Page:Twenty-one Days in India.djvu/80

68 into the cold waters of dreary reality by conjuring up a figure in tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I, amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!"

So say we, in faint echoes, defying the anathemas of the Foreign Office. Do not turn this beautiful temple of ancient days into a mere mill for decrees and budgets; but sweep it and purify it, and render it a fitting shrine for the homage and tribute of antique loyalty—"that proud submission, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom." With tail-coat and cocked-hat government "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone."