relief are sought to be pictured. We, no doubt, start even here with the jar and noise that surrounds us, and we hope to travel a good deal in the midst of these regions. But Progress and Harmony at home, in society, in religion, and with Government, both in and outside British India, peer overhead in the long run in spite of all this bewildering confusion; at least that is the postulate fundamental to our perspective, To look at these two cherubs of beauty and hope as they look at us, is at least a vision of glory and happiness, and what is vision to-day may be reality tomorrow.
True it is that the realization of this vision of the future taxes our patience, and we may never live to see it. Well may one grumble with the poet,
When will the hundred summers die,
And thought and time be born again,
And, newer knowledge drawing nigh,
Bring truth that sways the soul of men ?
Here all things in their place remain,
As all were ordered, ages since,
Come, care and pleasure, hope and pain,
And bring the fate fairy prince. "
But after all we may also have the privilege of seeing with him
Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd,
Faint murmurs from the meadows come,
Like hints and echoes of the world,
To spirits folded in the womb. *[૧]
The vision is not altogether a dream. Transient hours will come and go, But the student of permanent elements and constant factors will be able to trace the birth and growth of an inward homogeneity in what is heterogeneous in the inception, and to hail the slow but sure triumph of Progress on lines which may not satisfy either theoretical, revolutionary and precipitate visionaries and reformers, or those who on the other hand wish to give an eternal rigidity
- ↑ * Tennyson's Sleeping Palace.
