the people of any particular State has almost invariably remained loyal to the hereditary local dynasty, and in good and evil fortune they have been willing to sacrifice themselves in its defence. Those principalities which have been strong enough to resist attack like Udaipur, Jaipur, and Jodhpur, or which have been happily placed far from the path of invaders, or hidden in the distant recesses of the Himalayas, such as Chamba, Mandi, and Suket, have existed under the rule of families so ancient that their genealogies are lost in prehistoric mist, and they proudly claim their ancestry in the Sun. Princes good and bad, beneficent and tyrannical, have ruled these States; but the people have accepted them, one and all, without a thought of revolt or resistance; and these same families will probably be still securely reigning over their ancient principalities when the conquest of India by England will be taught as ancient history in the Board Schools of a distant future. Many of these chiefships are as poor and weak as they are obscure and insignificant; a ruined castle, a few square miles of mountain and valley, a few hundred rupees of revenue, and an army the soldiers of which may be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is not material force which has given them a perennial stream of vitality. They have struck their roots deep, as trees grow in the rain and the soft air; they have, as it were, become one with nature, a part of the divine and established order of things; and the simple Rájput peasant no more
