and as the romantic charm of the poem will no doubt survive, it will perhaps not be necessary to beseech the Maharaja not to give to the word "deal" that "slaughterous intention" attributed to it by the late Lord Salisbury. Indeed what is truly Hindu is safe enough in the author's hands, and almost his last words are those of warning to his hearers not to boast themselves far better than their sires.
It will be a pleasure to such as love India and her peoples to read the work of a highly educated, intelligent and travelled author, in which the destruction of all Hindu individuality is not considered per se as a merit, but in which on the contrary it is regarded as wrong in fact, in art, and in imagination to impair the ancient self- sufficient and highly complex civilization, to the task of providing a substitute for which Europeans and new Hindus are alike wholly unequal.
London, 'Xmas, 1904.
