a treasure-house sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken.
At last there comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen
extraordinarily deft, an observation marvellously rapid and keen;
and, by good luck, this Englishman has no official duties: he is
neither a soldier, nor a judge; he is merely a man of letters. He
has leisure to look around him, he has the power of making us see
what he sees; and, when we have lost India, when some new power is
ruling where we ruled, when our empire has followed that of the
Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr. Kipling's works what
India was under English sway.

It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny
masterpieces in prose and verse were poured, "as rich men give that
care not for their gifts," into the columns of Anglo-Indian
journals. There they were thought clever and ephemeral--part of the
chatter of the week. The subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar,
that the strength of the handling, the brilliance of the colour,
were scarcely recognised. But Mr. Kipling's volumes no sooner
reached England than the people into whose hands they fell were
certain that here were the beginnings of a new literary force. The
books had the strangeness, the colour, the variety, the perfume of
the East. Thus it is no wonder that Mr. Kipling's repute grew up as
rapidly as the mysterious mango tree of the conjurors. There were
critics, of course, ready to say that the thing was merely a trick,
and had nothing of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to
hold its ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a
young Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it wonderfully
well, in a Parisian review. He chose to regard Mr. Kipling as
little but an imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his popularity mainly
from the novel and exotic character of his subjects. No doubt, if