not gradually but rapidly, law to be enforced in spirit if not in letter, an administration to be rough-hewn after civilised models, provincial finance to be managed; here, then, he was in his element. This was, probably, the happiest time of his whole life, and the most satisfactory portion of his long career. In after years he would recur to it wistfully, when troubled by other surroundings and beset by other circumstances. There he had quite his own way, and left his proper mark; for in a few months he laid broadly and deeply the foundations of good administration. Besides the civil business, there was other work demanding his care. The province contained not only the rich and peopled plain near the confluence of the Sutlej and the Beas, but also a Himalayan region extending northwards to Tibet and held by mountaineer chieftains; and he had to reduce this mountainous country also to reasonable obedience. The results he attained in six months, that is from March to August 1846, seem on a retrospect to be wonderful, and prove with what method as well as force, what steadiness as well as energy, what directness of aim, what adaptation of means to righteous purposes, he must have laboured. Throughout these affairs he was in direct and immediate relations with the Government of India from whom he received ample support. And he more than justified the confidence of the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, who had selected him. Though his new charge in the Trans-Sutlej States was distant not more than two hundred miles from his old charge at Delhi,--which for north-western India is a short distance--there was a change of scene. Around Delhi and Paniput he had seen scenery as flat as that of northern or south-eastern Europe in the basin, for instance, of the Elbe and the Oder or of the Don and the Volga. No mountain wall, no abrupt peak, no wooded eminence, broke for him the monotony of outline, or bounded his horizon which ran in a complete circle like the horizon at sea. But in the Trans-Sutlej States on a fine winter’s morn, his northern horizon of the plains was bounded by a glittering wall of the snowy Himalayas, a sight which, when beheld by Europeans for the first time, so affects them that they instinctively raise their hats to the peerless mountains. Within the lower hills, which are outworks of the greater ranges, he rode up and down stony bridle-paths or across the sandy beds of summer-torrents, and gazed at hill-forts on stiff heights, or on castles like that of Kot-Kangra rising proudly from the midst of ravines with precipitous surroundings. Penetrating further northwards he reached mountains, with fir-woods bounded by snow, which reminded him of his Alpine tour only four years ago, and thought how short that interval was, and yet how much had happened to him within it. Though not specially sensitive to the beauties of Nature, he would yet dilate with something near enthusiasm on the vale of Dhurmsala, with its cultivated