Stead and the Spirits CONSIDERABLE attention has been attracted and excitement created by the latest development of Mr. W. T. Stead's agency for communicant spirits which he calls Julia's Bureau. The supposed communications of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield and other distinguished politicians on the question of the Budget have awakened much curiosity, ridicule and even indignation. The ubiquitous eloquence of Lord Curzon has been set flowing by what he considers this unscrupulous method of pressing the august departed into the ranks of Liberal electioneering agents, and he has penned an indignant letter to the papers in which there is much ornate Curzonian twaddle

Stray Thoughts FLOWERS and trees are the poetry of nature; the gardener is a romantic poet who has added richness, complexity of effect and symmetry to a language otherwise distinguished merely by facility, by directness and by simplicity of colour and charm. * Sound is more essential to poetry than sense. Swinburne who often conveys no meaning to the intellect, yet fills his verse with lovely and suggestive melodies, can put more poetry into one such line than Pope into a hundred couplets of accurate sense and barren music. A noble thought framed in a well-rounded sentence will always charm by virtue of its satisfying completeness, but will never convey that e

THREE His Official Career THUS equipped, thus trained Bankim began his human journey, began in the radiance of joy and strength and genius the life which was to close in suffering and mortal pain. The drudgery of existence met him in the doorway, when his youth was still young. His twenty-first year found him at Jessore, his fifty-third was the last of his long official labour. Here too however his inveterate habit of success went always with him. The outward history of his manhood reads more brilliantly even than that of his youth, and if he did not climb to the highest posts, it was only because these are shut to indigenous talent. From start to finish, his abi

-31_Kalidasa's Seasons.htm Kalidasa's "Seasons" I. ITS AUTHENTICITY THE Seasons of Kalidasa is one of those early works of a great poet which are even more interesting to a student of his evolution than his later masterpieces. We see his characteristic gift even in the immature workmanship and uncertain touch and can distinguish the persistent personality in spite of the defective self-expression. Where external record is scanty, this interest is often disturbed by the question of authenticity and where there is any excuse for the doubt, it has first to be removed. The impulse which leads us to deny authenticity to

SECTION TEN CONVERSATIONS OF THE DEAD I DINSHAH — PERIZADE II TURIU — URIU III MAZZINI — CAVOUR — GARIBALDI IV SHIVAJI — JAI SINGH V LITTLETON — PERCIVAL ONE Dinshah — Perizade DINSHAH Perizade, the shades of Iran were not so cool and sweet as these in our city of Mazinderan. The gardens that bloom on the banks of the river of peace are carpeted with lovelier and sweeter-scented flowers and the birds that sing upon every tree and make the day melodious with the unearthly delight of their clamorous harmonies, are of so various a plumage and hue that one is content to satiate the eye with the softness and splendour without car

The Historical Method OF Kalidasa, the man who represents one of the greatest periods in our civilisation and typifies so many sides and facets of it in his writing, we know if possible even less than of Valmiki and Vyasa. It is probable but not certain that he was a native of Malva born not in the capital Ujjayini, but in one of those villages of which he speaks in the Cloud-Messenger and that he afterwards resorted to the capital and wrote under the patronage of the great Vikramaditya who founded the era of the Malavas in the middle of the first century before Christ. Of his attainments, his creed, his character we may gather something from his poetry, but external

Yoga and Human Evolution THE whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilized man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning, the objects which compose the physical world were arranged by Him in their causes, developed under the law of their being in the subtle or psychical world and then manifested in the gross or material world. From kārana to sūk

Beauty in the Real I HAD ridden down by Shelsford thro' the glittering lustre of an afternoon in March and as I was returning somewhat cold and tired, saw at a distance the pink hat¹ and heavy black curls of Keshav Ganesh and with him Broome Wilson and Prince Paradox. As I trotted up Prince Paradox hailed me. "Come round and have tea with me," he said, "we are speculating at large on the primitive roots and origins of the universe, and I know your love for light subjects." "I shall be a delighted listener," I said, and was genuine in the assurance, for I had many a while listened with subtle delight to the beautiful and imaginative talk of Keshav Ganesh. I rode to the

SECTION ONE THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE 1890-92 "I read more than once Plato's Republic and Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his impress I rashly started writing at the age of 18 an explanation of the cosmos on the foundation of the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got beyond the first three or four chapters." From notes dictated by Sri Aurobindo Book One Keshav Ganesh [Desai] — Broome Wilson Keshav : My dear Broome, how opportune is your arrival! You will save me from the malady of work, it may be, from the dangerous opium of solitude. How is it I have not seen you for the last fortnig

SECTION EIGHT ART AND LITERATURE Art ALL Art is interpretation. Creation is a misnomer; nothing in this world is created, all is manifested. All exists previously in the mind of the Knower. Art may interpret that which is already manifest or was manifest at one time, or it may interpret what will be manifest hereafter. It may even be used as one of the agencies in the manifestation. A particular type of face and figure may be manifested in the work of a popular artist and in a single generation the existing type of face and figure in the country may change and mould itself to the new conception. These things are there in the type in the causal world with which ou