Meanwhile the idea of a school should be borne in mind in every branch of the administration, civil and judicial, and especially in the foreign or political department. A British officer at an Asiatic court is often the one solitary representative of civilisation and progress; and this feeble light ought to be fed, strengthened, and kept constantly burning like the fire of the Vestal virgins. By that light, Asiatic rulers may hope in time to rise to the level of Europeans; without it, they may sink back into the barbarism of the past century, when the Mogul empire had lost its hold, and was tottering to its fall. FOOTNOTES: [34] Mr. James Wilson died in 1860. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Laing as financial minister, who in his turn was succeeded in 1862 by Sir Charles Trevelyan. [35] During the Viceroyalty he was plain Sir John Lawrence, but when it was over he was raised to the peerage. [36] Calcutta is by no means an unpleasant residence for Europeans with tolerably sound constitutions. Sir John Lawrence was only in his fifty-fifth year, but he was sadly worn by hard work and unexampled anxieties. [37] British territory in India comprises 900,000 square miles, with a population of 200,000,000. Asiatic territory comprises nearly 600,000 square miles, with a population of 52,000,000. NORTHERN INDIA is fringed on the west by Afghanistan, on the north by Cashmere, Nipal, and Bhotan; on the east by Munipore and Burma. CENTRAL INDIA is traversed from west to east by a belt or zone of states and chiefships--Rajput, Mahratta, and Mohammedan--which extends from the western coast of Gujerat facing the Indian Ocean, and the western desert of Sind facing Rajputana, through the heart of the Indian continent eastward to the Bengal Presidency. This belt includes, amongst a host of minor principalities and chiefships, the three leading Rajput states--Jeypore, Jodhpore, and Oodeypore; the Jhat state of Bhurtpore; the Mahratta territories of the Gaekwar of Baroda in Western India, and those of Sindia and Holkar in Central India; and the Hindu states of Bundelkund, including Rewah, along the eastern hills and jungles to the south of the river Jumna. The DECCAN includes the Mohammedan dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad, to the eastward of the Bombay Presidency. SOUTHERN INDIA includes the Hindu states of Mysore and Travancore to the westward of the Madras Presidency.