pper classes, both ecclesiastical and
official, owing to his wayward and headstrong disposition. As a child he
was so precociously acute and resolute that he survived his regent, and
so upset the traditional policy of murder, being the only one out of the
last five incarnations to reach his majority. Since he took the
government of the country into his own hands he has reduced the Chinese
suzerainty to a mere shadow, and, with fatal results to himself,
consistently insulted and defied the British. His inclination to a
rapprochement with Russia is not shared by his Ministers.

The only glimpse I have had into the man himself was reflected in a
conversation with the Nepalese Resident, a podgy little man, very ugly
and good-natured, with the manners of a French comedian and a face
generally expanded in a broad grin. He shook with laughter when I asked
him if he knew the Dalai Lama, and the idea was really intensely funny,
this mercurial, irreverent little man hobnobbing with the divine. 'I
have seen him,' he said, and exploded again. 'But what does he do all
day?' I asked. The Resident puckered up his brow, aping abstraction, and
began to wave his hand in the air solemnly with a slow circular
movement, mumbling '_Om man Padme om_' to the revolutions of an
imaginary praying-wheel. He was immensely pleased with the effort and
the effect it produced on a sepoy orderly. 'But has he no interests or
amusements?' I asked. The Resident could think of none. But he told me a
story to illustrate the dulness of the man, for whom he evidently had no
reverence. On his return from his last visit to India, the Maharaja of
Nepal had given him a phonograph to present to the Priest-King. The
impious toy was introduced to the Holy of Holies, and the Dalai Lama
walked round it uneasily as it emitted the strains of English band
music, and raucously repeated an indelicate Bhutanese song. After
sitting a long while in deep thought, he rose and said he could not live
with this voice without a soul; it must leave his palace at once. The
rejected phonograph found a home with the Chinese Amban, to whom it was
presented with due ceremonial the same day. 'The Lama is _gumar_,' the
Resident said, using a Hindustani word which may be translated,
according to our charity, by anything between 'boorish' and
'unenlightened.' I was glad to meet a man in this city of evasiveness
whose views were positive, and who was eager to communicate them.
Through him I tr