536 TORU DUTT. where the four remaining years of Toru's life were passed. A photograph taken before their departure shows both girls to have been pleasing and refined in appearance, while Toru's rather round face with its bronze skin, brilliant eyes, and shading mass of loose hair, might be termed pretty, did we not prefer to call it expressive, since its alertness and intelligence possess a stronger charm than its beauty. Toru's career as an author dated from her return to India. Equipped already with a stock of knowledge which, as Mr. Gosse well says, " would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous," she could not rest content with these acquirements, but devoted herself zealously to the study of Sanskrit, under her father's tuition ; a pursuit which she continued until, in con- sideration of her failing health, he required her to give it up. Her first publication, which appeared in the Bengal Magazine when she was but eighteen years of age, was an essay upon the French poet Leconte de Lisle, with whose somewhat austere compositions she had much sympathy. This was soon followed by another upon Jose'phin Soulary, both being illustrated by translations into English verse. In July, 1874, her sister Aru died at the age of twenty, and in her Toru lost a faithful helper and friend. It had been their cherished project to publish an anonymous novel which Toru was to write and Aru, who possessed a striking talent for design, was to illustrate. Toru began the novel — Le Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arvers — before leaving Europe, but Aru died without having seen a page of it, and Toru herself was in her grave when the com- pleted manuscript was found among her papers by her father and given to the public. The " Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields " appeared, as
