The same ideal of service and privation is to be found no less in Bengal, sweetened however and softened like the more languid air. There is something hard, even cruel perhaps, in the arid Deccan plain with its burning dry winds and its stony hill-sides, and its stern, thrifty, self-centred people. Its asceticism is harsh and rough, the sour ferment as it were of crude souls in fear of a fierce Deity, looking by abnegation to secure the grace that alone can give salvation. The spirit is that, almost, of a Hindu Calvinism, savagely abnegatory. A softer piety, as of some Italian nunnery among roses and olive trees over the blue sea, inspires the womanhood of Bengal. They have a devotion no less intense, their service and self-sacrifice is no smaller; but they are filled also with the pity that assuages and the love that makes things sweet. To be kind and tender in a world which, with all its evil and pain, is pervaded by a loving and merciful Providence, such is the spirit in which they render service. The large houses of Bengal, embowered in trees, have a claustral peace as well as labour. The lives of the women in them are coloured by the tender light of pity and affection. Often in the warm nights under the star-strewn sky, young girls creep to each other and whisper little gaieties. [Illustration: BENGALI LADY] In general, among the middle classes of Bengal, women practise a seclusion that is, however, not too rigid. It is a seclusion like that of classic Athens, not savagely jealous as it still is in many Rajput houses. But with the renaissance that in the last fifty years has so greatly altered life in this great province, many have learnt to discard orthodoxy and with it the traditional restrictions. At Benares, especially, many a Bengali lady can be seen walking openly to the temples and the sacred river. Always she bears a perfect courtesy and a rounded balanced dignity. Of the newer school, too many perhaps have aspirations gleaned from the lighter English novels which they eagerly read--dreams for whose passage the ivory gates of Hinduism were never meant to open. But deep in the hearts of all--far deeper than such fashions--are the images of Sita and Sakuntala. Some play tennis and ride, some there are who return from English schools and the smarter section of London society with the gossip of Ranelagh or the bridge club and a wider taste for amusement. But there are none who discard the tenderness and soft devotion of their native womanhood. Nowhere in India have there been so many marriages between English and Indian; nowhere have they been more successful. The number of women really educated, appreciative of art and literature, a few even themselves poets and writers, is out of all comparison large; and the artistic rebirth in Bengal must to some extent have been shaped by the influence of women’s grace on the social world. Without departing from the prescribed fields of service and abnegation, they take their part