seen in setting the native rulers by the ears, in deposing some, and extorting from others immense sums of money, and ere long their territorial possessions. The trading companies were greedy and their servants unscrupulous. Such was the position of affairs in India when, in 1744, war broke out in Europe between England and France. At this time, M. Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was ambitious that the rule of his countrymen should be the dominant one in India. The English, as may readily be imagined, were the special objects of the Governor's designs; and in 1746 Madras surrendered to a French squadron which was then cruising on the coast. Two years afterwards, an English fleet failed in the attempt to take Pondicherry, but Madras, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, was restored to Britain.

Meanwhile the local situation was not improved by these Anglo-French outbreaks. The whole of Southern India, on the fall of the Mogul power at Delhi, had become practically independent; and in the Deccan the Nizam-ul-Mulk was founding at Hyderabad a hereditary dynasty. The Carnatic, the lowland district lying between the central plateau and the Eastern Sea, was governed by a deputy of the Nizam, known as the Nawab of Arcot. To the south lay Mysore, Tanjore, and and Trichinopoli, which were all seats of independent Hindoo power. On the death, in 1748, of Nizam-ul-Mulk, the "War of Succession" to the throne of the Deccan, referred to in Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings, began to rage. The English supported the claim of Nasir Jung, a son of the late ruler; while it suited the purpose of the French Governor, Dupleix, to maintain the cause first of one grandson and then of another.

To the subordinate sovereignty of Arcot, the French and English advanced the interests of rival claimants. The former upheld the pretensions of Chunder Sahib, while the latter countenanced those of Mahommed Ali. To end the trouble, which was a source of danger to Madras, and to cripple the influence of France in the Carnatic, the English directed Clive, who had come to India in 1743, to proceed with a small but, as it turned out, brave force to seize Arcot. Clive's capture and subsequent defense of the place was the first of his great mil

itary achievements, and made the year 1751 famous in the annals of British India. From that date French power in the East began to decline; and its overthrow occurred nine years later, when Sir Eyre Coote won the victory of Wandewash, and in the following year starved Pondicherry into a surrender.

The scene now shifts to Bengal, and to the advent of Warren Hastings. In 1740 the hereditary succession to the throne of the Province had been broken by a usurper, who died in 1756. His grandson, Surajah Dowlah, a hot-headed youth of eighteen, became Nawab of Bengal. The Court was at Murshidabad, contiguous to Cossimbazar and the European factories on the Hugli. Down the river, at Calcutta, there was by this time a large settlement of English. Suddenly the city was seized by a panic on the appearance at its gates of an army of the Nawab. On the pretext of capturing a relative, who had escaped from his vengeance, Surajah Dowlah had marched upon and invested Calcutta with his forces. Most of the English fled down the river in their ships, though 150 of them were captured and flung for the night into the military jail at Fort William. Only twenty-three emerged on the morrow from the horrors of the "Black Hole !"

While this tragic occurrence took place, Clive was at Madras with the British fleet under Admiral Watson. On hearing of the calamity he instantly set out for the mouth of the Ganges, and Calcutta was promptly recovered. The Nawab fortunately consented to a peace, and made ample compensation for British losses. But Clive soon found the opportunity to settle accounts more satisfactorily with Surajah Dowlah. War having again broken out between France and England, the hero of Arcot made it the pretext to seize the French settlement on the Hugli of Chandernagor. This enraged the Nawab, and in hot haste he took up the cause of the French. Clive, acting upon the policy of the Governor of Pondicherry, put forward a rival claimant for the throne. Resort was had to arms. At Plassy, about 70 miles north of Calcutta, the die was cast, and Clive, with less than a tenth of Dowlah's army, met and scattered it to the winds. Placing Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal, Clive dictated his own terms.on

elevating him to the position, and the East India Company became practically masters of the Province.

Plassy was fought on the 23d of June, 1757, and in the following year Lord Clive was appointed by the Court of Directors Governor of the Company's settlements in Bengal. The incidents connected with the dethronement of Meer Jaffier, the revolt of Meer Casim, and the re-conquest of Bengal, brings the story of British occupation well on in the career of Hastings. These and subsequent stirring events brought out the resources of that famed administrator, and, with

CONTEMPORARY OPINION: THE LOGIC OF PAIN

W

E are apt to regard pain as too exclusively an evil, and an unmitigated evil. We regard it as the essential part of the primal curse; its endurance is part of servitude, or the fate of the vanquished amidst savage races. Pain in disease has always been regarded as the great part of the cross we have to bear. Yet the question may be asked, is pain an unmitigated evil; has not pain other aspects, other sides to it? Is the pain of disease, or of an injury not often highly, indeed eminently, useful?

There are certain forms of pain, observes Dr. J. Milner Fothergill, a notable authority in Medical Science, to which animated beings are subject, which seem devoid of any good purpose, such as the pain inflicted by a cancerous growth. Cancer does not necessarily produce pain, and in nerveless regions its growth is not productive of suffering. But when a nerve-fibril gets caught by the progressing cell-growth of cancer, and is pressed upon by its remorseless grasp, then pain, persistent and agonizing, is the result. Probably no torture that ever was inflicted by man on man is more exquisite than that caused by the grip of a cancerous growth; where, as a literary man once wrote, "there is no temporary relief but in opium, no permanent rest but in the grave."

It would, however, be very erroneous and one-sided to regard pain solely, or even chiefly, from the point of view here put forth. Pain is the protector of the

Clive's military genius, make the history of the period a notable one in the annals of India. Clive's rule in the East terminated in 1767; Warren Hastings' extends from 1772 to 1785. After that came the administration of Lord Cornwallis and the second Mysore war, and the century closes with the third Mysore and the second Mahratta war and the military rule of the Marquis of Wellesley. These stormy scenes served to consolidate British power in India, and to prepare the way for other signal triumphs and a more peaceful and beneficent administration. G. M. A.

voiceless tissues. It tells us to desist from efforts when they are becoming injurious, it teaches us to avoid what is destructive to the tissues; it compels us to rest injured parts, and so to permit of their repair. Pain, then, is very far from an unmitigated evil. To what injuries, blows, burns, contusions, etc., would not the framework of man and of animals be subjected if the slow lessons of consequential injury were left without the sharp reproof of pain. The suffering immediately attracts the attention, and consequently that which would do much damage is avoided, not from any rational consideration of the consequences, but from the pain directly produced. Without the advantages which thus spring from pain, animals and savage men would incessantly be inflicting much injury upon themselves, and indeed often be imperilling their existence. Pain from this point of view is distinctly preservative throughout the whole of animated creation.

The utility of pain is seen in the membrane which sweeps the surface of the eye, for instance, in several animals, whenever any irritant particle is brought into contact with these delicate structures. The pain caused by the foreign body sets up reflexly a muscular contraction in this membrane, and thus it is brought across the eye, sweeping the surface, and so the offending matter is removed. When the foreign body is too fixed to be so removed, disorganization of the eye follows, and amidst a general

destruction of the organ the irritant matter is got rid of. Destruction of the eye in these animals would be a common occurrence if it were not for this muscular arrangement, and pain is the excitant. Not only does pain so defend the eye from the injurious effects of foreign bodies, it often serves to protect the delicate organ from overwork; and where pain is so produced, rest is given to the part, and recovery is instituted. The grave diseases of the eye are those which are painless, where incipient disease is aggravated by persisting action.

The advantages which ensue from pain are most markedly seen, and are most obvious, in the case of injuries. When a joint is sprained the pain caused by movement in it compels the rest which is essential to repair. If there were no pain produced by motion the parts would almost certainly be exercised to the detriment and to the delay of the reparative processes. So too, in broken bones, the agony caused by motion is such that a fixed position is maintained for weeks; with the result that the part, being kept at absolute rest, is thus permitted to recover as speedily as may be.

In like manner pain is most protective in certain internal diseases. Thus in inflammation of the large serous covering which invests the abdominal viscera and lines the walls of this space, pain, the result of movement, secures rest. Doubtless this pain is often such as to constitute a great danger to life; nevertheless, without it and its consequences more serious mischief would usually be produced. When there is an abscess in the liver, pain is induced by movement of this viscus; when a rib is broken, the fractured end rubs upon the pleura, and excites inflammation of it; and the pain thus set up causes the patient to call in a surgeon. Then in certain conditions of the stomach, pain is produced by improper food; and so dyspepsia guides the sufferer to the choice of suitable food, which does not set up pain. Such are some of the best known instances of the utility of pain in local ailments or injuries.

There are, however, more general conditions which evoke pain, and where that pain is the means of the condition being relieved, or remedied by medical art. Take neuralgia, for instance. It may be the outcome of several conditions which have to be discriminated for its relief.

Neuralgia is the common outcome of blood either poverty-stricken or poisoned by some deleterious ingredients, as in material poisoning for instance. Without the pain so produced the condition would go on unrelieved, and ulterior organic changes would probably be brought about. The pale, bloodless creature who is the prey of facial neuralgia, or that pain in the intercostal nerves which is felt below the heart (and commonly referred to that organ), is compelled thereby to desist from exhausting efforts, and to seek in rest and good food that relief which is so imperatively demanded by the pain.

With several persons known intimately to the writer, neuralgic pain is the first evidence of the system being overtaxed. In one gentleman this is very marked. Long and sustained over-exertion, mental and bodily, some years ago, brought on a most severe and continued attack of sciatica, which necessitated a lengthened rest before recovery was completed. He now knows distinctly how far he can go with impunity. In this case the pain is directly conservative and conducive to health, and to length of days; it is indeed protective against physiological bankruptcy, or exhaustion. It is rather singular that in this gentleman's wife a similar phenomenon is found. She is dyspeptic, and as a consequence often reduces the food she takes to an amount below what is compatible with proper nutrition. In her case, a gusty current of facial neuralgia, like a long wail, is at once the indication for, and the direct cause of, more attention to her diet, and, hence, her health generally is improved. So, too, in lead poisoning; here colic or neuralgia attracts attention, and points alike to the cause and its treatment.

Headache often alone can secure that rest which the brain requires; and the headache of exhaustion is as marked as is that pain at the top of the head which tells us that the brain is insufficiently supplied with blood. The headache after a day of exertion, excitement or enjoyment, so commonly met with in ladies, secures a day of complete quiet, during which the system regains its tone. In dyspepsia, too, the pain caused by food, and still more by unsuitable food, either improper in quantity or in quality, is the direct incentive to the necessary attention to the matter, whereupon improvement

follows. Absolute rest for the stomach is a serious and very troublesome affair for the patient; and though so grave a condition is not often reached, such cases are sufficiently frequent to point out the protective character of dyspeptic pain. To many persons their hateful dyspepsia is a species of guardian-angel; though it is very probable that they are not in the habit of regarding it in that light.

When a muscle is exhausted its contractions are accompanied by pain. Consequently this pain secures the rest req

WORRIES

B

Y worries we mean evils in anticipation; those fears, vexations, irritations, and dangers which haunt the mind, unsettled and disturbed, out of its ordinary routine though it is so far at ease in present circumstances, and has so little ground in positive fact for its forebodings, that it has to call in fancy to swell vague apprehension into shape and consistency. Misfortune," says an old journalist-reviewer, "is not a worry, nor yet is a well-grounded anxiety. Worries are possibly impending troubles and annoyances, magnified into such large dimensions as not seldom to cause more uneasiness as mere creatures of the imagination than they would do if converted into fact. We know, while we brood over them and dilate upon them, that we ought to combat them, that we are exaggerating trifles into things of importance; we are conscious of a fevered fretful fancy, and that our fears are of the nature of phantoms. The real troubles of life, experience tells us, are facts equally patent in all times of the day, in all weathers, in every state of health. We may feel them more at one time than at another, but they never lose their character to the understanding. We are aware, on the contrary, that worry expands and dwindles. Awake at midnight, it is a terror, at noonday a bugbear to be smiled at, set aside, overcome; but not the less is its sway powerful at its own time and hour.

There is a mixture of conscience and cowardice in the character subject to worry. It terrifies us through our weaknesses by revealing a vista of uncongenial effort, of muddle that we cannot see our

uisite for repair in muscles that are utterly exhausted, as is seen in the present common "tennis-elbow." The characteristic of muscular pain is that it is absent as long as perfect quietude is maintained, but as soon as the muscle is thrown into action pain is produced. So, too, with a gouty toe, the agony produced by movement secures the requisite rest for the inflamed joint. From which considerations it is clear that pain is not always an unmitigated evil, but has at times a distinct value of its own.

way through, of energies severely taxed. Always we are the actors unprepared for our part, unequal to it; but, however many are concerned, ourself is the person on whom the pressure lies, on whom it devolves to disentangle intricacies, to reduce chaos into order, to reconcile contradictions. The mind subject to worries is not indolent; but it runs in a groove, expatiates in leisure, cannot rouse itself to prompt action, is very far from rejoicing at a sudden call upon its powers. And yet from these very causes- from its dread of contretemps, failure, incongruity from its horror of confusion, from its recoil from risk, from its morbid pursuit of remote consequences, from an unnecessary and little appreciated sympathy with others in possible predicaments -it feels that itself is the one to step into the breach, to plan the rescue, to face and to avert the mischief; an innocent vanity, after all, which generally Idies with the daylight. It is Hamlet's state of mind applied to social difficulties and the lesser miseries of life :"The time is out of joint:-O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

The victim of worries is necessarily very unfit for the work which he thus officiously imposes on himself. How, asks the moralist, can we regulate events of which we know not whether they will ever happen, and why should we think with painful anxiety about that on which our thoughts can have no influence? Common sense will be no party in such consultations. The man who tackles and gets the better of difficulties when they do arise is of another. temper altogether; he is one who waits for the occasion, wasting no ingenuity on imaginary

situations, but quick to apprehend and arrange the facts of a case as they declare themselves. He does not fret and fume in perplexed anticipation through the hours of inaction, but, clear-headed, in calm self-reliance, addresses himself, not without complacency, to the task of reducing confusion to order, and setting the crooked straight. Whatever reflection he bestows will stand daylight and discussion. The other, the dreamer, listens, admires, acquiesces, and, if he is wise, keeps his unprofitable lucubrations to himself, thankful to have the question that has so painfully exercised him settled for him.

The step from being haunted by worries to worrying in turn is, however, almost inevitable. Whenever some occasion brings many persons together for a common object there is generally one of the company importunate in pressing his apprehensions on the general mind. The anxious, worried member of a travelling party cannot help being troublesome to his associates by warnings out of season. He gives vent to his fears when fears are futile; he foresees that the baggage will be lost, the train missed, the hotel full, when nothing can be done to avert these calamities. His enemy comes between him and the fairest prospects, and he cannot help making others sharers in his own distraction, probably showing the least resource of any of the party when the thing he fears really happens. But, wherever worries are given way to, the worried person, whether it be in the cause of punctuality or foreseeing danger and possible inconvenience or accident, breaks up snugness, reminds his friends of cares and duties which all would willingly forget for a time, and spoils the pleasure which he is so solicitous to preserve from disturbance and mischance. This may be merely the instinct of teasing, but it is also the temptation of the nervous temper alive to possibilities, and feeling that nobody else is sufficiently awake to remote dangers.

The greater troubles of life are certainly independent of times and seasons. But surely the pleasure-taking season is the season of worries. They characterize the turn of the year along with rooks, and partridges and shooting stars, which may be seen all the year round, but collect in flights, and run in coveys, and fall in showers in the autumn.

The hol

iday months are the very hotbed of worries; nor need a person be peculiarly susceptible to worries to be tried by them at this season. It is their opportunity. Somebody must lie awake through the small hours in every family that is engaged in a scheme of change and enjoyment. Somebody must puzzle himself or herself to the verge of despondency in every house which expects a succession of guests; how to reconcile contending plans and claims, how to make the right people meet each other, and how to keep the wrong people from falling in each other's way. However smoothly things may run, someone, we may be sure, has had an uneasy time. Serene and smiling as is the brow of the hostess, it has wrinkled but lately under a touch of mimic anguish, very like the real thing while it lasted, as she passed difficulties under review and saw shadows loom and grow portentous to a startled fancy.

inci

Worries flourish in holiday time because in fact they are the trials of prosperity. They drop into insignificance at the first touch, or even threat, of calamity and adversity. The heads of a sea-side party, worried to death with the various uneasiness and inconveniences dent to this form of enjoyment, find them disappear into space at the mere alarm of sickness or the panic of a bathing accident. How coolly will a man take the disarranging of elaborately planned schemes of pleasure, or even some slight where his feelings are most sensitive, at the first suspicion of something wrong in his affairs; while he would have fumed, fretted, believed himself the victim of cruel fate, made everybody unhappy about him, if he had seen his fortune on the rise instead of going down.

Unbroken felicity is incompatible with humanity; worries are the natural alloy of a prosperous career. They are the recognition of the law of mutability. The difference is that happiness has small torments appropriate and peculiar to itself, which so often overcloud it to its owner that it is not recognized for what it is till that phase of it at least has passed away forever. And certainly this is one of the compensations for downright calamity. Misfortune on a large scale sends worries packing, and people will sleep under a heavy loss who pass weary vigils under