they may come. If the play had ended in blank despair or in unrelieved pessimism, we would have been tempted to throw away the book exclaiming cui bono. But having drunk deep from the fountains of the master minds, the author could not but exhibit this optimistic trait which distinguishes the normal type of man. The genuine pessimism of neurotics, not the fashionable one which is merely a pose visible in some normal men, is a case for mental pathologists to investigate and not one for discussion in this connection. The central lesson taught by implication is that man's duty is to believe that there is a "Power that shapes our lives roughhew them how we will" and to rest contented in this larger hope. The marriage of VANI with NATARAJAN, which we may presume to have been performed at the intercession of MANONMANI, ends that subsidiary love-episode in the most fitting manner. Here, however, the poet has recourse to human agency to defeat the hostile forces that had arisen to blight poor VANI'S love. The disinterested love which this maiden bore towards MANONMANI appears to have kindled in the breast of the latter an affection of the same type. It is very rarely that genuine love-love without the dross of selfishness - goes unrequited. MANONMANI very properly comes as the saviour and by her letter to her father removes the stupendous rock that blocked the natural current of VANI'S love. Here too the sum-total of human calculations - the plans of the learned, aged SAKADA, and of the kindly yet domineering JIVAKA - has come to be little better than a zero. What these worthies never expected and did not certainly intend came to pass at last and this secondary love-plot, as the primary, clinches the original moral that man is cradled in the bosom of a higher Power which knows what is good for him better than he himself. Turning to JIVAKA and KUDILA, the gullible King and the scheming minister who form an inseparable pair and fit each other in the most admirable way, the reader will easily catch the ethical import. For the moral weaknesses displayed by both these high personages, it is defeat and disaster all along the line. Law is no respecter of persons. However much human law may fall short of this ideal, moral law is absolutely unmodifiable. It works itself out as inexorably as any of the physical laws to which Science attaches importance. The poet wants to convey the lesson that moral laws cannot be violated with impunity. The failure, sufferings and humiliations in store for these leading characters were all due to certain intellectual and ethical flaws in the character of JIVAKA and of KUDILA. JIVAKA displays, in all his actions, an intellectual somnolence, nay, even a moral weakness of the decisive type. KUDILA'S moral bankruptcy does not admit of any doubt. He has overdrawn his account in every possible way. Naturally enough, therefore, this admirable-fitting couple, like the upper and nether stones of a mill, have succeeded in grinding their fortunes to dust and