r them and leaves them unchanged.

The village is self-contained. It is a complete organism, protoplastic
it may be, with the chlorophyll of age colouring its institutions, but
none the less a perfect, living entity. It has within itself
everything that its existence demands, and it has no ambition. The
torment of frustrated hope and of supersession is unknown in the
village. We who are always striving to roll our prospects and our
office boxes up the hill to Simla may learn a lesson here:

Sisyphus in vita quoque nobis ante oculos est
Qui petere a populo fasces saevasque secures
Imbibit et semper victus tristisque recedit.
Nam petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam,
Atque in eo semper durum sufferre laborem,
Hoc est adverse nixantem trudere monte
Saxum quod tamen e summojam vertice rusum
Volvitur et plani raptim petit sequora campi.

In this idyllic existence, in which, as I have said, there is no
ambition, several other ills are also wanting. There is, for instance,
no News in the village. The village is without the pale of
intelligence. This must indeed be bliss. Just fancy, dear Vanity, a
state of existence in which there are no politics, no discoveries, no
travels, no speculations, no Garnet Wolseleys, no Gladstones, no
Captain Careys, no Sarah Bernhardts! If there be a heaven upon earth,
it is surely here. Here no Press Commissioner sits on the hillside
croaking dreary translations from the St. Petersburg press; here no
_Pioneer_ sings catches with Sir John Strachey in Council. But here
the lark sings in heaven for evermore, the sweet corn grows below, and
the villager, amid these quiet joys with which the earth fills her
lap, dreams his low life.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. XV

THE OLD COLONEL

[Illustration: THE OLD COLONEL--"Ripening for pension."]

"Kwaihaipeglaoandjeldikaro"--_Rigmarole Veda._

[November 15, 1879.]

The old Indian Colonel ripening for pension on the shelf of General
Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has
ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore,
with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless pennants
streaming in the wind.

He has forgotten nearly everything he ever learnt of military duty,
and what he has not forgotten has been changed. It is as much as he
can do to keep up with the most advanced thoughts of the Horse Guards
on buttons and go