The visit of the King and Queen to India at the end of 1911 was therefore well timed, and it provoked a still greater outburst of popular enthusiasm than their visit as Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905. For it was the first time that the Sovereign to whom it was given to rule over India from a remote Western island travelled out to receive on Indian soil the homage of his Indian subjects and appeared before them in the full majesty of crown, orb, and sceptre. Apart entirely from the merits of the measure, the dramatic transfer of the capital of his Indian Empire from Calcutta to Delhi appealed to the imagination of Indians as a demonstration of the Royal power no less impressive than the splendours of the great Durbar at which the Royal command went forth. Equally did their Majesties fulfil another of the time-honoured conceptions of royalty by knowing, so to say, when to step down from their throne and mix freely with the people. It has been from times immemorial one of the principles of Indian rulership that the ruler cannot deny to his subjects the privilege of access to his person, and many are those who have gained more popularity by giving ample opportunity to their subjects for stating to them their grievances in the royal presence than by ever actually redressing them. In Calcutta especially when the King and Queen moved cheerfully amongst the delirious crowds that had thronged to the Maidan to worship 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.