ip them, the
scene surpassed all previous experiences. For had not one of the
measures announced as the Royal will at the Delhi Durbar been the
revision at last of Lord Curzon's detested Partition of Bengal? The
furious agitation of the first few years had broken in vain against the
dead wall of the _chose jugee_ which Mr. Morley had upheld, and it had
gradually died down. The wound, however, had been still there, and now
the King's hand had touched and healed it. The old Province of Bengal
was not indeed restored within its former limits, but Eastern Bengal,
created as the Hindu Bengalees believed, in favour of Mahomedan
ascendancy, disappeared, and in its stead Behar and Orissa, where a
large part of the population was of a different stock and spoke a
different tongue, were detached to the west and south of Bengal proper
and formed into a separate province which served equally well to relieve
administrative congestion without doing violence to Bengalee sentiment.

On the very first anniversary, however, of the day of the great Delhi
Durbar an audacious attempt to murder the Viceroy at the moment when he
was making his solemn entry into the new capital came as a painful
reminder that the fangs of Indian anarchism had not yet been drawn. From
one of the balconies of the Chandni Chauk, the chief thoroughfare of the
native city, a bomb was thrown at Lord Hardinge who was riding with Lady
Hardinge on a State elephant, in accordance with Indian usage, on his
way to the Fort where he was to have delivered a message of greeting to
the people of India recalling the memorable results of the Royal visit.
The Viceroy was severely wounded and Lady Hardinge, though she escaped
without any apparent hurt, suffered a shock which at least hastened her
premature death two and a half years later. Lord Hardinge had already
earned the widespread confidence of Indians by his undisguised sympathy
with all their legitimate aspirations, and the Lady Hardinge's School of
Medicine for Indian women stands now at Delhi as an enduring monument,
not only of the keen interest which she took in the cause of Indian
womanhood and in everything that could tend to its advancement, but of
the affection she had won by a rare charm of manner that was, with her,
merely the outward reflection of a gentle and finely tempered nature.
There had been abortive plots against Lord Minto's life, but it had been
deemed politic to minimise their importance. This, however