attentions restored him to his senses.  Learning from him the object of his journey, and fearing that his wounded brother Lachhman would die before he could get to Ceylon with the requisite remedy, he offered to send Hanuman on upon the barb of one of his arrows, mountain and all.  To try him Hanuman took up his mountain and seated himself with it upon the barb of the arrow as desired.  Bharat placed the arrow to the string of his bow, and drawing it till the barb touched the bow, asked Hanuman whether he was ready.  ‘Quite ready,’ said Hanuman, ’but I am now satisfied that you really are the brother of our prince, and regent of his kingdom, which was all I desired.  Pray let me descend; and be sure that I shall be at Ceylon in time to save your wounded brother.’  He got off, knelt down, placed his forehead on Bharat’s feet in submission, resumed his load, and was at Ceylon by the time the day broke next morning, leaving behind him the small and insignificant fragment, on which the town and temples of Govardhan now stand.

’While little Krishna was frisking about among the milkmaids of Govardhan,’ continued my old friend, ’stealing their milk, cream, and butter, Brahma, the creator of the universe, who had heard of his being an incarnation of Vishnu, the great preserver of the universe, visited the place, and had some misgivings, from his size and employment, as to his real character.  To try him, he took off through the sky a herd of cattle, on which some of his favourite playmates were attending, old and young, boys and all.  Krishna, knowing how much the parents of the boys and owners of the cattle would be distressed, created, in a moment, another herd and other attendants so exactly like those that Brahma had taken, that the owners of the one, and the parents of the other, remained ignorant of the change.  Even the new creations themselves remained equally ignorant; and the cattle walked into their stalls, and the boys into their houses, where they recognized and were recognized by their parents, as if nothing had happened.

’Brahma was now satisfied that Krishna was a true incarnation of Vishnu, and restored to him the real herd and attendants.  The others were removed out of the way by Krishna, as soon as he saw the real ones coming back.’

‘But,’ said I to the good old man, who told me this with a grave face, ’must they not have suffered in passing from the life given to death; and why create them merely to destroy them again?’

‘Was he not God the Creator himself?’ said the old man; ’does he not send one generation into the world after another to fulfil their destiny, and then to return to the earth from which they came, just as he spreads over the land the grass and corn?  All is gathered in its season, or withers as that passes away and dies.’  The old gentleman might have quoted Wordsworth: 

            We die, my friend,

Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon,
Even of the good is no memorial left.[9]