Colonel Meadows Taylor's remarkable tale _Tara_ is probably less widely known than it deserves. Those who have read it, know what a fascinating picture it presents of the condition of life in India, at the epoch when the Mahratta power was founded. In the decline of the Mogul empire, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, a new Hindoo power was gradually built up, the original seat of which was in the difficult mountain country of the western Ghauts. Sivaji the founder appealed alike to the religious zeal and to the race feeling of the Hindoos, as against their alien Mahommedan rulers, without nominally repudiating allegiance to the emperor; the Mahratta power grew and spread, till it became supreme all over central India. Even in Bengal the raids of the Mahratta horsemen were a real danger: the first fortification of Calcutta, some years before Plassy, bears the name of the Mahratta Ditch. Late in the eighteenth century the Mahratta confederacy had fallen into somewhat the same condition politically as the Mogul empire. Their titular head, the Peishwa, was no more really supreme over the other Mahratta princes than the emperor at Delhi had been over the rulers of the Deccan and Bengal. About the time at which Mysore was finally passing into English hands, the ablest of the secondary Mahratta princes had gone near to making himself master of all India, outside the British sphere. He dominated the puppet emperor at Delhi; he had troops trained and officered by Europeans, besides the splendid cavalry which had always been the main strength of the Mahrattas. He was rapidly acquiring preponderant influence over the Peishwa and the other Mahratta states, and dreaming of using his power to expel foreigners from India, when his death broke up the whole fabric.