go away out of their own territories, the chances are a hundred to one that some younger brother, or fifteenth cousin, or irritated minister, will take advantage of their absence, and start up in their place; so that when a sovereign makes a speculative excursion of this kind, he may consider himself the most fortunate of men if he do not find his throne occupied on his return.

It was under the operation of some apprehension of this kind that Zemaun Shah, the then monarch of the Douranee, kept "continually" advancing upon the frontier, and as "continually" marching back again in a great fright to his Balla Hissar at Caubul. His movements were calculated to awaken curiosity and wonder, rather than to produce alarm, wherever the actual extent of his resources were known: but the people of British India were so ill-informed respecting him and his dominions, that when a rumour came floating into the Council Chamber of Calcutta, announcing the threatened descent of this fluctuating Sovereign upon Hindostan, we cannot be much surprised to find that it created a strong sensation, which penetrated even to the Governor-General himself. The danger was, of course, magnified by ignorance of the real poverty of a ruler, who, if he could have raised the enormous levies with which he was accredited by report, must have immediately disbanded them again from want of money to pay them. Had they been aware that his menaced invasion bore a close resemblance to the celebrated exploit of the French king and his numerous followers up and down a certain historical hill, they would have given themselves very little trouble at Calcutta about the flourishes of his chivalry. But the fact of an invasion from that quarter was one of the most probable things in the world. It was the centre of a movement and a hope to which the aspirations of every tribe and race in the east were directed. The re-establishment of Islamism, and the rescue of Hindostan from the hands of the Franks, were objects for the accomplishment of which all eyes were turned to Canbul, and all hands were ready to lend their aid. "Every Mahomedan," said Lord Wellesley, speaking of the threatened expedition, "even in the remotest regions of the Deccan, waited with anxious expectation for the advance of the champion of Islam." The most sagacious statesmen of the day recognised the likelihood of such an attempt; and the reputed enthusiasm of Zemaun Shah, for the recovery of the ancient land of the faithful, gave a strong colouring of feasibility to the rumours which, day after day, supplied fresh speculations for the political circles of Calcutta. But his Majesty's phantom appearances and disappearances at various points, created so many groundless alarms that the English grew tired of the cry of "wolf!" His name, and the vague terrors associated with it, were at last very nearly

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forgotten; indeed, the whole empire of the Douranee must have sunk into total oblivion, if sundry ominous reports of French intrigues in Central Asia had not suddenly revived an interest in its existence, and given an importance to its affairs which they could not otherwise by any possibility have acquired.

ran.

The French were said to be carrying on secret plots in Persia, with a view to the ultimate subversion of our power in the East; and as Persia was the grand frontier and high road to India in that direction, these rumours no sooner reached us in an authentic shape, than we resolved to send a mission to the Court of TeheThe agitation produced by the apprehension of a French demonstration on the borders of our Oriental empire, and the treaty negociated by Captain afterwards Sir John Malcolm, with the Persian monarch, by the provisions of which the French were literally prohibited from entering the country upon any pretext whatever, are matters of history familiar to all readers. But an allusion to them is indispensable to the completeness of the narrative. Having thus secured ourselves against the only real danger that threatened us, a season of indifference succeeded. The internal convulsions of Central Asia went on as usual-the Douranee Empire continued to cultivate insatiable domestic feuds, and to threaten its neighbours with flying hostilities; but from the date of the Malcolm treaty we took no further notice of these exterior races. Prince after prince was deposed, imprisoned, or put to death. It was no affair of ours. Even the formidable Zemaun Shah, while he was actually advancing on one of his chimerical invasions of Hindostan, was stopped short by the rebellion of his brother Mahmoud, ignominiously beaten, cast into prison, and for ever incapacitated from reigning, by having his eyes punctured and blinded by a lancet. Mahmoud in his turn was driven out by a younger brother, Shah Soojah; but these fluctuations in the royal drama exercised no disturbing influence over our repose. So long as we kept the French off the Persian border, and maintained our amicable relations with the Court of Teheran, the population of Afghanistan might play at soldiers in any fashion they pleased. We had other business to attend to. change had passed over our whole system of policy. We no longer displayed the bravery of our wealth to dazzle the imagination or bribe the friendship of the native powers; we no longer stepped in amongst them as guardian or arbitrator. A spirit of the strictest economy pervaded our internal regulations, and our new external policy was that of rigid non-interference. We were to govern India by its own resources alone, at a time when these resources were reduced to the lowest ebb, and to abstain from all demonstration of activity on our frontiers, while we were pursuing measures of retrenchment that betrayed our

weakness within. Nor was the inexpediency of this change the only grave objection against it. Coming suddenly after the brilliant administration of the Marquis Wellesley, its effects were the more keenly felt, and its poverty the more glaringly exhibited. That such a system could not have been long sustained without endangering the whole framework of our Indian administration soon became sufficiently obvious; and even if the disaffection that it engendered in the army, and the death of Lord Cornwallis, had not brought it to a close, the new and portentous events that were looming upon us from the west must have rendered its abandonment inevitable.

Russia was ravaging Persia; and the Persian monarch, in the last emergency, had applied to France for assistance-to that very France who not very long before was not to be allowed to plant her foot on Persian ground. And to increase the perils of this situation, Napoleon and Alexander were just about this time meeting in a raft at Tilsit to parcel out the world between them. The policy of Persia in seeking the help of France at this juncture was evident, and not a moment was to be lost in the effort to re-establish an influence in the Court of Teheran, or, in the event of failure, to stir up into hostility the intermediate races that lay upon our border. The domestic system was given up all at once. A voice had gone abroad, from one end of India to the other, to warn us that Russia was striding over the adjacent provinces, and that nothing short of a miracle could save us from impending destruction. The rapidity of our action under the pressure of these terrible omens was equal to the occasion. We despatched missions to every quarter from which we could draw an advantage, or neutralize a danger to the Afghans, to the Ameers of Sindh, to Teheran, and to the Sikhs, "a strange new race of men," as Mr. Kaye calls them, who, in the interval that had elapsed, since our attention had last been attracted to that neighbourhood, had "erected a formidable power on the banks of the Sutlej by the mutilation of the Douranee Empire." Our main object was to wean Persia from the French alliance, and to recover our influence in that country; failing in that, it was our design to set up Afghanistan and Sindh as barriers against encroachments from the west, and to strengthen our frontier still more directly, by uniting the Sikhs with us against the French and Persian confederacy. If we have made these projects intelligible, the reader has now the whole state of things as in a map before him up to 1808.

The missions were successful, without a single exception. An extraordinary embarrassment hung over the negociations with Persia, arising from a circumstance unprecedented in the history of diplomacy—that of two ambassadors, with different powers,

and what was still worse, with different views, being accredited at once from the same government. But a treaty was executed in spite of this singular stumbling-block. The reverses of Napoleon in the Peninsula greatly facilitated the progress of our envoys; and even the Sikhs, at first discourteous and almost contemptuous, entered into a friendly alliance with us on our own terms. In the treaties with Sindh and Caubul, special provision was made for the contingency of a French invasion; but the caution was unnecessary, for while these very instruments were being drawn up, all doubts and fears about France were extinguished in the victories of Wellington.

In the meantime the interior of the Douranee Empire was torn by distractions, out of the fury of which rose Dost Mahomed to supreme power. The life of this man forms a remarkable episode in Indian history, and is strikingly characteristic of the accidents that conduct to eminence amongst Oriental nations, and of the qualities most available for taking advantage of them. The English reader should be apprised, as a key to Dost Mahomed's career, that the Douranee population is mainly divided into two principal clans or tribes-the Populzyes and the Barukzyes. The Suddozye, or Royal race, of which the poor blind Zemaun Shah and his insurgent brothers were members, and therefore legitimately entitled in their illegitimate way to ascend the throne, was a branch of the former. These are hard names to read and remember; but he who would understand Indian history must make up his mind to difficulties of this kind. One of the most powerful chiefs, or Sirdars, of the Barukzye tribe, was Futteh Khan, who, after having served and betrayed several masters, occupied at this period the influential post of Wuzeer. With this introduction, the reader will be prepared for what follows:

"Among the twenty brothers of Futteh Khan was one many years his junior, whose infancy was wholly disregarded by the great Barukzye Sirdar. The son of a woman of the Kuzzilbash tribe, looked down upon by the high-bred Douranee ladies of his father's household, the boy had begun life in the degrading office of a sweeper at the sacred cenotaph of Lamech. Permitted, at a later period, to hold a menial office about the person of the powerful Wuzeer, he served the great man with water, or bore his pipe; was very zealous in his ministrations; kept long and painful vigils; saw everything, heard everything in silence; bided his time patiently, and when the hour came, trod the stage of active life as no irresolute novice. A stripling of fourteen, in the crowded streets of Peshawur, in broad day, as the buyers and the sellers thronged the thoroughfares of the city, he slew one of the enemies of Futteh Khan, and galloped home to report the achievement to the Wuzeer. From that time his rise was rapid. The

neglected younger brother of Futteh Khan became the favourite of the powerful chief, and following the fortunes of the warlike minister, soon took his place among the chivalry of the Douranee Empire.

"The name of this young warrior was Dost Mahomed Khan. Nature seems to have designed him for a hero of the true Afghan stamp and character. Of a graceful person, a prepossessing countenance, a bold frank manner, he was outwardly endowed with all those gifts which most inspire confidence and attract affection; whilst undoubted courage, enterprise, activity, somewhat of the recklessness and unscrupulousness of his race, combined with a more than common measure of intelligence and sagacity, gave him a command over his fellows and a mastery over circumstances, which raised him at length to the chief seat in the empire. His youth was stained with many crimes, which he lived to deplore. It is the glory of Dost Mahomed that in the vigour of his years he looked back with contrition upon the excesses of his early life, and lived down many of the besetting infirmities which had overshadowed the dawn of his career. The waste of a deserted childhood and the deficiencies of a neglected education he struggled manfully to remedy and repair. At the zenith of his reputation there was not, perhaps, in all Central Asia a chief so remarkable for the exercise of self-discipline and self-control; but he emerged out of a cloudy morn of vice, and sunk into a gloomy night of folly."

We give this sketch in full, because Dost Mahomed was one of the chief actors in the war that followed, and because our author evidently holds his character in the highest estimation. That Dost Mahomed is well entitled to the honourable vindication he has received at the hands of Mr. Kaye, we entirely believe; judging from the whole tenor of his conduct, so long as it was possible for him to propitiate or secure the British alliance, and also from the regard with which he inspired Sir Alexander Burnes, whose residence at Caubul, under circumstances in the last degree unpropitious for the development of favourable impressions on either side, afforded him the amplest opportunities of studying his temper and disposition. When we find Burnes always ready to proclaim his reliance on Mahomed's integrity, and congratulating himself, at the opening of the war, that he was to be sent in another direction, and that "Dost Mahomed was to be ousted by another hand than his," we may be assured that the Douranee usurper deserved nobler treatment and a better fate than he received. But we are anticipating the course of

events.

We need not trace the steps by which Dost Mahomed rose upon the ruins of his brother Futteh Khan, and finally expelled Shah Soojah from his throne. Such wonderful transitions are com-mon slides in the magic lantern of the East. But in this case there was an element that distinguished the expulsion and usurpation