by the development of secret societies which often attract young men of very good connexions, and they have proposed to use for the detection and suppression of dacoities the local bands of “national volunteers” whom they formerly helped to organize for the purpose of enforcing the boycott and stimulating unrest.  How far, even if unreservedly exercised, the influence of such men as Mr. Surendranath Banerjee will be as potent for checking the mischief as it was for promoting it remains to be seen.  For the present also the boycott is being discountenanced in the same quarters, though Mr. Banerjee, presumably to “save his face,” professes to have agreed only to a suspension pending the revision of Partition.  But his paper, the Bengalee, is almost the only one that pretends to regard the Partition as still an open question.  It has been eclipsed by far graver issues, of which the further development cannot yet be foreseen.

The return to more sober counsels seems to be confined unhappily to the older generation, and the older generation, even if we include in it the middle-aged, must before long pass away.  What we have to reckon with, especially in Bengal, is the revolt of the younger generation, and this revolt draws its inspiration from religious and philosophical sources which no measures merely political, either of repression or of conciliation, can reach.  It often represents a perversion of the finest qualities, as, apparently, in the case of Birendranath Gupta, who murdered Shams-ul-Alam in the Calcutta High Court last January.  An English missionary who knew him well assured me that in his large experience of Indian youths he had never met one of more exemplary character or higher ideals, nor one who seemed more incapable of committing such a crime.  The oaths and vows administered on initiation to secret societies are not directed only to political ends.  They impose on the initiates in the most explicit terms a life of self-denial, and sometimes celibacy; and though these vows do not always avail against some of the worst forms of sensuality, it would be foolish and wrong to generalize from unworthy exceptions.  In its moral aspects the revolt of young Bengal represents very frequently a healthy reaction against sloth and self-indulgence and the premature exhaustion of manhood which is such a common feature in a society that has for centuries been taught to disregard physiological laws in the enforcement of child marriage.  To this extent it is a revolt, though in the name of Hinduism, against some of the worst results of the Hindu social system, and that it has spread so largely amongst the Brahmans of Bengal shows that it has affected even the rigidity of Brahmanism.  Thus, whereas we have seen in Kolhapur the Brahmans of the Deccan assert that in this “age of darkness” there can be no Kshatriyas, their fellow-caste-men in Bengal are quite willing to invest Kayasthas with the sacred thread, on the ground that they are really