appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely fashion, accusing him of obscureness of speech:—­princes and the louder members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that which they do not immediately comprehend.  It is explained by the Minister:  not even the flower, he says, would hold constant, as they, to the constantly unseen—­a trebly cataphractic Invisible.  The Rajah professes curiosity to know how it is that the singular people nourish their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the continued being of the object in which they put their faith.  He is informed by his prostrate servant of a settled habit they have of diligently seeking their Divinity, hidden above, below; and of copiously taking inside them doses of what is denied to their external vision:  thus they fortify credence chemically on an abundance of meats and liquors; fire they eat, and they drink fire; they become consequently instinct with fire.  Necessarily therefore they believe in fire.  Believing, they worship.  Worshipping, they march Eastward at morn, Westward at eve.  For that way lies the key, this way the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.

According to Stage directions, the rajah and his minister Enter a Gin-Palace.—­It is to witness a service that they have learnt to appreciate as Anglicanly religious.

On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they speak of the hatted sect, which is most, or most commercially, succoured and fattened by our rule there:  they wave adieu to the conquering Islanders, as to ’Parsees beneath a cloud.’

The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal of a medical pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches, traceries, horrid blots, diagrams with numbers referring to notes, of the various maladies caused by the prolonged prosecution of that form of worship.

‘But can they suffer so and live?’ exclaims the Rajah, vexed by the physical sympathetic twinges which set him wincing.

‘Science,’ his Minister answers, ’took them up where Nature, in pity of their martyrdom, dropped them.  They do not live; they are engines, insensible things of repairs and patches; insteamed to pursue their infuriate course, to the one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing of them, on peril of an instant suspension if they deviate a step or stop:  nor do they.’

The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of the riddle of their power to vanquish.  In some apparent allusion to an Indian story of a married couple who successfully made their way, he accounts for their solid and resistless advance, resembling that of—­

             The doubly-wedded man and wife,
        Pledged to each other and against the world
        With mutual union.