so superhuman that it is impossible for the latter to surpass them. The story of the lobster, we shall perhaps be pardoned at remarking, is very like a whale. An immense deal of nonsense is talked about 'cramming.' No amount of cram will enable man or boy to translate at first sight a stiff piece of Latin or Greek into English, or to translate a piece of Carlyle into good Tacitean Latin, or into Greek in the style of Demosthenes. Differential and integral calculus are not things' quick, sharp boys' can pick up a smattering of in a hurry. At least any crammer deserves all he gets who can show them the way to do so. A crammer can help a well-educated youth to summarise and condense his know ledge, can teach him to answer fully yet tersely, and can point out a great variety of points which must indispensably be remembered, and which points a student by himself would be long in ascertaining. Such a 'crammer must be an able and experienced man, and as such deserves an ample honorarium. But if it be meant that a crammer or crammers can cause a badly taught, superficial youth to pick up a smat. tering of a number of subjects, and thus gain a place, all we can say is, that we entirely disbelieve the assertion. The rules of the examination are expressly framed to exclude such smatterers, and we believe do So. At all events, we have met none of the class referred to among the members of the new service. A few a very few indeed-do warrant part of the reproach cast upon them, of bringing only 'energies worn out and exhausted by premature toil over books.' Premature exhaustion is not always caused by so worthy a cause. But howsoever arising, it indubitably would be an evil of the greatest magnitude if it were general or even common among the selected candidates for the Indian Civil Service. We believe it to be very rare, but Practically, the Indian Civil Service is at present closed to graduates ! of Oxford and Cambridge, a matter which the writer at least deplores as most hurtful to the service of India. We do not know if the severity of the examination has been lowered of late years, though we have heard rumours to this effect. If so, it is greatly to be deprecated. Nothing possibly could better suit the interests of professional trainers than this. In gravibus superior is the only true motto for a fair and real testing of acquirements, and nothing will so tend to depress attempts to give fictitious value to mere efforts of memory as the allowing trained and formed men to enter as candidates in an examination as comprehensive and searching as it can be made. Better shorten the subsequent two years' training to one year than sacrifice the main principle itself, viz. the obtaining of the best men that the country can produce. To one consequence we must draw attention. If the maximum of age be increased to 23 years, a very much greater chance of success will be given to natives T of India to enter the Civil Service. This, in our judgment, is a most weighty argument against the proposed extension. We, nevertheless, think that the risk should be run, as the least evil of the two. There are only about 950 civilians in all India. Hence the extreme urgency of using every effort to secure the efficiency of every member of the service. Our objections to the employment of natives as district officers at present are too long to be discussed in this paper. It must suffice here to say that we believe any large infusion of natives into the ranks of the Civil Service would be, for many years to come, not merely disastrous but perhaps ruinous to our empire. and that perhaps among the most important of its duties, is to form the medium of communication between the supreme Government and the people. To the Government it discharges the important duty of conveying its behests to the people intelligibly, rapidly, and in a manner to ensure compliance without shocking prejudice, while at the same time it is the channel, and practically the sole channel, by which the desires, opinions, and prejudices of the people can be conveyed to Government. In this capacity it discharges the functions of the French préfet or German Beamte, but without the military swagger of the one or the aggravating and inflexible pedantry of the other. Owing to a fault in the system of selection in the Indian Secretariats, the Indian Government is singularly dependent on this assistance from its agents, which, however, when courteously requested, is always cheerfully and 626 members. frankly rendered. We have referred to the small number of members belonging to the Indian Civil Service. In 1872 they stood as follows: In the Bengal Civil Service, 160 172 The total for all India is therefore 958. The duties devolving upon this small body of men are in brief the government of the empire. The departments of organisation and control-that is, the Secretariat, with its subdivisions- home, foreign, finance, the functions of general government and of legislation, the whole machinery of taxation, the realisation of the revenue, its deposit and distribution, the whole internal administration-judicial and police-the entire supervision of local as contradistinguished from imperial expenditure-viz. the support and management of education, prisons, hospitals, dispensaries, district roads and other internal communications; these, and many other duties too numerous now to detail, are one and all discharged by the Civil Service. One, VOL. VIII.-NO. XLVI. NEW SERIES. The above will suffice to give a general idea of the positions actually filled by the members of the Civil Service proper in India. A fuller detail of their duties will form the subject of other papers. Some interest may, however, be felt as to the emoluments earned by this most important and laborious body. These vary considerably in different presidencies; but premising that our figures are an approximate average only, we may say that a young officer begins upon a salary of about 500l. a year. În a year or two this is raised to 600l. This is again increased in a few years, and after ten or twelve years of service he is usually in the receipt of 850l. to 1,200l. per annum. In three or four more years he probably is drawing over 2,000l. a year, that is after from thirteen to sixteen years of service. After the lapse of several years this is again raised to 2,700l. a year, and at the termination of I I his twenty-one years of service he may probably be getting 3,000l. a year. This is the highest limit of emolument reached by the great majority of civilians. There are exceptional prizes in the service; but to these, of course, not more than 5 per cent. can ever hope to attain. What all, however, alike possess is a moderate pension after twenty-five years of service, of which twenty-one years must have been actually spent in the country. Besides this pension, a civilian has other advantages in the possession of a fund for the support of his widow and orphans, should he predecease them. Each widow gets 300l. a year, and each child a pension of from 30l. to 100l. a year, the daughters till marriage and the sons till of age. These allowances (subject to some qualifications, which cannot be here detailed) are really in the nature of insurances effected on exceptionally low terms, and of course pro tanto relieve the civilian from the necessity of accumulating in his lifetime a provision for his family after his death. A civilian cannot ordinarily save largely out of his income. His style of living must be generous, or his health would fail under the exertions of his office. He must keep up a retinue of servants and several horses, and he finds furlough trips necessary and delightful as they are very exhausting to his finances. Macaulay, writing some thirty years ago, assumed the sav ings of a retired civilian to average something like 30,000l. Few civilians of ordinary good for. tune save nowadays more than from 5,000l. to 7,000l. during their term of twenty-five or thirty years of service, and many do not save nearly so much. Let no one, therefore, enter the Indian Civil Service with vain and undefined hopes of amassing a fortune. He will assuredly not succeed, nor is it even advisable for him to try to do so. The days of the pagoda-tree are long past. He will, however, enjoy ample competence, be able to marry early, and with prudence may reckon upon exemption from petty pecnniary anxieties. He has before him the opportunity of living a most useful life, not without trials and privations, but with its fair share of brightness too; and if he preserve his health by care and temperance, he will probably live to enjoy a pleasant decade or two in his native land after his term of service has been passed. the retired civilian of thirty or thirty-five than those of the present time. The purcertainly not greater than the purchasing It follows that the average of savings now to 30,000l.-i.e. as one in ten. THE DRAGON'S HEAD: BEING THE CONCLUSION OF THE LEGEND OF THE MONKEY.' [Some of the readers of this Magazine may recollect that some months ago a story under the head of The Legend of the Monkey' appeared in these pages. The Monkey, which, it was then explained, was understood to be an allegorical representation of the mind of man, after passing through numerous adventures, at length succumbed to the superior craftiness of Buddha of the Present, and was condemned, as a punishment for his overweening pride, to undergo a term of imprisonment for five thousand heavenly years, during which he was to be fed with pills of iron, and his thirst assuaged with mineral water. In the following pages the history of the Monkey is brought to a conclusion. For a better appreciation of the story the reader is referred to the September number of Fraser's Magazine, 1872. It is to be regretted that so much extraneous matter has been introduced prior to the reappearance of the Monkey on the scene. It is not, however, irrelevant to the development of the plot, and possesses in itself so much that is curious and entertaining, that I have decided to preserve the tale in its integrity. In taking leave of the Monkey one cannot praise too highly the ability of the author, who in an instructive story at once captivates the imagination, inculcates morality, and satirises ambition. H. E. WODEHOUSE.] A1 CHAPTER I. T the time when the incidents about to be related took place, the Tong dynasty was in power, and was represented by his Majesty Tong Tai Tsung. On his accession to the throne the empire was in Chinese phraseology blessed with harmonious winds, prosperous rains, and a peaceful population. In a certain part of the country on the seaside lived two men of humble birth, one of whom was a fisherman, the other a woodcutter. Every day, after the labours of both were completed, they would meet together for a stroll by the seaside, and talk over their affairs. As a rule they had not much to boast of; fish were scarce and trees did not seem to grow; but one day the fisherman came up to his friend and told him in a voice of great joy that a certain diviner had been good enough to inform him of all the best places in which to fish, and that now he was able to catch as many as he liked. The only return the diviner required for this information was one large fish every day. 'Where is he to be found?' said the woodcutter; he might perhaps tell me how to procure wood.' 'I have no doubt he could,' replied the fisherman. His place is only a few miles from here. He lives in a large booth, outside which he has placed a board which tells people what he is. His name is Ng Chi Hing.' As the two were thus chatting together on the seashore, it chanced that a large carp overheard the conversation, and overwhelmed with dismay at finding that there was a diviner who was able to tell fishermen where all the favourite resorts of the fishes were, rushed in haste to the palace of the Dragon of the Eastern Seas, and loudly complained to him that so long as the diviner possessed this knowledge, the fishes had no chance of escape whatever.· The Dragon saw the danger in which his subjects were placed, and after a brief consultation with his Prime Minister the carp, determined to go in person and put a stop to the mischievous divinations of the astrologer. He accordingly assumed the garb and appearance of a Bachelor of Arts, and in this form presented himself at the booth in which the oracular sayings were delivered. 'Good morning,' said the Dragon, as he walked in. 'I have come to ask you to be good enough to tell me when next there will be rain.' The Dragon purposely put this question to him, since he was himself in charge of the Wind and Weather Department, and could therefore arrange the weather as he pleased. The diviner consulted his books for a minute or two, and then replied: "To-morrow when the sun doth rise, 'Thank you,' said the Dragon, pleased at having obtained so definite an answer. 'I will make a bargain with you. If your prognostication comes true, I will pay you down two hundred dollars; but should it prove untrue, I will knock down your booth, destroy your books, and you must promise me to divine no more.' Agreed,' said the diviner; 'so remember what I have predicted;' and he once more repeated the lines to him. The Dragon then wished him good day, and went away in high spirits. His first act on getting back to his palace was to give orders that no rain was to fall the next day, after which he retired to rest. He had not been long asleep before a carp came in with a message from the Sovereign of Heaven marked 'Immediate." The Dragon opened the despatch and found that it contained these words, 'Make the clouds collect at sunrise to-morrow, and let it rain from ten to twelve; after that it is to clear up.' This order completely upset the Dragon, since, coming from the quarter whence it did, it was almost impossible to disobey it; for though the Dragon was head of the Meteorological Department, yet the Sovereign of Heaven was supreme over all departments, and his orders must be obeyed. So loth, however, was the Dragon to execute this com mand, the fulfilment of which made the diviner's prognostication true, that he determined to run the risk, not of disobeying the order, but of altering the hour at which he was commanded to make the rain fall. The next day, therefore, instead of making the rain begin at ten as he had been ordered to do, he did not allow it to commence until twelve, thus making the prediction wrong by two hours. He then, assuming the same form as on the previous occasion, rushed in exultant haste to the diviner's tent, and without any parley at all smashed it and the board to pieces. You are not so wise as you thought,' said the sage quietly; for merely in order to make my prognostication wrong, you have dared to deliberately disobey an express order from the Sovereign of Heaven.' At these words the Dragon was more than ever astonished at the diviner's knowledge, who up till this moment he had imagined to be ignorant of his identity, and he now became very frightened indeed, and falling on his knees begged him to forgive him, and to save him from the wrath of the Emperor of Heaven. 'I can forgive you,' said the diviner, 'for you have done me no harm, but I cannot save you. Tomorrow at twelve o'clock your head will be taken off by Ngai Ching, the great Minister of Heaven, Earth, and Men, unless at that hour you can induce the Emperor Tai Tsung to distract the Minister's attention, in which case you are safe.' The Dragon, thanking him most heartily for his information, after paying him the two hundred dollars agreed upon, took his leave and determined to try what he could do with the Emperor. So that night he appeared to his Majesty in a dream, and implored him to devise some plan by which to distract the Minister's attention at twelve o'clock the next day. The Emperor promised to do this, and |