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them were the speeches and writings of Burke, Froude, Lord Morley, and others. I thus lived in constant association with the great masters of the English language and in close familiarity with their vocabulary and methods of thought, and to none do I owe a greater debt than to Edmund Burke, whose political philosophy has so largely moulded my own views about government and society. One of the most extraordinary things that the Calcutta University ever did was to interdict the writings of Burke. The ban has now been partly removed. I suppose the idea was, at least in the minds of some, that Burke taught revolutionary doctrines, and a learned counsel in the Dacca Conspiracy Case actually referred to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution in that light, forgetting that the book is the strongest and the most reasoned protest against revolutions of all kinds.

On my way to attend the Congress at Poona I halted for a day at Allahabad and stayed with my son-in-law, Colonel Mukerjee, who was then in medical charge of an Indian regiment, and who is now so well known as the author of A Dying Race. I repeated to him the peroration of my Poona presidential speech. He heard it and said, 'That speech has been twenty years in the making'. The remark struck me as one of extraordinary shrewdness and more or less of general application. It meant that my laborious performance covered a period of time far beyond what was actually taken up by the work. No improvisation is, or can be, productive of any really great effort, for there are no short cuts either in nature or in art. Even when there is improvisation in a great achievement in public speaking, it will often be found to have its roots in laborious efforts in a kindred field of work. The orator has laid by in the chambers of his mind a storehouse of noble thoughts and a fine vocabulary, ready at his command to form varied combina- tions. They move forward in serried procession, for him to pick and choose, or modify, for the deliverance of his message. Nature and his prepossessions predispose him to live and move and have his being in company with the immortals of the earth, breathing an atmosphere fragrant with their breath. His training and equipment are moral rather than intellectual. His heart inspires, his intellect obeys. Carlyle has observed that all great thoughts spring from the heart; and through the heart they work round the brain. It must be so in a special degree in the orator's work; for here heart speaks to heart and is the centre of the emotions which flow out to the audi- ence and overwhelm them. Oratory indeed is reason incandescent