as compared with 208,000 at Delhi), its appearance, and its life, render it practically certain that nothing short of some tremendous convulsion of Nature, reducing the city to ruin, will drive the Government of India elsewhere, during the five winter months of the year that are spent in the plains. Delhi's chances of supplanting Calcutta may therefore be considered infinitesimal. Neither is Delhi the capital of a Local Government. It is merely the residence of a Commissioner, and of a very small civil and military population. However much a memorial erected there might be visited and seen by travellers from all parts of India, it is not possible that it could be erected under adequate supervision; it is still less possible that the collections which it is to contain should be accumulated, or added to, at a place where the controlling authorities, of whom the Viceroy must always be the chief, are never found. It is as though a London committee, under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, were invited to undertake the erection and maintenance of a great fabric, and the installation within it of a valuable collection, at Gibraltar or at Malta. It will need the most untiring activity on the part of the Viceroy to carry the plans into execution at Calcutta, where he is present for four months only in each year. It would be absolutely out of the question at Delhi, which he visits for two days once in five years.

Calcutta being chosen for the site, it will, of course, be necessary to employ such materials as will best resist the ravages of a tropical climate, and to adopt such precautions as are necessary for the protection of the contents. The building will probably be faced entirely with white marble, of which there are many excellent varieties in India. Its contents should not be any more difficult of preservation than those of Wellesley's Government House, which have remained intact for a hundred years.

In one respect Calcutta offers advantages with which no other city in India can compete. It possesses in the Maidan one of the finest city parks to be seen in any capital in the world. Situated on the outskirts of the town, and yet in close proximity to its most crowded quarters, this great expanse, already adorned with the statues of Governors-General and eminent men, presenting a stretch of green sward such as can nowhere be created in the drier climate of Northern India, interspersed with avenues and clumps of trees, and lending itself both to landscape gardening and to architectural effect, offers an almost ideal site for the erection of a simple but noble memorial structure.

It has not yet been finally determined upon what portion of the Maidan the Victoria Hall will be placed. The architect, when appointed, must be consulted upon this point. It is proposed to surround the Hall by a beautiful public garden, the laying out of which will be co-ordinated with the design and plan of the building.

Having thus explained the choice of locality and the selection of site, I pass to a description of the character and contents of the proposed Memorial Hall.

It has been hinted in some quarters that any separation of these from the personality of the late Queen will by so much detract from the personal character of the memorial. There is some, but not I think considerable, force in this criticism. A monument that was purely personal in character, such as the Albert Memorial in London, or the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh, might not have attracted all the contributions that we have received. A bronze out-of-door statue of Her Majesty for Calcutta, subscribed for at the time of her second Jubilee, has already been completed, and is now on exhibition in England. Its erection on the Maidan, with surroundings of suitable dignity and splendour, will be made a first charge upon the funds that we are now collecting. But it will exhaust no more than a small fraction of them. Further, we do not possess in India the artists to erect an English Taj. The best of our English sculptors will probably be employed upon the Queen's Memorial in London, and we could not have hoped in India to carry into execution any great work of a purely monumental character.

Nevertheless the Queen will be the central figure of the Hall that bears her name. Under a central dome, or in a central hall, will stand in all probability her effigy. Upon its marble walls will be inscribed in letters of gold, in English and in the vernaculars, the terms of her celebrated Proclamation, and of her various messages to the Indian people. Around, in cases, will be displayed objects directly connected with herself; her autograph letters, and such memorials of herself as we are fortunate enough to secure.

Around this centre, or branching from it, will be a series of galleries and corridors and halls, which bring me to the secondary aspect of the scheme as a National Gallery, or Hall of Fame, for India. There can be no doubt that the addition to it of this feature, at once sentimental and utilitarian, æsthetic and practical, has stimulated the liberality of the response which has been evoked in this country. There is no country where there exists such a lamentable and appalling dearth of material for bringing the past in a visible form before the eyes of the present, for teaching the lessons of history in a concrete form, or for familiarising succeeding generations with the commanding figures and the memorable events that have preceded them. Other countries have their National Galleries or Imperial Museums. England has the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, Greenwich Hospital, the Tower of London, the Royal United Service Institution, not to speak of the monuments in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. In all of these are preserved the memorials of great

men, of dramatic incidents, and of momentous times. Paris has the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and a great number of smaller galleries and collections. Berlin is particularly rich, apart from its Picture Gallery, in the possession of the Arsenal, which contains a most interesting collection of military paintings and trophies, and, the Hohenzollern Museum. In India we have nothing of the sort. No period in the history of India has been more remarkable for triumphs, both of war and peace, than the reign of the late Queen. None has been more crowded with stirring episodes, or with the deeds of famous soldiers, scholars, writers, and statesmen, and yet, beyond a few scattered statues and busts, ill seen and oft unknown, we have no visible memorials of this crowded and illustrious past. A traveller might come to India and leave it with the impression that, since the days of the great Moguls, whose tombs and temples are the wonder of the East, it had had no history that was worthy of concrete commemoration, had produced or seen no great figures, but had only been fortunate in the enjoyment of an administration which had been lavish in endowing it with law courts, town halls, educational institutions, secretariats, and gaols. It is still not too late, though before long it may be so, to supply this need, and to provide India with that which every civilised nation should possess, for bringing home to the popular imagination the reality of the past, and for implanting in future generations the instincts of national pride, of reverence, and of patriotism.

The desirability being thus accepted of making the commemoration of Her Majesty the central feature of a building which should also commemorate those who have served her in India, and the events of the past, the question arose as to what limitations of nationality, character, or period should be applied. It was obviously impossible to appeal to the Indian Princes and people for a memorial that would be exclusively devoted to the glorification of Englishmen. For such an appeal would have implied that there was nothing remarkable or memorable in India that had not been done by Englishmen -an implication that would have been both insulting and historically unjust. It was also impossible to limit the collection to the personalities or the episodes of Her Majesty's reign. A single illustration will suffice. Would the Duke of Wellington be admitted? He lived for fourteen years into the Queen's reign. But his Indian career was over more than thirty years before it began, and fourteen years before Queen Victoria was born. And if the memorials of the Duke of Wellington were admitted, how could we exclude those of the brother under whom he served, of Lord Cornwallis, who both preceded and succeeded that brother, and of the greatest of all the proconsuls of that epoch, Warren Hastings? To start a National Gallery, and at the same time to institute an arbitrary limitation in respect of

time, would be to deprive it both of the representative and of the educational character with which it is imperative that it should be endowed.

Similar considerations were held to apply to Indian history and to Indian names. Since the entire country has passed under the settled dominion of the British, less scope is afforded for those careers of prominence or adventure which were possible and frequent in times when war was as a rule proceeding in some part of the peninsula, when the country was split up into innumerable small units, and when, as the authority of the Mogul Emperor waned, any bold spirit might hope to carve a road to a kingdom or to fame. The history of the British rule in India is bound up with so many of these names that to exclude their memorials, where they are available, would be to give a one-sided view of history. If we trace back the records of British connection with India, we of course come ultimately to a stop at the point where that history commenced at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Following the same process with native history, we arrive at no fixed or natural starting-point until the foundation of the Mogul dynasty, by Baber, seventy years earlier. This, then, is the limit that has been tentatively accepted in respect of Indian history. We shall probably not secure many memorials of the age from Baber to Aurungzeb. Did we attempt to recede further into the past, we should run the risk, which I desire especially to avoid, of confusing the purpose of the Victoria Hall with that of an archæological museum, and of usurping the functions which, in India as elsewhere, the numerous specimens of the latter class are designed to fulfil.

In this paper, which is written for English readers in England, it is not necessary for me to say anything about the persons or events in native Indian history with whose commemoration we shall charge ourselves. Our success, or failure, in doing so will depend upon efforts which will be confined to this country, and upon the response that our appeals will elicit from Indian princes, antiquarians, and wealthy men. An English audience may take a more direct, and as I hope a sympathetic, interest in that part of the scheme which will relate to the perpetuation of the services and names of eminent Englishmen (of course I do not mean to exclude Scotchmen, Irishmen, &c.), and I will accordingly describe the methods by which it is proposed to accomplish this end.

The collection in the Victoria Hall will fall more or less into the following categories:

(1) A gallery of sculpture, in which will be collected the statues, busts, and medallions of distinguished men. We fortunately already possess the nucleus of such a collection in Calcutta, though the objects are so widely scattered, and so inadequately placed, that

their existence is probably quite unknown to travellers, and is but little known to the majority of Calcutta residents. There is a very fine marble statue of Warren Hastings by Westmacott, which is now effectually concealed from public view in an unused portico of the Town Hall. In the ground floor of the same building, which is rarely used for public purposes, is a colossal figure of Cornwallis by Bacon. There are busts of James Prinsep and the Duke of Wellington in the same building, which has been condemned as unsound, and will probably one day be pulled down. In the Dalhousie Institute, which was named after the great Governor-General, and was intended to be a sort of Valhalla for Calcutta, but is now merely an entertainment room, with a small club attached to it, are a number of fine pieces of statuary. A beautiful marble effigy of Lord Hastings by Chantrey stands in the portico. Inside are statues or busts of Dalhousie (which belonged originally to Government House), Havelock, Outram, Nicholson. A number of others that I might name are distributed elsewhere. We shall offer to all these scattered objects a more worthy setting in the Victoria Hall.

(2) A gallery or galleries of paintings, engravings, prints, and pictorial representations in general, both of persons and scenes. Here, again, we already possess in Calcutta the germs of such a collection, and since the scheme was started, I have received offers or promises of others. Where their owners do not care to part with them altogether, we may hope to obtain specimens on loan. Oil painting is now almost extinct in India. But a century ago, a number of English artists of repute, including more than one Royal Academician, came out from England and spent some time in the country, undertaking commissions on a large scale. Several of their pictures are still traceable. One of the objects of this article is to discover still more. At about the same time a series of admirable coloured engravings by English artists were published of Indian places and scenes. These also we shall collect, and where we cannot secure originals, shall be content with reproductions.

It ought to be possible after diligent search to present in mezzotint and line engravings an almost continuous history of AngloIndian worthies, battles, sieges, landscapes, buildings, forts, and scenes during the last two hundred years.

(3) In view of the great munificence that has been shown by the Native Chiefs in contributing to this Hall, which but for their princely donations would never come into being, I should like to create a Court, or Hall, of Princes within it, where such memorials might be collected as they were willing to offer or to lend. Statues and likenesses of notable men among them might be placed here, and might appropriately be surrounded by a collection of the arms and accoutrements-spears and battle-axes, swords, shields, horse