, and no monumental work more imposing than the vil

lage pump.

The

Looked at from the Anglo-Indian standpoint, there is, however, some reason for this distinction. Anglo-Indian whose lines are cast in the capital of the old Khalsa kingdom, finds that the resources of Lahore are not equal to the supply of all he requires. If he want a decently made coat or tolerably fitting boots, he must send to Calcutta for them, and it is the same with many of his other requirements. 'Writing to Calcutta for it' is as much a matter of every-day life in Lahore, and of as little consideration, as 'sending up to town for it' is to the resident of some country place in Kent or Surrey; although send

ing for anything from Lahore to

ing for it from Copenhagen to Southern Italy. So also does Calcutta supply the Anglo-Indians of Delhi and other large cities of the north; and, as centres of supply of coats, waistcoats, trousers, boots, and many other articles of a peculiarly English character, Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, may claim a distinctive character.

Practically there is nothing in the existence of the Anglo-Indian analogous with the town and country life of England. There is no 'season' in any one of the capitals when it is the right thing to go up to town. There are no town mansions opened for three months and relegated to spiders, brown-holland, and a housekeeper for the rest of the year. The people who are of the town seldom leave it; the people of the Moffussil stay in the Moffussil. Everybody has employment of some sort that ties him down to his place of residence, and only exceptionally does the town-man take a few days' holiday in the Moffussil, or the Moffussil man misuse a vacation by a shopping expedition to the town.

Neither is there anything in the life of the Anglo-Indian that fully represents the sea-side pleasures in which some of the nations of Europe delight. There is no Brighton or Biarritz, there is not even a Ramsgate or Margate, at which the Anglo-Indian can disport himself. Bombay and Madras are upon the sea and derive some slight advantage from the sea breeze; but seabathing is hardly practicable where sunstroke menaces from above and sharks below; and, in point of fact, the propinquity of the sea in India altogether fails as an attraction.