years went on. Sister Nivedita was the most fervent and convinced of Nationalists: the word continually on her lips was Nationality. She had unbounded faith in the reserve power of the Indian people, and her call to the younger generation was a ringing challenge to them to rise, not only to the height of the past, but to the demand of the future. Unsparing she could be, at times, in criticising the Indian character; but she never bated a jot of her belief in the certainty of its triumph, and it went hard with anyone, European or Asiatic, who offered any kind of insult or disparagement to the people of her adoption. The beginning of her work in India coincided with a stage of extraordinary deadness in public and intellectual life. But the change was already on the way, and she had the joy of seeing the growth of a new spirit, the rapid formation of new ideals, the dawn, as she believed, of a renascent national life and power. The influences that have gone to the shaping of the New India are still obscure; but this may be said with complete assurance, that among them all there has been no single factor that has surpassed, or equalled, the character and life and words of Margaret Noble.
There were no rules of exclusion in the House of the Sisters, provided only that the privileged
