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to-day. They are at least intelligible, and were, as Law interpreted them, perfectly consistent.

In 1882 Edward Law determined to leave Russia. He took little away with him save the opinions which we have indicated and ten years of invaluable experience. "I have learnt to unlearn," said he, and thus was ready for any enterprise that might present itself. He had not long to wait. In 1883 the King of the Belgians demanded of Sir Garnet Wolseley "un jeune Gordon s'il en existe," to take charge of the International Association of the Congo. Sir Garnet applied to Sir Henry Brackenbury for the "young Gordon," and he recommended Law, who thought well of the project, and, unlike the most of men, was not ill-disposed towards King Leopold. But the affair moved slowly, and before the King of the Belgians had completed his arrangements Law was fighting the battle of the Globe Telephone Company against the United, its powerful rival. He suoceeded in obtaining excellent terms for the company which employed him, as he was wont to succeed at each stage of his adventurous life, and then suddenly the War Office, after a silence of fifteen years, offered him a chance of active service.

This was in 1885, and forthwith he was appointed Transport Officer with the Suakin Field Force. But no sooner was the war over than he went on the tramp again, this time in the interests of the Amur

River Navigation_Company, and was back in England in time to take part in a vigorous campaign against Mr Gladstone's schemes of Home Rule. When Mr Gladstone was driven from office, Law threw himself with all his energy into the establishing of the Imperial Institute, and out of the work which he did to this end there came the suggestion of a Commercial Intelligence Department, which he himself was the first to direct. In other words Law was offered, in 1887, "an appointment described as Financial and Commercial Attaché," with headquarters fixed at St Petersburg, and a roving commission in the countries of the Near East.

Here was a post after Law's own heart, and a post which none could have filled with a better hope of success than he. He was the master of many languages; he knew Russia like his pocket; he was gifted with a power of work which few could excel; and it need not be said that he abundantly justified his appointment. His reception at St Petersburg, it is true, was chilling. Sir Robert Morier, a man of equal vigour and tenacity, did not approve of the new scheme. "Well, sir," said he, when Law was announced, "I'm dd if I know why you are here." He was not long in doubt. With characteristic candour he acknowledged the valuable qualities which Law brought to his work as soon as he discovered them, and, as he said, "parted with him with very great regret." Thus for three years

Law travelled through the to a place and show you a Caucasus and Persia, marking trade routes, writing reports, and teaching the Persians that "their capital may be as safely and more conveniently placed in the hands of a banker than under the hearthstone of their own houses."

Two years later Law was on leave in Ireland, and a telegram came from the Foreign Office which sent him forthwith to Greece. He had never been there. "How does one get to that country?" he asked. "I never thought of its existence." Nor, indeed, did he ever until the end think of that Greece which means so much to many Englishmen. Law was no student of the classics. His interest, like the interest of all adventurers, was entirely in the present. For the Greece of Sophocles and Phidias, of Pericles and Thucydides, he cared not a jot. Well as he came to know Athens, intimate as were the ties which afterwards bound him to that city, he visited the Parthenon only once, and then because he had heard of its curved pillars, so that after all it was the mechanical problem, not the sentiment of art, which persuaded him to climb the Acropolis. The point of view is characteristic of Law, and it was absolutely sincere. A story told by Lady Law will illustrate the peculiar sympathy which Law felt for Greece better than a page of argument. She recalls "that once on public holiday as they were going out he said to her: Come along; I'll take you

view of Athens you have never seen before.' On drawing near to the Zappeion Park, I exclaimed, 'Well, Edward, of all places to bring me to on 8 holiday!' 'Come along,' he repeated. And indeed soon after, I was lost in admiration of the view that presented itself all at once to my eyes,-the sea through the columns of the temple of Jupiter, the Acropolis to my right, the Stadium to my left, and Lycabettos behind.

That is your Athens,' he exclaimed, 'isn't it?' Then, with a sweeping movement, he added: And all this, with this crowd -this living crowd-around us is my Athens.'

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That, indeed, was the Athens to which he came, with its living crowds and its financial disasters, and which he served faithfully for many a year. His first task was to draw up a report upon the financial condition of the country. The report was not altogether hopeful. A lax administration neglected the proper collection of taxes, whilst the balance of trade was steadily against the country. "It is said," wrote Law, "that Greek patriotic sentiment develops such violence of partisan feeling as to prevent the equitable enforcement of taxation. Political animosity, it is affirmed, is sometimes given forcible expression through the strict demands of tax assessors and collectors, while leniency shown to friends prejudices the treasury." On the other hand, he declared his perfect faith in the unimpeachable integrity of

the statesmen of the country, who gave their services without stint or personal benefit for salaries of not more than £400 a-year. Nor was this financial report the last duty which Law discharged for Greece. Had it not been for his firmness, she would have been asked to pay a far higher indemnity than was paid after the Turkish War. And Greece was never unmindful of the debt which she owed to Law. Sir Theodore Morison's book contains not a little evidence of her fidelity to the man who had served her. When he died, the Municipal Council of Athens paid him the rare compliment of naming one of its thoroughfares Edward Law Street. Far better than compliments, Athens gave Law his wife, to whom his perfect devotion was in harmony with the sense of romance never absent from his life.

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After Greece, the Ottoman Debt engrossed him for a while, and then, in 1899, he was induced to accept the post of Financial Member of Council in India. How well he acquitted himself in the difficult post is here set forth at great length in a chapter written by Sir William Meyer. His views on the general politics of India are sound and were eloquently expressed. He recognised that many changes had taken place since the days when he was a subaltern. Education, above all, had been widely and disastrously extended. "Nihilism in Russia," he said, "was the result of putting higher education within the reach of quick

wits, who could learn anything from books and pass competitive examinations, but who could not assimilate knowledge or reason for themselves." However, it was in finance that Law did his chief work and won his greatest triumph. Sir William Meyer's testimony is

clear and indisputable. Sir Edward Law, he tells us, placed the Currency System on an assured basis "by the formation of the Gold Standard Reserve." Under his hands "the railway budget of the Government of India, instead of showing a deficit, was yielding large surpluses. The financial arrangements with the Provinces had been placed on a satisfactory basis, and military expenditure had been efficiently regularised." Truthfully may Sir William Meyer conclude that "there are few Finance Ministers of any country who have such a complete tale of successes to their credit."

Sir Edward Law retired from India and the last public office which he held in 1905. He retired without a pension. Though he had devoted the greater part of his life to the public service, the service had not been continuous nor given all to one department. So at the age of sixty he was asked to begin his life all over again. He did not flinch from the task. He "went into the city" and prospered there, as he had prospered in every other field of adventure. Freed from responsibility, he threw himself with all his vigour into the movement of Tariff Reform,

force of the temperamental vigour held in determined restraint."

and gave a loyal support to Mr Joseph Chamberlain. The part he played on this the last of his many stages is well de- As Mr Garvin paints his scribed by Mr J. L. Garvin, portrait with the deep and who has sketched Sir Edward kindly knowledge of of symLaw's character in what pathy, we seem to see and we are sure are the vivid to know the gallant original. colours of truth. "Contact The soldier was always at with that character and mind," writes Mr Garvin, "was always like reading in a living volume with chapters as various as many, and with decisive thought and full substance on every page. . . . It was a volume like no other. You never consulted it without fresh instruction." And the man was in a sense more wonderful than his life. "He was that redoubtable thing," Mr Garvin adds, "the Calvinist, the Covenanter, who is also a romanticist combination more frequent in kind than is generally thought, but found in him with a degree of intensity rare indeed. His face and tone were stern and disciplined, yet no good observer could mistake for a moment the depths of kindness and feeling that lay below, or the

the bottom of him; he bad not a particle of rhetoric; he could face the facts that he disliked, these are some of the phrases which drop from Mr Garvin's pen. Still more vivid is the conclusion: "Abstract speculation he dismissed. His question was ever, 'What ought to be done?'... Hence he was successful in every administrative charge committed to him, and I cannot well imagine any task of Government in which he would have failed." a

Than this a

higher tribute could not be paid, and that it was amply deserved is the best measure of Sir Edward Law's success. He lived many lives; he served his country in many lands, and the word failure is written against no one of his enterprises.

THE DURBAR, FROM THE CROWD.

"Here as I sit by the Jumna bank,

Watching the flow of the sacred stream,
Pass me the legions, rank on rank,

And the cannon roar, and the bayonets gleam."

THE journalist, the newswriter, and the stately historian have had, and will have, much to say of the Imperial Durbar at Delhi, when for the first time since the days of Aurangzeb a real Bādshāh has been seen to ride coram publico, for all who willed to gaze on. The Maratha leaders of horse, the rebellious Afghan governors, and even the Abulli himself, or the later-day titular holders of the Delhi sceptre, never bulked to the people as the all-powerful ruler that so appeals to the imagination of the East. Power, might, majesty, and dominion appeal to all who need support and protection, and never did any field of the cloth of gold appear more emblematic of empire than did this wonderful assemblage in the late fall of the year of grace 1911.

The writers must search deep into their colour-box for the wherewithal to paint their word pictures, and to their skill the picture may safely be left. It is enough if the gazer by the wayside can recall some of the voces populi, the remarks of those who lined the road or gazed over the ranks of serried bayonets, of the peasant from

-Delhi, 1876.

the fields of Hindustan and the villages of the five rivers, of the trader from the stalls in the packed bazaar, of the American cousin with his camera and lust for souvenirs, of the Dutchman who, like the ranks of Tuscany, "could scarce forbear to cheer," since he comes of a people who love empire-and so forth. In the series of pageants we have in the crowd the soldier off duty, the longsuffering constable, European tourists of every nationality, Burmans, Shans, and all the peasantry of the country-side. Let us hear them as they watch a sovereign move through the streets of Delhi, the first time for a couple of centuries. The Indian element is silent; down the .Chandni Chouk, and up the roads to the Ridge, their Majesties have ridden in silence. The East, it is true, does not cheer as the West does, at least not readily, but still some sound was expected. But the East forgets little, and in Mogul days he who lifted up his voice as the king passed would have been cut down by the guards. Some evil spirits have reminded the crowd of this, and whispered that the police had orders to beat down the first to raise

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