This was the spring-tide of his public life when he was bursting forth into vigour of body, soaring in spirit, and rejoicing like a young lion in healthy strength. Then, too, he was able to withstand the climate all the year round. For although in summer the sky was as brass, the earth as iron, the wind as a blast from a furnace, still in winter the marching in tents was salubrious, the breeze invigorating, the temperature delicious by day, and the air at night frosty. After an incumbency of three years at Paniput he was transferred to Gurgaum, a district south of Delhi. There his work was the same as that already described, only somewhat harder, owing to the lawless and intractable habits of some classes among the inhabitants, and because of drought which visited and distressed that region. Then in 1838 he was appointed Settlement-Officer of Etawah, a district south-east of Delhi between the Ganges and the Jumna. In technical or official language, his settlement-work included the whole scope of landed affairs, in the most comprehensive as well as in the minutest sense,--the assessment of that land-tax, which is the main burden of the peasantry and the prime resource of the State--the cadastral survey of every field in every village or parish--the adjudication of all disputes regarding the rights, interests and property in land--the registration of landed tenures. His duty herein was, of all duties which can be entrusted to a man in India, the one of most interest and importance, the one which penetrates deepest into the national life, the one for which the Government always chooses its most promising officers. This duty, moreover, universally attractive to the best men throughout India, had for him especial charms in the districts between the Ganges and the Jumna. For here he found, in all their pristine and unimpaired vigour, those Village Communities which have survived the shocks of war and revolution, and have engaged the thoughts of jurists and philosophers. His business was to guard the innate and indestructible energy of these ancient communities, to adapt their development to the wants of the present time, to fence round their privileges and responsibilities with all the forms of a civilized administration. The experience thus gained was to him of unspeakable value in the most arduous passages of his after life. But though he entered with all his heart and mind into this work, he felt the district itself to be dull and distasteful after Delhi and Paniput, and this feeling shows how the antique splendour of the former and the historic traditions of the latter had affected his imagination. He could no longer live contentedly unless amidst his surroundings there were something grand for his mind to feed upon. However grateful he may have felt to Etawah for the experience it had given him, he never looked back on the place with pleasure. One melancholy recollection abided with him, for it was here that he caught