Page:Under the Sun.djvu/12

 has not only felt the never-ceasing attraction of the "common objects" of India for a cultivated and observant fancy, but has found time and gifts to record them as they first struck him, in a style which, with all its lightness of manner and material, has great strength and value, like those fine webs of Dacca and Delhi with the embroidered beetle-wings and feathers. The Author writes of beetles, birds, frogs, squirrels, and the "small deer" of India, but always, as it seems to me, with so just a sense of the vivid vitality of these Indian scenes and creatures, and so much sympathy for the Asiatic side of our empire, down to its simplest every-day objects, that I should not know where to send an uninformed English reader for better hints of the out-ofd-oor [sic] look and spirit of things in our Indian gardens.

They are only sketches, no doubt, which fill this little portfolio, but their outlines are often drawn with so true a hand, that nothing can be more suggestive to the memory of any one who has lived the same life. India may be hot, dusty, distant, and whatever else the weary exile alleges when his liver goes wrong, but she is never for one moment, or in any spot, as regards her people, her scenery, her cities, towns, villages, or country-places, vulgar. There is nothing in her not worth study and regard; for the stamp of a vast past is over all the land, and the very pariah-dogs are classic to those who know Indian fables and how to be entertained by them. Our Author is one of the happy few in whom familiarity with Indian sights and objects has not bred indifference, but rather suggested the beginnings of a new field of Anglo-Indian literature. If I am not wrong, the charm of looking at these utterly commonplace animals and people of India in this gay and pleased spirit is that