But those were the days before the mutinies, and before the introduction of railways. The steamers of the Peninsula and Oriental and other companies had not then a monopoly of passengers, and people still went out to India in sailing vessels round the Cape of Good Hope. There are some warm-hearted politicians who imagine that the change of Government in India, by the substitution of the name of the Queen for that of the old East India Company, has conferred inestimable benefits on all people who dwell in India. In one sense they are quite correct, because the benefits referable directly to this cause are almost as inestimable as they are invisible to the mind’s eye. But that a great change has come over the land since 1857 is undeniable. The well-known Mr. John Marshman, the historian of India, used to say that it was impossible to do any good in a country like Bengal, or for a people like the Bengalis, because, according to their national proverb, it was “impossible to carve rotten wood.” But the introduction of railways has almost falsified the national proverb. Wherever the iron road pervades the country, it gives a new basis of strength and vitality on which a new growth of life can arise. It is no exaggeration to say that this new power has affected materially the whole European and native community, and has worked and is working the most important social changes. By the use of the railway, the Viceroy and the provincial governors are enabled to resort without anxiety to the cool hill stations, from which the electric telegraph flashes their orders to the labourers in the hot vineyards of the plains. By the railway the wealthy and pious Hindoo pilgrims are enabled to proceed in ease and comfort to remote sacred shrines, and at such a moderate cost that their money-bags still contain ample store to propitiate the priests in charge of the temples and their idols. The wandering Caubul merchant no longer commits himself and his caravan of camels to a tedious march of several months to reach Calcutta, but stows himself, with his Persian cats and rugs and pomegranates and other wares, in the third-class carriage of a railway, and finds himself at his journey’s end in a few days, instead of months. Within the last few years it happened that a distinguished political officer was summoned from Quetta to Calcutta, a journey of about two thousand miles by railway, to be consulted by the Viceroy. He had scarcely returned to Quetta when a telegram came summoning him back to Calcutta for a further consultation. So that in less than a fortnight he twice traversed the whole continent of India without any great fatigue, and with very little risk to his health.