Grey vapour-surges, whirled by wind
              Of roaring tunnels, dark and long;
         Then sky and landscape unconfined;
             Then scattered towns where workers throng:
                      The whistle shrill
                       Controls our will.

          Broad vents, and chimneys tall as masts,
             With heavy flags of streaming smoke;
          Brick mazes; fiery furnace-blasts;
             Walls, waggons, gritty heaps of coke:
                    And now our ponderous rank
                    Glides in with hiss and clank.

          Swift was our boldly-measured course
              Athwart a tranquil, busy land,
           Subdued by long and painful force
              Of plotting head and plodding hand.
                     Men neither strong nor sage
                     Have wondrous heritage!

          JUSTICE FOR "NATIVES."

AFTER a few years' residence at Calcutta,
I accepted an invitation from my excellent
friend Mornington Jumps, Esquire, Collector
and Magistrate at Fuzzulpore, to, pay him a
visit and have a little "pig-sticking"—the
vernacular for hog-hunting—in his immediate
neighbourhood. Jumps had been fortunate.
Connected with illustrious Anglo-Indian
families, he had only been ten years climbing
from the bottom of the ladder of promotion,
whence a "writer" starts to the exalted post
of revenue collector and magistrate. His
course of preparation for fiscal and judicial
functions having been his service as under
secretary to a board of salt, opium and arrack;
as deputy postmaster; as assistant deputy
secretary to Government in the military
department; and as deputy assistant in the
office of the Civil Auditor. Thus capacitated
to hold the scales of justice with an even
hand, and to penetrate the dark mazes of
native evidence, he had accepted the office of
magistrate because it was, by rule and usage,
the pendant to what his instructions told him
is considered a much more important post—
that of collector of taxes. From all I could
learn, Jumps really did not perform his
duties in a much worse manner than many
of his colleagues; although, as a dispenser of
civil justice, there was one special defect in his
previous training;—he had never studied law.

Twenty-four hours' dawk (palankeen
travelling post) carried me to the bungalow of
Mornington Jumps. Breakfast discussed, he
led me into his stable; bade me admire
"Goolaub," a filly he was training for the
Fuzzulpore planters' cup; shewed me his
wife's favourite Arab; pointed to a leopard
chained up in the compound (yard) which he
kept for deer-hunting; and, after giving some
biscuit to his dogs, proposed a game at
billiards, a cigar, and then that I should
accompany him to the "Cutcherry" or
magistrate's office.

Twelve o'clock was the ordinary business
hour; but, on this day, my host's courtesy
induced him to extend his absence to one P.M.,
when he drove me in his buggy to the hall of
justice.

Were the forms of Indian law as simple
as the buildings which are supposed to be
filled with the spirit of Equity, our muslined
fellow-subjects would have little to complain
of. A whitewashed and thatched or tiled
building, consisting of two or three rooms, and
a broad verandah all on one floor, constituted
the Adálut, or court;—from adál,
Hindostanee for justice. As we approached—
heralded by two or three mustachioed peons
bearing broad shoulder-belts with polished
plates, on which the nature of the office to
which they belonged was inscribed—the
loud chattering which had been carried on
in the verandah was hushed through the
instrumentality of various brijobassies (armed
policemen), rejoicing in curly black beards,
swords, shields, and pikes. Several gentlemen
wearing singularly white turbans and tunics,
with shawls over their shoulders or girded
round their loins, with furtive looks and a
singular pliancy of back, bespeaking them,
the Omlah, or officers of the court, approached
to make their salaam, as we alighted and
walked into the court. An old woman, whose
visage presented a strange amalgamation ot
agony and persuasive entreaty, broke the
temporary silence by an appeal to the huzoor
("The Presence"—the magistrate himself),
and was immediately choopraoed (hushed) by
the united efforts of two brijobassies, a clerk,
and a peon.

I could not help taking a survey of the
motley assemblage as we slowly adjusted
ourselves—the magistrate in his own chair, on
a platform raised a couple of feet from the
ground, so as to give him a view of the Court,
and impress the spectators with just notions
of his exalted position (to say nothing of
increasing his chances of long life from not sitting
upon a damp floor)—and I, seated upon his
left hand. In the verandah were crowds of
miserable, half-nude objects, male and female,
of every variety of wretchedness. These were
the plaintiffs, witnesses, and their friends and
families, who had been forced away some
fifty miles from the labour on which alone
they depended for daily bread. Among them
—now administering a kick to impose silence,
and anon listening with a degree of attention
proportionate to the fee put into their palms
—were chowkeydars (constables), sircars
(clerks), and similar functionaries, each of
whom the unhappy crowd believed to have
some influence with the magistrate.

The punkah swings over the head of
Mornington Jumps and his guest; the
obsequious hookahburdar (pipe-bearer) administers
the amber mouth-piece crowning the serpent-
hookah, which is coiled beneath the left arm
of the chair. "Choop! (silence!) "ejaculates
the chief of the burkundazes (lightning
throwers!—another branch of the police
force), and the Nazim or principal officer of