more successfully convey to us the impression that his people are alive
and real? Is it when he is supposed to be drawing men from the life,
or is it when he has set free his imagination to call up the People of
the Hills or the folk in the Jungle?

The grain of Mr Kipling's work is the finer, his vision is more
confident and clear, the further he gets from the world immediately
about him. Already we have seen how happily in India he left behind
his impression of the alert tourist, his experience of the mess-room
and bazaar, to enshrine in his fairy tale of _Kim_ the faith and
simplicity of two of the children of the world--each, the old and the
young, a child after his own fashion. _Kim_ is Mr Kipling's escape
from the India which is traversed by the railway and served by the
"Pioneer." It is the escape of Dan and Una into the Kingdom of Puck,
and the escape of Mowgli into the Jungle. It is the escape, finally,
of Mr Kipling's genius into the region where it most freely breathes.

We have noted that Kim is one of the Indian doors by which we enter;
but there is a more open door in the first story of _The Second Jungle
Book_. It is the best of all Mr Kipling's stories, just as the _Jungle
Books_ are the best of all his books. It concerns the Indian, Purun
Bhagat.

He was learned, supple, and deeply intimate in the affairs of the
world. He had shared the counsels of princes; he had been received
with honour in the clubs and societies of Europe. He was, to all
appearances, a polite blend of all the talents of East and West. Then
suddenly Purun Bhagat disappeared. All India understood; but of all
Western people only Mr Kipling was able to follow where he walked as a
holy man and a beggar into the hills. There he became St Francis of