216 Colonel Sir Ronald Ross [June 4, 



" Is this the way,/ she cried, " you waste 



Time should be spent in huddling haste 



To harry Ignorance to her den, 



Or pink fat Folly with the pen '? 



Small unobserved things to use, 



Each with its little mite of news, 



To build that sheer hypothesis 



Whose base on righteous Eeason is, 



Whose point among the Stars. For shame ! 



Enough the seeming-serious game. 



But search the Depths ; and for thy meed, 



A place among the men indeed." 



This rather tends to upset my own hypothesis ; for I evidently 

 thought in those youthful days that Science, clad in black velvet, was 

 a much more serious dame than her sister Muses, and I was clearly 

 rather sorry to be led away ! 



At that time (1881) I had just arrived in India, where, like other 

 young men, I was much struck by the difference between the civiliza- 

 tion there seen and that which I had just left, and was casting about in 

 my mind to discover the cause. The following sonnet on " Thought " 

 indicates something of this endeavour: — 



Thought. 



Spirit of Thought, not thine the songs that flow 



To fill with love or lull Idalian hours ; 



Thou wert not nurtured 'mid the marish flowers, 



Or where the nightshade blooms, or lilies blow ; 



But on the mountains. From those keeps of snow 



Thou seest the heavens, and earth, and marts and tower: 



Of teeming man ; the battle smoke that .lours 



Above the nations where they strive below ; 



The gleam of golden cohorts and the cloud 

 Of shrieking peoples yielding to the brink — 

 The gleam, the gold, the agony, the rage ; 

 The civic virtue of a race unbow'd ; 

 The reeling empire, lost in license, sink ; 

 And chattering pigmies of a later age. 



Although European civilization was much more recent than that of 

 the East, it was clearly superior in many ways, though not in all ; 

 if only as proved by the fact that a handful of Englishmen could, 

 not alone maintain dominion over such a great country, but also 

 give it innumerable benefits. I attributed this largely, and rightly, 

 to our superior knowledge of Science. And in the following sonnet 

 I attempted the praise of the great scientific Discoverers : — 



