More interesting is the question--For how long can the vitality of a people whose life was arms be suspended? Men in the North say that, by the favour of the Government, the Sikh Sirdars are rotting on their lands; and the Rajput Thakurs say of themselves that they are growing “rusty.” The old, old problem forces itself on the most unreflective mind at every turn in the gay streets of Udaipur. A Frenchman might write:--“Behold there the horse of the Rajput--foaming, panting, caracoling, but always fettered with his head so majestic upon his bosom so amply filled with a generous heart. He rages, but he does not advance. See there the destiny of the Rajput who bestrides him, and upon whose left flank bounds the sabre useless--the haberdashery of the iron-monger only. Pity the horse in reason, for that life there is his _raison d’etre_. Pity ten thousand times more the Rajput, for he has no _raison d’etre_. He is an anachronism in a blue turban.” The Gaul might be wrong, but Tod wrote things which seem to support this view, in the days when he wished to make “buffer-states” of the land he loved so well. Let us visit the Durbar Gardens, where little naked Cupids are trampling upon fountains of fatted fish, all in bronze, where there are cypresses and red paths, and a deer-park full of all varieties of deer, besides two growling, fluffy little panther cubs, a black panther who is the Prince of Darkness and a gentleman, and a terrace-full of tigers, bears, and Guzerat lions bought from the King of Oudh’s sale.