If any are inclined to question Lord Palmerston's judgment in the selection of an individual for the Viceroyship of Ireland, the appointment of the Earl of Carlisle to that post would be a triumphant reply. Difficult to fill, that lord-lieutenancy required peculiar qualifications to deal with those factions, the differences of which have existed so long that they have almost become proverbial. They have even led to the question, by some little disposed to examine into causes and effects, whether Ireland in its remoter corners had yet become completely civilised? The kindness, engaging manners, and frankness of Lord Carlisle, were never more required nor better exhibited than in his late high office. He was born to be esteemed, not by those lofty displays of talent which are so captivating to the multitude, but by those equable virtues to which the gates of heaven, to quote a distinguished writer, are flung more widely open than to those which merely dazzle the world by showy achievement.

In the career of Lord Carlisle, there were points which may be recalled when he sat in the House of Commons which marked his peculiar character, but not one which subjected him to censure. He obtained high credit as Lord Morpeth, when in the Lower House, by his speeches, but much more by his bearing and that temperament which distinguished him to the last, and made him in party conflicts respected on all sides. Perhaps his nature was less excitable than that of most other men. He had more of kindness than other political partisans, and he seemed unable, if he would, to divest himself of that virtue. The respect felt for him was ever personal rather than political. When Lord Morpeth, defeated years ago in Yorkshire, he made a resolve not again to enter the House of Commons; but he repented of his resolution, the only over-hasty thing, perhaps, that he ever did in public life. The Tory party was victorious, and its triumph seemed likely to be permanent. Lord Morpeth had not at the moment considered that just principles, political or otherwise, cannot remain long in abeyance. The spirit of the age was not to be overcome, any more than his own conviction of his error in his hasty resolution had been. He wisely retraced his steps. Yet his political opponents found it difficult to censure the politician when the man crossed their way. Even the affected horror of the chiefs of the party now extinct, or only seen amid its last struggles, palsied and expiring, when his lordship appeared, in his earnestness and sincerity, to uphold principles that the narrow minds of the leaders of the hour, inheriting from the painful reign of George III. all its baleful colouring, deemed next to Holy Writ in sanctity—even that horror did not disturb his own course, based as it was upon solid truths. The public regarded his open-heartedness with no small degree of affection, and he never deceived it.

He was ever the agent of his own sincere convictions. There was no miserable, cloudy varnish flung over his labours. He was always lucid and clear. He did not court popularity, and, as a natural consequence, it courted him. He did not care about policy where reason and justice should rule. Perhaps he did not always reflect that an ideality is not actively practicable in all cases, and that to contend against the habits and even weaknesses of our nature is not generally successful from admitted fallibility in its best condition. Things must be taken as they are, and we must sympathise with humanity. No one appeared more in the habit of it than his lordship. For his verbal integrity hes ever held in high respect.

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No one relied more on the fact, that beyond all sentiment of rank, or reflection of a personal nature, as a consequence derived from intellectual acquirement, he was before all a man. "Homo sum; humani nihil à me alienum puto. He felt this, and, in consequence, exhibited none of those supercilious airs which men of rank and fortune often exhibit: he was above them, and could, relying upon his higher claim, regard his station only as an ornament. There was no affectation here. He felt as he acted; free, courteous, gentlemanly in manner, he was so in his mode of thinking. There is, in this respect, a concinnity, a fitness, a dovetailing, if the simile may be used, between the mode of thinking and acting, which cannot be shown but where it is felt.

He

After his absence for several years from the House of Commons, to which he returned in 1846, during which time he visited the United States, he had still further improved on his appearance in parliament. His arguments were to the purpose, and were forcibly urged home. He had become at his age, then, all he ever could be as a public man. spoke in the House sometimes in language a little high-flown, but always in sentiment generous, not soft in tone, and somewhat monotonous, but always earnest the great charm of an orator who would move the heart. His action was somewhat stiff, yet not unpleasant, and at times he suffered his audience to perceive that he was artificial and studied, rather than like himself in private life, all nature. Amidst its ambitiousness of style, and consequently a little aside the mark, he swayed his auditory almost wholly, because he carried its feelings captive. All was kindly and generous with him; he was all heart, and such men are very rare in our day. He had no acrimony even for a decided foe, who must have relaxed before his sympathies. England could just now have spared a better man: Lord Carlisle carried away her affections. How Ireland has felt, we cannot judge. A new image is set up for the idolatry of Dublin fashion, and no doubt will soon attract the island worship. Lord Carlisle will pass away there, but not so in England. It remains for that singular people to characterise the deceased nobleman according to their own view. The view of England is already recorded regarding him, and will be inerasable.

These few lines must be regarded only as the mere register of a deplorable loss. It would require much space and time to treat the character of Lord Carlisle as it merits to be treated. We know of no loss more lamentable, if we refer to the office his lordship filled so long and so well. We were never but once in his lordship's society, but the impress he left was that of amiability and exceeding candour, and, contrary to his oratory, that remarkable simplicity which always accompanies a pure and elevated mind-elevated in the possession of many of the choicest but simple virtues that accompany frail mortality.

"I am a man, and cannot be indifferent to the interests of humanity." This is the great key to oratorical effect. It is the secret of the success of the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon. His sermons are nothing in the closet. The life of Franklin, in mentioning Whitfield, details an anecdote to the same effect. Earnestness is everything.

pirivay
ution.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

CENTRAL ASIA.*

ONE of the primeval seats of the human race, and once the centre of power, grandeur, and civilisation, there are in the present day no regions on the face of the earth that are in a more lamentable social condition than those of Central Asia. That this state of things should so long continue is in no small degree owing to the same international jealousies which uphold a semi-barbarous Muhammadan power within Europe itself. The Turkomans pointed out sea-marks to Vámbéry on the Caspian which they said had been placed there by the "Inghiliz" to mark the limits of the Russian waters, the other side belonging to the Turkomans, "whom the 'Inghiliz' would always protect against the attacks of the Russians." There was naturally no foundation for the statement, but it shows what is the prevalent idea in the country; and so they go on with predatory raids, slave hunts, and murderous assaults on travellers and caravans, with an impunity which is only now and then repudiated by the equally cruel and barbarous local governments.

It is not a very pleasant version of matters that political exigencies should even in an indirect manner entail such a vast amount of moral responsibility, and it becomes still more disagreeable when it is considered that these exigencies have possibly no basis whatsoever.

Politically, the mistake lies, in respect to Turkey, in always taking it for granted that, in case of Christianity supplanting the Crescent, Russia must necessarily be in the ascendant. In respect to Central Asia, the mistake is that Christianity, or civilisation, being in the ascendant, our empire in India would be thereby jeopardised. Geographers are all at utter variance with politicians upon this latter point. Sir H. Rawlinson, Sir R. I. Murchison, Mr. Crawford, and others, all agreed, when discussing the results of Vámbéry's explorations, that the real rivalry between us and Russia in Central Asia is in commerce, and not in politics. It is a sort of law of nature, admitted as such by the late Sir Robert Peel, and shown by our own position in India and New Zealand, by that of the French in Algeria, and of the Russians in Central Asia, that, when civilisation impinges on barbarism, the latter must give way. The Russians were, in Vámbéry's time (1863), at Kaleh (castle) Rehim, on the Jaxartes; they are at the present moment masters of Kho

* Travels in Central Asia: being the Account of a Journey from Teheran across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand; performed in the year 1863. By Arminius Vámbéry, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Pesth, by whom he was sent on this Scientific Mission. John Murray.

Feb.-VOL. CXXIIIX. NO. DXXX.

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kand. Nor do we grieve at these extensions of their frontiers; on the contrary, we are inclined to think, and so, we opine, will any one who will be at the trouble of perusing the following account of Vámbéry's experiences, or who are acquainted with the previous writings of Khanikoff, Lehmann, Wolf, Abbott, and others, that, in the words of a sound philosopher, "both nations, by advancing their frontier and approximating to each other, only tend to civilise barbarous regions, and to bring savage nations under a regular system of government.”

The actual condition of these most miserable countries is exemplified the moment the frontiers are crossed. Vámbéry, disguised as a dervish, and having, therefore, advantages which no other European traveller ever had of seeing the interior life of the people, crossed the Caspian at its extreme south-east corner, from Kara-tepe (Black Hill) to Gomush-tepe (Silver Hill), an old Macedonian site, and which has probably received its name from the silver coins found there. On his way he passed Ashurada, a Russian station, where were three Russian men-of-war, especially employed in preventing piracy, and yet, notwithstanding which, we are told that piratical hordes of Turkomans still hide their vessels along the coast, whence, extending their expeditions to a distance of a few leagues into the interior, they return to the shore, dragging with them Persian, and even sometimes Russian, slaves. All are fish, indeed, that fall in their net, and an undisguised or unaccredited Englishman or Frenchman would experience the same fate.

"Let us," says Vámbéry, "only picture to ourselves the feelings of a Persian, even admitting that he is the poorest of his race, who is surprised by a night attack, hurried away from his family, and brought hither (to Gomush-tepe) a prisoner, and often wounded. He has to exchange his dress for old Turkoman rags that only scantily cover parts of the body, and is heavily laden with chains that gall his ankles, and occasion him great and unceasing pain every step he takes; he is forced upon the poorest diet to linger the first days, often weeks, of his captivity. That he may make no attempt at flight, he has also during the night a karabogra (iron ring) attached to his neck and fastened to a peg, so that the rattle betrays even his slightest movements. No other termination to his sufferings than the payment of a ransom by his friends; and failing this, he is liable to be sold, and perhaps hurried off to Khiva and Bokhara!

"To the rattle of those chains I could never habituate my ears; it is heard in the tent of every Turkoman who has any pretensions to respectability' or position. Even our friend Khandjan had two slaves, lads, only in their eighteenth and twentieth year; and to behold these unfortunates, in the bloom of their youth, in fetters, made me feel inde-> scribable emotion, repeated every day. In addition, I was forced to listen in silence to the abuse and curses with which these poor wretches were loaded. The smallest demonstration of compassion would have awakened suspicions, as, on account of my knowledge of Persian, I was most frequently addressed by them. The youngest of our domestic slaves, a handsome black-haired Irani, begged of me to be so good as to write a letter for him to his relatives, praying them, for God's sake, to sell sheep and house in order to ransom him, which letter I accordingly wrote. Upon one occasion I thought, without being perceived, I might give him

a cup of tea, but unluckily, at the moment when he extended his hand to receive it, some one entered the tent. I pretended to be only beckoning to him, and, instead of presenting him the tea, I felt constrained to give him a few slight blows. During my stay in Gomush-tepe no night passed without a shot echoing from the sea-shore to announce the arrival of some piratical vessel laden with booty. The next morning I went to demand from the heroes the tithes due to the dervishes, or rather, let me say, to behold the poor Persians in the first moments of their misfortune. My heart bled at the horrid sight; and so I had to harden myself to these most striking contrasts of virtue and vice, of humanity and tyranny, of scrupulous honesty and the very scum of knavery."

It is curious to read with what facility these abductions of living beings are effected by the karaktchi, as the professional kidnappers are called. On one occasion we are told of a karaktchi who had alone, on foot, not only made three Persians prisoners, but had also, by himself, driven them before him into captivity for a distance of eight miles. On another occasion the karaktchi sailed in a boat to a Persian village under the pretence of purchasing a cargo. The bargain was soon made; and scarcely had the unsuspicious Persians appeared with their goods upon the seashore than they were seized, bound hand and foot, buried up to their necks in their own wheat, and forcibly carried off to Gomush-tepe. One would think that experience would make them a little more cautious. The Russians interfered on this occasion, and the Turkomans were obliged to give hostages for the future, but the Persians remained in chains.

At Etrek, the next place they came to, it was the same thing over again. They passed few tents without seeing two or three Persians in them heavily laden with chains. Among them was an unfortunate Russian, one of the sailors kidnapped from Ashurada; the other had died in captivity. The very name of Etrek, which is given both to a river and to the inhabited district in its vicinity, is, we are told, a word of terror and a curse for the unfortunate inhabitants of Mazanderan and Taberistan. Even in Gomush-tepe," says Mr. Vámbéry, "these cruel scenes were loathsome to me: judge, then, how my feelings must have been revolted when I learnt to regard the last-named place as the extreme of humanity and civilisation !"

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Beyond Etrek the desert began, and on its borders were a tribe of robbers called Kem, who plundered on their own account, and were in hostility with the other tribes around. The goat-skins were filled here with the last sweet water that they would meet with, until after twenty days' journey they should refresh themselves on the banks of the Oxus, and the caravan took a northerly direction, without the slightest trace of a path indicated by foot of camel or hoof of other animal. The author had, it is to be observed at the outset, as all along, much to suffer from the suspicions attaching to his physiognomy and general appearance, but, versed as he was in the language of the Koran and the religious sayings and practices of the Sunnis, he always triumphed over these obstacles. The positions he was placed in were, however, constantly demanding a considerable amount of ingenuity and resolution on his part. He did not, however, dare to take a note, nor could he ask the name of a place, village, ruin, rivulet, hill, or plain, for in his character of a dervish he was pre