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CHAPTER I

THE BLACK HOLE, 1756

I.—

HERE has been a marked impetus given within recent years to the issue of literature about India. It is still going on. We have the inevitable tourist's India—the real India, a vision of India, etc., etc. Of guide-books and handbooks, memoirs and letters, there is no stint. And last, not least, the solid material brought to the surface by capable and laborious burrowers in the official records of the past. All these books, light or heavy, provide information, for those who would seek and appreciate it, of a very useful and very attractive kind, and must have cost their writers much care and thought. And the upshot of it all? Has it brought India and its lovable people, and the exotics zealously toiling there for their welfare, any nearer to the knowledge and to the interest of the stay-at-home English man or woman? Candidly, I do not think so. The home press, no doubt, when it has to tell of some grand pageant in India, destined to be historic, attended by many gorgeous Princes and Rajahs and by some members, perhaps, of our Royal Family, and illuminated by splendid military display, evokes from time to time some temporary enthusiasm. Much complacent gratification is felt when the public reads its newspaper and becomes expansive about "our great dependency," or "the brightest jewel in the crown." But there the matter ends, so far as the so-called man in the street is concerned. Not that this want of more lasting interest is confined to him. It pervades every stratum of society, and all ranks—low, high, middle. Ask almost any member of what are recognised as the learned professions about the great Eastern trust confided to Great Britain, and, unless he be either officially or domestically, directly or indirectly