the country. Thieves, vagrants, and beggars were arrested and incarcerated, if found abroad during the night-time or under suspicious circumstances, and difficulties were thrown in the way of those who wished to travel from one part of the state to another. Without the permit of the Dadkwah no individual could leave his home, for the roads were constantly patrolled either by regular troops or mounted police, and these had strict instructions to convey back to their homes any persons journeying without Government permission. Yakoob Beg's police system was in no sense inferior either to his military or his judicial. The guardians of order were divided into two classes, the secret and the municipal. The municipal were chiefly the attendants on the Kazis in the towns, and the suburban patrols stationed at all cross roads, and generally throughout the country. In numbers these were limited, but to judge by the result they performed their duties in a very effective manner. But the secret were a far more effective body. They permeated all ranks of society, and were omnipresent. Their zeal was invincible, for it resulted in their own advancement, and every one was eager to enter their ranks and receive the pay and emoluments that were the reward of their good service. The eagerness shown by every one to speak ill of his neighbour in a very short time produced a block in the progress of justice, and restrictive acts were brought into operation to remove the threatened confusion in public business. Laws against libel and false accusations were passed, and the punishment for such offences made extremely stringent.

Another effective method was to reduce the rewards given to informers. These measures produced a salutary improvement, and during the last years of Yakoob Beg's rule the secret police had become no longer a nuisance to the public and the ruler alike, but a most powerful assistant of the latter in his dealings with the former. But while Yakoob Beg gained strength in one direction by this effective police system he lost as much in another. Order was supreme, but discontent was widespread. The freedom of the subject had disappeared, and in its place had sprung up a sense of thraldom that had never been apparent under the Chinese rule. Neighbours feared to express their convictions even to those whom they had known for years, and a sort of stupor fell over the population which even perfect security could not dispel. In the bazaars the busy hum which prevailed during the Khitay domination had given place to a more monotonous undertone, and although the morality of the Mussulman law far excelled that of the tolerant and indifferent Chinese, the merits of the new Government were effaced by its harshness and rigour. Many said, too, that the good state of public morality was only on the surface, and that as much vice existed beneath

this pleasing exterior as during the days of the opium smoking, bang-drinking, and amusement-loving Khitay. A blight had fallen on the energies of an enervated population, and all the attempts of Yakoob Beg, who, as a warrior, was averse to trade, to increase the prosperity of his state seemed doomed to failure. Yarkand alone maintained some of its old activity, and Kashgar itself assumed something of the appearance of a capital. But everywhere else was stagnation and retrogression. The Chinese had been expelled and the Tungani crushed, but the effort those triumphs had cost produced exhaustion. A ruler, who devoted his attention to military matters so much as did the Athalik Ghazi, who sought to play so important a part in the affairs of neighbouring states, was not the one most fitted to raise Kashgar from its fallen condition. The money spent on warlike stores and in the maintenance of a large army, if devoted to more peaceful operations, would have raised Aksu and Kucha to cities of the first rank once more, and would have really added to the effective strength of the nation more than high sounding, but useless enterprises against the Tungani, and towards Wakhan. The truth does not seem to have been far exaggerated in the pathetic language of the son of the ruler of Artosh when he said, "During the Chinese rule there was everything, there is nothing now."

We have now nothing left but to briefly consider the terminating act of Yakoob Beg's reign, and it is not necessary to say much here on this final catastrophe. In the autumn of 1876 the rumour reached the Emir that a Chinese army had commenced operations to the east of Turfan; but it was not until the fall of Manas in the October of that year that he perceived that this fart was of importance to himself. Swiftly the rumour ran through Kashgar that the Khitay were returning for their revenge, and all the memory of their former prowess revived at their preliminary successes north of the Tian Shan. Yakoob Beg, undisturbed for twelve years in his occupation of Eastern Turkestan, had now to face the same danger which had crushed every Khoja prince from Jehangir to Wali Mahomed. With all his natural courage, the heart of Yakoob Beg must have misgiven him. The return of the Chinese after so long a respite seemed like the inexorable decree of fate. Early in the spring of last year the Chinese army, considerably more numerous than that collected by the Athalik Ghazi round Turfan, commenced operations from Manas by forcing the Devan pass through the Tian Shan, and also from Hamil by pushing on a detachment against Chightam and Turfan. Both operations were crowned with success, and Yakoob Beg, driven out of Turfan, seems to have kept up a running fight to Toksoun, where he was again severely

beaten. He then withdrew in haste to Korla, where, some weeks afterwards, he died, either through natural causes, or by the hand of the assassin, as is now the accepted version. His army thereupon abandoned all the country up to Kucha, and the Chinese slowly advanced into Kashgar. In the meanwhile, Beg Bacha had, after some opposition, succeeded his father; but the skilful generalship of the Chinese has compelled him to seek refuge in Russian territory. Practically speaking, Eastern Turkestan has reverted to its old position as a Chinese province, and the story of Yakoob Beg and of his rule passes into the domain of history. He undoubtedly possessed great abilities, and for a modern Asiatic he achieved no mean task. As soldier and ruler he equally excelled, and in his own private life he appears to have been both moderate and generous. Steeped in all the customs, the intrigues, of the Court of Khokand, he emancipated himself from the enervating influences of that Court, once he became an independent ruler, and has left a name which, whether he be handed down to history as Yakoob Beg or as the Athalik Ghazi, will not lightly pass out of the pages of Central Asian chronicle. Therein is the chief proof of his individual superiority. When Khudayar Khan, Mozaffur Eddin, and possibly Shere Ali, are forgotten, the mention of Kashgar will bring back the remembrance of a warrior who roused sympathy in the streets of Calcutta, and in the receptionrooms of London. Identified with the Mohammedan religion, and the bold defier of Russian power, the sympathies of all his coreligionists were attracted towards him; nor soon, though he failed in accomplishing the summit of his and their desires, will he be forgotten by those who had come to regard him as a heaven-sent champion. His premature end, brought about by an invasion which was generally considered to be an impossibility, dispelled every illusion about the power of his state. But in closing this account of the great ruler we may say that his final overthrow in no way detracts from the high esteem in which we must always hold this able and successful sovereign.

WE

ART. V. GEORGE ELIOT AS A NOVELIST.

E must judge of books as we judge of men, und the fair way to appreciate one's fellow-creatures, is not to pay exclusive attention to any one mental or moral trait, and in that way produce a psychological caricature, but to endeavour to form a true, adequate, and complete conception of the man's whole thinking and feeling nature. Books, which are in the completest sense the immortal parts of men, and go on living and moving

and teaching, and doing good or evil long after the hands which wrote them, or the brains which dictated them, have passed into the indistinguishable dust of the grave, must be criticised in the same manner that men are. No trivial inquiry into the style, no dry disquisition as to the manner will meet the one case any more than a description of a man's coat will meet the other. Writings are not inorganic matters to be placed on the trim shelves of some museum, to be comprehended in classes under some byword, but organic things which are transfused with the life from which they emanate, and to understand them in their oneness and manifoldness, you must understand the life that is in them. Any earnest criticism must go deeper than the skin of style, must concern itself with more than the varieties of expression, must weigh and understand the meaning of the book and the writer who stands behind it as a man stands behind a mask whose mimic features are a nimble likeness of his own; must determine the thought and purpose of the one and the other.

How do we then arrive at our conclusions as to men? How is it we eagerly accord our admiration to some, are indifferent to others, and are earnestly antagonistic to a third class? It is doubtless true that in many cases our likes and dislikes are scarcely rational. Men embrace or strike at one another, if not in the dark, at least in very dim twilight. In many cases habit, prejudice, common interests of the mart, community of feeling about trivial pleasures, common purpose in slight affairs, are the bonds which attach men to their sc-called friends. But these are casual friends who are lightly come by, and may as lightly go; they are not the friends who, in the words of Ecclesiasticus, are the "medicine of life and immortality." These wholesome friendships have to be sought oftener in the large field of history than in the narrow garden of society. We ransack the past for our heroes if the present will give us no human worthiness to worship, and the bonds between the great of the past and ourselves, are quite other than those which attach us in ephemeral friendships with our poor contemporaries. Our community with these is in noble thought, in strong conscience, in clear resolve, and in diligent execution of unselfish purpose. It is these qualities we look for in our heroes; it is these qualities which command our ready, our officious admiration and respect, which make us the worshippers of those who have them in great measure, the friends of those who have them in some allowance; and it is for these qualities which we must look in all the works which men perform, before we can pronounce them good or bad. Books are no exception to this rule, for books are, on the whole, the noblest works that man has ever created, the most adequate monument to his transcendant genius. It is true that other great

deeds have been done besides those which the pen has accomplished. Besides writing noble books, men have at all times been busy in the paramount duty of living noble lives, which latter is a prerequisite of the former, and, indeed, the end and object of all these other works, whether they are done in words, in stone, in colour, or in music. But while we praise books, we must not forget that many men have found the sword more adapted to their strong hands and valiant hearts than the pen, and they have served good ends with that coarser instrument. Man's hand, too, has wielded the trowel to noble purpose, and we have those umbrageous works of stone which, with massive lightness, keep shelter sacred through centuries of time and storm. The brush, too, has been used with conscience, and the results of the patient labour of those who have dipped the sun's rays in their dye-pots, light our dark days with reflections, as in a sworn mirror, of the beauty and brightness of the past.

But whether we deal with painting or sculpture, or architecture or literature, we must consider the same spiritual facts, the honesty of the worker, the tempered flesh which was a ready instrument at the beck of high thought and great purpose. We come back always to the question as to the moral and intellectual nature of the man who did the work, and his relation to us in our two-fold nature. He is speaking to us through these his works; he is influencing us through these his endeavours, and our business in criticism is to find out how he is affecting us, with what purpose and result.

These principles may be understood by most readers, but they are apt to be lost sight of in the ordinary bustle of criticism. Criticism every day sinks beneath its high function because it is almost impossible to find a competent critic. To understand a man and his work, one would require to be the man, and yet to be some one other than the man at the same time. One must be the man in all his sympathy with the work; but other than the man in all his sympathy with himself. Hence the real difficulty of excellent criticism. To criticise George Eliot and her books, one ought to follow her through every effort of her consummate genius from the first to the last, retrace her laborious steps of effort, sympathise with every thought which has passed through her brain, and every feeling which has been in her heart, and yet ought, notwithstanding this intense intimacy, almost identity with one's subject, to transcend that subject by sharing in none of her selfish aims; by being dissociated from her in all her personal wishes. And to accomplish this work, to assume this attitude, it would require a genius greater than that possessed by George Eliot herself. However difficult it may under these circumstances be to find a competent critic for such works as she has given to England and the worid-for national boundaries are too small for such large