as not so much power as his predecessors had, for the reason
that the present Maharaja allows little but tiger-shooting to distract
him from the supervision of the State. His Highness, by the way, is a
first-class shot and has bagged eighteen tigers already. He preserves
his game carefully, and permission to kill tigers is not readily
obtainable.

A curious instance of the old order giving place to the new is in
process of evolution and deserves notice. The Prime Minister's son,
Futteh Lal, a boy of twenty years old, has been educated at the Mayo
College, Ajmir, and speaks and writes English. There are few native
officials in the State who do this; and the consequence is that the lad
has won a very fair insight into State affairs, and knows generally what
is going forward both in the Eastern and Western spheres of the little
Court. In time he may qualify for direct administrative powers, and
Udaipur will be added to the list of the States that are governed
English fashion. What the end will be, after three generations of
Princes and Dewans have been put through the mill of the Rajkumar
Colleges, those who live will learn.

More interesting is the question, For how long can the vitality of a
people whose life was arms be suspended? Men in the North say that, by
the favour of the Government which brings peace, the Sikh Sirdars are
rotting on their lands; and the Rajput Thakurs say of themselves that
they are growing rusty. The old, old problem forces itself on the most
unreflective mind at every turn in the gay streets of Udaipur. A
Frenchman might write: "Behold there the horse of the Rajput--foaming,
panting, caracoling, but always fettered with his head so majestic upon
his bosom so amply filled with a generous heart. He rages, but he does
not advance. See there the destiny of the Rajput who bestrides him, and
upon whose left flank bounds the sabre useless--the haberdashery of the
ironmonger only! Pity the horse in reason, for that life there is his
_raison d'etre_. Pity ten thousand times more the Rajput, for he has no
_raison d'etre_. He is an anachronism in a blue turban."

The Gaul might be wrong, but Tod wrote things which seem to support this
view, in the days when he wished to make "buffer-states" of the land he
loved so well.

Let us visit the Durbar Gardens, where little naked Cupids are trampling
upon fountains of fatted fish, all in bronze, where there are cypresses
and red paths, and a deer-park full of