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The Murder of Macnaghten.

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that ensued, if it might not be hoped that the relation of them would serve as a warning to the future. In the last extremity, Macnaghten consented to give a meeting to Akbar Khan to negociate terms. He was warned of intended treachery, but, like poor Burnes, he would not believe in it. Accompanied by his friends Lawrence, Trevor, Mackenzie, and a few horsemen, he rode out of the cantonments; but, remembering a beautiful Arab horse of his own which Akbar Khan had much coveted, he sent back for it that he might present it to the Sirdar.

"Near the banks of the river, midway between Mahmood Khan's fort and the bridge, about 600 yards from the cantonment, there were some small hillocks, on the further slope of which, where the snow was lying less thickly than on other parts, some horse-cloths were now spread by one of Akbar Khan's servants. The English officers and the Afghan Sirdars had exchanged salutations and conversed for a little while on horseback. The Arab horse, with which Mackenzie had returned, had been presented to Akbar Khan, who received it with many expressions of thanks, and spoke also with gratitude of the gift of the pistols which he had received on the preceding day. It was now proposed that they should dismount. The whole party accordingly repaired to the hill-side. Macnaghten stretched himself at full length on the bank; Trevor and Mackenzie, burdened with presentiments of evil, seated themselves beside him. Lawrence stood behind his chief until urged by one of the Khans to seat himself, when he knelt down on one knee, in the attitude of a man ready for immediate action. A question from Akbar Khan, who sat beside Macnaghten, opened the business of the conference. He abruptly asked the Envoy if he were ready to carry out the proposals of the preceding evening? Why not?' asked Macnaghten. The Afghans were by this time gathering around in numbers, which excited both the surprise and the suspicion of Lawrence and Mackenzie, who said, that if the conference was to be a secret one, the intruders ought to be removed. With a movement of doubtful sincerity some of the chiefs then lashed out with their whips at the closing circle; but Akbar Khan said that their presence was of no consequence, as they

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Iwere all in the secret with him.

"Scarcely were the words uttered, when the Envoy and his companions were violently seized from behind. The movement was sudden and surprising. There was a scene of terrible confusion, which no one can distinctly describe. The officers of the Envoy's staff were dragged away, and compelled each to mount a horse ridden by an Afghan chief. Soon were they running the gauntlet through a crowd of Ghazees, who struck out at them as they passed. Trevor unfortunately slipped from his insecure seat behind Dost Mahomed Khan, and was cut to pieces on the spot. Lawrence and Mackenzie, more fortunate, reached Mahmood Khan's fort alive.

"In the meanwhile, the Envoy himself was struggling desperately on the ground with Akbar Khan. The look of wondering horror that

sat upon his upturned face will not be forgotten by those who saw it to their dying days. The only words he was heard to utter were, Az barae Khoda,' (For God's sake.) They were, perhaps, the last words spoken by one of the bravest gentlemen that ever fell a sacrifice to his erring faith in others. He had struggled from the first manfully against his doom, and now these last manful struggles cost the poor chief his life. Exasperated past all control by the resistance of his victim, whom he designed only to seize, Akbar Khan drew a pistol from his girdle-one of those pistols for the gift of which only a little while before he had profusely thanked the Envoy-and shot Macnaghten through the body. Whether the wretched man died on the spot-or whether he was slain by the infuriated Ghazees, who now pressed eagerly forward, is not very clearly known-but these miserable fanatics flung themselves upon the prostrate body of the English gentleman, and hacked it to pieces with their knives."

It is almost incredible that this treacherous and bloody deed, committed in the open day-light, should have been permitted to pass, not only unrevenged, but without even an attempt to revenge it. The same had happened in the case of Burnes. General Elphinstone was paralyzed by worse disabilities than rheumatic gout.

Then came the retreat-the crowning retribution of all. It is impossible to convey any adequate impression of the narrative Mr. Kaye has collected, for the first time, into a complete whole of these dreadful scenes. After sixty-five days of such humiliation as had never before been borne by a British force, they prepared to consummate the work of self-abasement by abandoning their position, and "leaving the trophies of war in the hands of an insolent enemy." The snow was deep upon the ground, the elements as well as man were against them, and, to aggravate their misfortunes, the rush of camp-followers that overwhelmed the soldiery, prevented the possibility of maintaining anything like military order.

"Not a mile of the distance had been accomplished before it was seen how heavily this curse of camp-followers sate upon the doomed army. It was vain to attempt to manage this mighty mass of lawless and suffering humanity. On they went, struggling through the snow -making scant progress in their confusion and bewilderment— scarcely knowing whether they were escaping, or whether they were rushing on to, death."

When they had advanced farther in their dismal route, attacked by the enemy who harassed them at every step, these camp-followers, clustering about the fighting men, literally paralyzed their movements. They hoped to shake off the incubus by moving on lightly under cover of the night-but in vain.

"It was a bright frosty night. The snow was lying only par

Ignominious Failure of the War.

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tially on the ground. For some miles they proceeded unmolested. But when, at Seh-Baba, the enemy again opened a fire upon their rear, the camp-followers rushed to the front; and when firing was heard a-head of the column, again fell back on the rear. Thus surging backwards and forwards—the ebb and flow of a great tide of people these miserable camp-followers, in the wildness of their fear, overwhelmed the handful of soldiers who were still able and willing to show a front to the enemy, blocked up the road, and presented to the eyes of the Afghan marksmen a dark mass of humanity, which could not escape their fire even under cover of the night."

The tragedies of the Koord-Caubul, and the Jugdulluck passes, are yet distinctly remembered by all readers of these campaigns. We hasten to the sequel. Perishing by the worst varieties of death, the whole army melted away, until at last out of a total multitude of 16,500 human beings, 4500 of whom were fighting men, but one individual, Dr. Brydon, escaped alive to tell the tale of slaughter to his fellow-countrymen at Jellalabad.

At Jellalabad and Candahar, the miserable enterprise had fared somewhat better. Still it was a disgraceful failure; and when Lord Auckland, who remained in office long enough to witness the total frustration of his magnificent project, staggering and reeling under the ruin he had so rashly invoked, relinquished the government of India into the hands of Lord Ellenborough, we can readily believe that it was the only moment of respite he had felt from the blast of the first trumpet to the close of his Vice-royalty.

In the history of the world there never was a great undertaking in which the hand of Providence punishing the injustice of a powerful state was so visible. Nor did the injustice fall upon Afghanistan alone. It was an injustice, most grievous and oppressive, to ourselves. The attempt to sustain Shah Soojah on the throne had drained the resources of the East India Company to the dregs. The people of Hindoostan suffered as deeply as the people of Afghanistan. They not only expended vast treasures, but offered up the flower of their troops, and some of the bravest and most accomplished men, and best blood they possessed, as sacrifices to a policy which was vainly attempted to be forced upon an independent nation. And in the end, we had the satisfaction of seeing the monarch we had restored, entering into an alliance with the race we had ousted to make way for him, and by whom, upon the very first occasion of his shewing himself among them, he was afterwards murdered, stripped of his jewels, and cast into a ditch.

The narrative of these ruinous campaigns is followed up by a

VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI.

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detailed account of the retributive operations of Pollock and Nott, terminating with the restoration of Dost Mahomed, and the declaration by Lord Ellenborough, on the 1st October 1842, of the utter failure of the policy enunciated by Lord Auckland on the 1st October 1838. And thus, after an expenditure of thousands of lives, and millions of money, we sent back the man we had forcibly removed, with the bitter memory of his wrongs upon him to make him our enemy, when we might have made him our friend, in the first instance, at very little cost of money, and none at all of life; and thus one Governor-General publicly reversed the policy of his predecessor, writing his proclamation, by a singular and signal coincidence, in the same room at Simlah from which the manifesto of the war had been issued exactly four years before!

The work to which we are indebted for a comprehensive chronicle of this war, is a valuable contribution to Indian history. The details are full, accurate, and impartial; and are entitled to additional confidence from the authentic and hitherto unexplored sources drawn upon in the relation of them. Mr. Kaye belongs to no party, and the fearlessness with which he traces the policy of the Government and the conduct of individuals, exhibits an independence of all influences highly creditable to his integrity and his courage. The period embraced in this war was peculiarly open to unconscious predilections. Of the two Governors-General who presided over the affairs of India during the occupation of Afghanistan, one was a Whig and the other was a Tory; but it is impossible from the perusal of these volumes to determine with which party Mr. Kaye's political sympathies are bound up.

It is written with ability and sound judgment, developing an intimate acquaintance with the interior of the country and the life of the people. Its appearance at this moment is peculiarly opportune. Herat is again threatened by rival claims and Persian intrigues; while, if the German journals may be relied upon, we are menaced by a renewal of Russian interference in that quarter. Central Asia is likely to become once more the scene of dynastic revolutions and foreign invasion, in which Dost Mahomed will take a prominent part, having already, it is said, placed his son Hydu Khan (who is strengthened in his title to the throne of Herat by his marriage with the widow of his brother Akbar Khan, a daughter of Yar Mahomed) at the head of a large army, for the purpose of descending upon Herat by the route of Balk. If these rumours be well founded, and there is no reason to doubt them, Mr. Kaye's history will be a horn-book for our political and military servants in that distracted region.

Translations from the Classics: Eschylus.

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ART. IX.-1. The Tragedies of Eschylus. Literally translated by THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford. London, 1849.

2. The Lyrical Dramas of Eschylus, from the Greek. Translated into English Verse by JOHN STUART BLACKIE, Professor of Latin Literature in Marischal College, Aberdeen. 2 vols. London, 1850.

THAT every civilized modern nation ought to possess a complete series of translations of all the Greek and Latin Classics, is an assertion that will be universally admitted. Whether the English language may not already be in possession of something professedly equivalent to such a complete series of translations, our knowledge of what has been done in this department since the commencement of our literature, does not permit us to affirm; we can unhesitatingly say, however, that no such series of translations from the classical writers as ought to exist in the English language, does exist in it. A large proportion of what our literary men and scholars have done in this way has been irrecoverably vitiated by the false method according to which it was done -that method, namely, of loose and elegant paraphrase, in lieu of accurate and literal rendering, which was so prevalent among English translators during the whole of the last and the early part of the present century, and of which Pope's version of the Iliad is the most splendid example. All translations executed according to this method are, we hold, to be simply discardedto be treated as if, in their character as translations, they did not exist. They may be read for their independent merits, if people choose; but they ought not to be counted in any catalogue that may be drawn up to exhibit what amount of Greek and Roman literature has been really translated into English. And were this subtraction made from the list of our professed translations from the Classics-were no translations counted but those executed, however imperfectly, on right principles-we are convinced that the blank would be very large.

Now, this blank ought, most decidedly, to be filled up; and that as soon as possible. As far as one could hope, by any declaration beforehand of what is desirable, to determine the labours of our literary practitioners in a given direction, one would be disposed to say to them, "Give us, as soon as possible, a good and complete series of translations of the classic masterpieces; we will dispense with as much else as may be necessary, till you have provided us with that." It is to our literary practitioners, we say, that we would address this demand; for this is

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