“And on the ocean slept th’ unanchored fleet.” He writes about the poor as they are, without sentimentality, and without exaggeration; and as a painter of English landscape he still remains the best. What has the poet Crabbe got to do with the Indian Ocean? Nothing. But it can do nobody any harm to be reminded of the poet Crabbe, although he was born in 1754 and died in 1832. He may not be read by the modern generation, but he is not forgotten. A Frenchman wrote a long and excellent book about him not long ago. He is safe in the Temple of Fame, which once you have entered you cannot leave. And this temple is like a wheel. It goes round and round, and sometimes some of its inmates are in the glare of the sun, and sometimes they are in the shade, but they are there; and they never fall out. This is comforting. It also teaches us not to laugh at the taste of our fathers, because that taste which we despise may be the rage once more in the days of our grandchildren. How we used to despise everything connected with the Early Victorian period. Now people have their rooms done up in Early Victorian style, and Early Victorian furniture is collected; rep sofas are precious, green tablecloths and antimacassars. They have passed the period of being like an out-of-date fashion plate; they have reached the hallowed moment of being picturesque and Old World. It is Late Victorian art that is now despised--William Morris and Burne-Jones. But they are safe in the temple, too, and a day will come when people will admire Burne-Jones’s pictures and collect Morris designs as a great curiosity, and say, “This is a very fine specimen of 1880 chintz.” During this monsoon period I read more than ever. I once asked a famous politician what he did on a sea voyage. He said, “The first day I am civil to my fellow passengers, and after that I read Scott’s novels.” I adopted this plan. _Ceylon: July_ A line of palm trees over a tumultuous fringe of silver foam, which leaps up on a dull opal-green sea, is your first impression as you get near the island. When you come into harbour, a quantity of narrow black boats swarm round the steamer. Then the tug comes alongside, and after waiting in it till it is no longer worth while to go on shore in a boat, I finally, in a burst of impatience, get into a boat and am rowed ashore. No sooner am I in the boat than the tug starts. However, the four black men in my boat pull hard and we reach the pier almost at the same time as the tug.