Chapter XVII · (continued 2)

"He denies the three ages of the Buddhists: the wholly happy; the happy mixed with misery, and the miserable tinged with happiness,—the present. The Zoroastrians had four, each of 3000 years. In the first, Hormuzd, the good-god, ruled alone; then Ahriman, the bad-god, began to work subserviently; in the third both ruled equally; and in the last, now current, Ahriman has gained the day.

"Against the popular idea that man has caused the misery of this world, he cites the ages, when the Old Red Sandstone bred gigantic cannibal fishes; when the Oolites produced the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when the monsters of the Eocene and Miocene periods shook the ground with their ponderous tread. And the world of waters is still a hideous scene of cruelty, carnage, and destruction.

"He declares Conscience to be a geographical and chronological accident. Thus he answers the modern philosopher whose soul was overwhelmed by the marvel and the awe of two things, 'the starry heaven above and the moral law within.' He makes the latter sense a development of the gregarious and social instincts; and so travellers have observed that the moral is the last step in mental progress. His Moors are the savage Dankali and other negroid tribes, who offer a cup of milk with one hand and stab with the other. He translates literally the Indian word Hâthî (an elephant), the animal with the Hâth (hand, or trunk). Finally he alludes to the age of active volcanoes, the present, which is merely temporary, the shifting of the Pole, and the spectacle to be seen from Mushtari, or the planet Jupiter.

"The Hâjî again asks the old, old question, What is Truth? And he answers himself, after the fashion of the wise Emperor of China, 'Truth hath not an unchanging name.' A modern English writer says: 'I have long been convinced by the experience of my life, as a pioneer of various heterodoxies which are rapidly becoming orthodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or given in the affections and intuitions; and that discussion and injury do little more than feed temperament.' Our poet seems to mean that the Perceptions, when they perceive truly, convey objective truth, which is universal; whereas the Reflectives and the Sentiments, the working of the moral region, or the middle lobe of the phrenologists, supplies only subjective truth, personal and individual. Thus to one man the axiom, Opes irritamenta malorum, represents a distinct fact; while another holds wealth to be an incentive for good. Evidently both are right, according to their lights.

"Hâjî Abdû cites Plato and Aristotle, as usual with Eastern songsters, who delight in Mantik (logic). Here he appears to mean that a false proposition is as real a proposition as one that is true. 'Faith moves mountains' and 'Manet immota fides' are evidently quotations. He derides the teaching of the 'First Council of the Vatican' (cap. v.), 'all the faithful are little children listening to the voice of St. Peter,' who is the 'Prince of the Apostles.' He glances at the fancy of certain modern physicists, 'devotion is a definite molecular change in the convolution of grey pulp.' He notices with contumely the riddle of which Milton speaks so glibly, where the Dialoguists,

'—reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.'

"In opposition to the orthodox Mohammedan tenets which make Man's soul his percipient Ego, an entity, a unity, the Soofi considers it a fancy, opposed to body, which is a fact; at most a state of things, not a thing; a consensus of faculties whereof our frames are but the phenomena. This is not contrary to Genesitic legend. The Hebrew Ruach and Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or spirit, simply signify wind or breath, the outward and visible sign of life. Their later schools are even more explicit: 'For that which befalls man befalls beasts; as the one dies, so does the other; they have all one death; all go unto one place' (Eccles. iii. 19). But the modern soul, a nothing, a string of negations, a negative in chief, is thus described in the Mahâbhârat: 'It is indivisible, inconceivable, inconceptible: it is eternal, universal, permanent, immovable: it is invisible and unalterable.' Hence the modern spiritualism which, rejecting materialism, can use only material language.

"These, says the Hâjî, are mere sounds. He would not assert 'Verba gignunt verba,' but 'Verba gignunt res,' a step further. The idea is Bacon's 'idola fori, omnium molestissima,' the twofold illusions of language; either the names of things that have no existence in fact, or the names of things whose idea is confused and ill-defined.

"He derives the Soul-idea from the 'savage ghost' which Dr. Johnson defined to be a 'kind of shadowy being.' He justly remarks that it arose (perhaps) in Egypt: and was not invented by the 'People of the Book.' By this term Moslems denote Jews and Christians who have a recognized revelation, while their ignorance refuses it to Guebres, Hindus, and Confucians.

"He evidently holds to the doctrine of progress. With him protoplasm is the Yliastron, the Prima Materies. Our word matter is derived from the Sanskrit माढ़ा (mâtrâ), which, however, signifies properly the invisible type of visible matter; in modern language, the substance distinct from the sum of its physical and chemical properties. Thus, Mâtrâ exists only in thought, and is not recognizable by the action of the five senses. His 'Chain of Being' reminds us of Prof. Huxley's Pedigree of the Horse, Orohippus, Mesohippus, Meiohippus, Protohippus, Pleiohippus, and Equus. He has evidently heard of modern biology, or Hylozoism, which holds its quarter-million species of living beings, animal and vegetable, to be progressive modifications of one great fundamental unity, an unity of so-called 'mental faculties' as well as of bodily structure. And this is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the popular idea that man is the great central figure round which all things gyrate like marionettes; in fact, the anthropocentric era of Draper, which, strange to say, lives by the side of the telescope and the microscope. As man is of recent origin, and may end at an early epoch of the macrocosm, so before his birth all things revolved round nothing, and may continue to do so after his death.

"The Hâjî, who elsewhere denounces 'compound ignorance,' holds that all evil comes from error; and that all knowledge has been developed by overthrowing error, the ordinary channel of human thought. He ends this section with a great truth. There are things which human Reason or Instinct matured, in its undeveloped state, cannot master; but Reason is a Law to itself. Therefore we are not bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, anything which is contrary or contradictory to Reason. Here he is diametrically opposed to Rome, who says, 'Do not appeal to History; that is private judgment. Do not appeal to Holy Writ; that is heresy. Do not appeal to Reason; that is Rationalism.'

"He holds with the Patriarchs of Hebrew Holy Writ, that the present life is all-sufficient for an intellectual (not a sentimental) being; and, therefore, that there is no want of a Heaven or a Hell. With far more contradiction the Western poet sings—

'Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self-place; but when we are in hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be; And, to be short, when all this world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell which are not heaven.'

For what want is there of a Hell when all are pure? He enlarges upon the ancient Buddhist theory, that Happiness and Misery are equally distributed among men and beasts; some enjoy much and suffer much; others the reverse. Hence Diderot declares, 'Sober passions produce only the commonplace ... the man of moderate passion lives and dies like a brute.' And again we have the half-truth—

'That the mark of rank in nature Is capacity for pain.'

The latter implies an equal capacity for pleasure, and thus the balance is kept.

"Hâjî Abdû then proceeds to show that Faith is an accident of birth. One of his omitted distichs says—

'Race makes religion; true! but aye upon the Maker acts the made. A finite God, an infinite sin, in lieu of raising man, degrade.'

In a manner of dialogue he introduces the various races each fighting to establish his own belief. The Frank (Christian) abuses the Hindu, who retorts that he is of Mlenchha, mixed or impure, blood, a term applied to all non-Hindus. The same is done by Nazarene and Mohammedan; by the Confucian, who believes in nothing, and by the Soofi, who naturally has the last word. The association of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph with the Trinity, in the Roman and Greek Churches, makes many Moslems conclude that Christians believe not in three but in five Persons. So an Englishman writes of the early Fathers, 'They not only said that 3 = 1, and that 1 = 3: they professed to explain how that curious arithmetical combination had been brought about. The Indivisible had been divided, and yet was not divided: it was divisible, and yet it was indivisible; black was white, and white was black; and yet there were not two colours but one colour; and whoever did not believe it would be damned.' The Arab quotation runs in the original—

'Ahsanu 'l-Makâni l' il-Falâ 'l-Jehannamu, The best of places for (the generous) youth is Gehenna:'

Gehenna, alias Jahim, being the fiery place of eternal punishment. And the second saying, Al-nâr wa lâ 'l-'Ar'—'Fire (of Hell) rather than Shame,'—is equally condemned by the Koranist. The Gustâkhi (insolence) of Fate is the expression of Umar-i-Khayyâm (St. xxx.)—

'What, without asking hither hurried whence? And, without asking whither hurried hence! Oh many a cup of this forbidden wine Must drown the memory of that insolence.'

"Soofistically, the word means 'the coquetry of the beloved one,' the divinæ particula auræ. And the section ends with Pope's—

'He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.'

"Conclusion.

"Here the Hâjî ends his practical study of mankind. The image of Destiny playing with men as pieces is a view common amongst Easterns. His idea of wisdom is once more Pope's—

'And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.' ——(Essay IV., 398.)

"Regret, i.e. repentance, was one of the forty-two deadly sins of the Ancient Egyptians. 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart,' says the Ritual of the Dead, the negative justification of the soul or ghost (Lepsius, 'Alteste Texte des Todtenbuchs'). We have borrowed competitive examination from the Chinese; and, in these morbid days of weak introspection and retrospection, we might learn wisdom from the sturdy old Khemites. When he sings 'Abjure the Why and seek the How,' he refers to the old Scholastic difference of the Demonstratio propter quid (why is a thing?), as opposed to Demonstratio quia (i.e. that a thing is). The 'great Man' shall end with becoming deathless, as Shakespeare says in his noble sonnet—

'And Death once dead, there's no more dying then!'

"Like the great Pagans, the Hâjî holds that man was born good, while the Christian, 'tormented by the things divine,' cleaves to the comforting doctrine of innate sinfulness. Hence the universal tenet, that man should do good in order to gain by it here or hereafter; the 'enlightened selfishness,' that says, Act well and get compound interest in a future state. The allusion to the 'Theist-word' apparently means that the votaries of a personal Deity must believe in the absolute foreknowledge of the Omniscient in particulars as in generals. The Rule of Law emancipates man; and its exceptions are the gaps left by his ignorance. The wail over the fallen flower, etc., reminds us of the Pulambal (Lamentations) of the Anti-Brahminical writer, 'Pathira-Giriyâr.' The allusion to Mâyâ is from Dâs Kabîr—

'Mâyâ mare, na man mare, mar mar gayâ sarir. Illusion dies, the mind dies not though dead and gone the flesh.'

Nirwânâ, I have said, is partial extinction by being merged in the Supreme, not to be confounded with Pari-nirwânâ or absolute annihilation. In the former also, dying gives birth to a new being, the embodiment of karma (deeds), good and evil, done in the countless ages of transmigration.

"Here ends my share of the work. On the whole it has been considerable. I have omitted, as has been seen, sundry stanzas, and I have changed the order of others. The text has nowhere been translated verbatim; in fact, a familiar European turn has been given to many sentiments which were judged too Oriental. As the metre adopted by Hâjî Abdû was the Bahr Tawîl (long verse), I thought it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to fringe it with the rough, unobtrusive rhyme of the original.

"Vive, valeque!"

APPENDIX C.

BHUJANG AND THE COCK-FIGHT.

Specimen of his early writings in Scinde.

"Some years ago, when surveying the country about this Hoosree, I had an opportunity of reading a lecture to a gentleman about your age, Sir: hear how politely he received it, without ever using the word 'dogmatical,' or making the slightest allusion to 'forwardness.'

"I was superintending the shampooing[1] of a fighting cock—about as dunghill and 'low-caste' a bird as ever used a spur, but a strong spiteful thing, a sharp riser, and a clean hitter withal. Bhujang,[2] the 'dragon,' had sent many a brother biped to the soup-pot. Ere the operation of rubbing him down ended, in walked an old Moslem gentleman, who had called in a friendly unceremonious way to look at and chat with the stranger.

"Cocking, you must know, Mr. Bull, is not amongst these people the 'low' diversion your good lady has been pleased to make it. Here a man may still fight his own bird and beat his own donkey à discrétion, without incurring the persecutions of a Philo-beast Society.

"There was a humorous twinkle in the Senior's sly eye as it fell upon the form of Bhujang, and the look gained intensity when, turning towards me, the scrutinizer salaamed and politely ejaculated—

"'Máshálláh! that is a bird!—the Hyderabad breed,[3] or the Afghan?'

"I shuffled off the necessity of romancing about my dunghill's origin, and merely replied that, struck by his many beauties, I had bought him of some unknown person—I did not add for eightpence.

"'What Allah pleases!—it is a miraculous animal! You must have paid his weight in silver! Two hundred rupees, or three hundred?'[4]

"Many people are apt to show impatience or irritability when being 'made fools of'—whereby, methinks, they lose much fun and show more folly than they imagine. My answer to the old gentleman's remark was calculated to persuade that most impertinently polite personage that the Frank, with all his Persian and Arabic, was a 'jolly green.'

"Thereupon, with the utmost suavity he proceeded to inform me that he also was a fighter of cocks, and that he had some—of course immeasurably inferior to the splendid animal being shampooed there—which perhaps might satisfy even my fastidious taste. He concluded with offering to fight one under the certainty of losing it,[5] but anything for a little sport; again gauged me with his cunning glance, salaamed, and took his leave.

"In the evening, after prayers, appeared Mr. Ahmed Khan, slowly sauntering in, accompanied by his friends and domestics; a privileged servant carrying in his arms a magnificent bird, tall, thin, gaunt, and active, with the fierce, full, clear eye, the Chashmi Murwarid,[6] as the Persians call it; small, short, thin, taper head, long neck, stout crooked back, round compact body, bony, strong, and well-hung wings, stout thighs, shanks yellow as purest gold, and huge splay claws—in fact, a love of a cock.

"I thought of Bhujang for a moment despairingly.

"After a short and ceremonious dialogue, in which the old gentleman 'trotted' me out very much to his own satisfaction and the amusement of his companions, the terms of the wager were settled, and Bhujang was brought in, struggling upon his bearer's bosom, kicking his stomach, stretching his neck, and crowing with an air, as if he were the Sans-peur of all the cocks. 'There's an animal for you!' I exclaimed, as he entered. It was a rich treat to see the goguenard looks of my native friends.

"Countenances, however, presently changed, when sending for a few dozen Indian cock-spurs,[7] like little sabres, I lashed a pair to my bird's toes, and then politely proceeded to perform the same operation to my friend's. Ahmed Khan looked on curiously. He was too much of a sportsman, that is to say, a gentleman, to hang back, although he began to suspect that all was not right as he could have wished it to be. His bird's natural weapon was sound, thin, and sharp as a needle, low down upon the shank, at least an inch and a quarter long, and bent at the correctest angle; mine had short, ragged, and blunt bits of horn—the most inoffensive weapons imaginable. But the steel levelled all distinctions.

"We took up the champions, stood a few yards apart—the usual distance—placed them on the ground, and when the 'laissez aller' was given, let go.

"For some reason, by me unexplainable, the game-cock, especially in this country, when fighting with a dunghill, seldom begins the battle with the spirit and activity of his plebeian antagonist. Possibly the noble animal's blood boiling in his veins at the degrading necessity of entering the lists against an unworthy adversary confuses him for a moment. However that may be, one thing is palpable, namely, that he generally receives the first blows.

"On this occasion the vulgarian Bhujang, who appeared to be utterly destitute of respect for lineage and gentle blood—nay, more like an English snob, ineffably delighted at the prospect of 'thrashing' a gentleman—began to dance, spring, and kick with such happy violence and aplomb, that before the minute elapsed one of his long steels was dyed with the heart's blood of his enemy.

"Politeness forbad, otherwise I could have laughed aloud at the expression assumed by the faces present as they witnessed this especial 'do.' Ahmed Khan, at the imminent peril of a wound from the triumphant dunghill, whom excited cowardice now made vicious as a fiend, raised his cock from the ground, looked piteously for an instant at his glazing eye and drooping head, bowed, and handed it over to me with a sigh.

"Then like the parasite of Penaflor after dinner, I thus addressed him—

"'Ahmed Khan, great is the power of Allah! Did not a gnat annihilate Namrud,[8] the giant king? Could Rustam, the son of Zal, stand against a pistol-bullet? or Antar against an ounce of aquafortis? Have you not heard of the hikmat[9] of the Frank, that he is a perfect Plato in wisdom and contrivance? Another time, old gentleman, do not conclude that because our chins are smooth, we are children of asses: and if you will take my advice, abstain from pitting valuable cocks against the obscure produce of a peasant's poultry-yard.'

"'Wallah!' replied my visitor, all the cunning twinkle out of his eye, 'I will take your advice! Your words are sharp: but they are the words of wisdom. But'—here obstinacy and conventionalism obscured Ahmed Khan's brighter qualities—'your bird is a wonderful bird. Máshálláh! may he win many a fight, even as he has done this one!'"

APPENDIX D.

VISIT TO THE VILLAGE OF MEER IBRAHIM KHAN TALPUR A BELOCH CHIEF.

Another specimen of Richard's fresh writings in Scinde.

"Enter Mr. Hari Chand, a portly pulpy Hindoo, the very type of his unamiable race, with a cat-like gait, a bow of exquisite finish; a habit of sweetly smiling under every emotion, whether the produce of a bribe or a kick; a softly murmuring voice, with a tendency to sinking; and a glance which seldom meets yours, and when it does, seems not quite to enjoy the meeting. How timidly he appears at the door! How deferentially he slides in, salaams, looks deprecating, and at last is induced to sit down! Above all things, how he listens! Might he not be mistaken for a novel kind of automaton, into which you can transfer your mind and thoughts—a curious piece of human mechanism in the shape of a creature endowed with all things but a self?

"You would start could you read his thoughts at the very moment that you are forming such opinions of him.

"'Well, Hari Chand' (after the usual salutations), 'and pray what manner of man may be this Meer Ibrahim Khan.—Talpur, is he not?'

"'Wah! wah! What a Chieftain! What a very Nushirawan[1] for all-shading equity! a Hátim for overflowing generosity—a Rustam—

"'That is to say, always considering that he is a Beloch,' says Hari Chand, perceiving by the expression of my face that his opinion requires modifying.

"'For a Beloch! The Sahab's exalted intelligence has of course comprehended the extra fact that they are all dolts, asses, fools. But this Ibrahim Khan, saving the Sahab's presence, is not one of them. Quite the contrary.'

"'You mean he is a rogue!'

"'The Sahab has the penetration of an arrow—a rogue of the first water!

"'A rogue of the first water. He has won the wealth of Bokhara and Samarcand by the sunshine of the countenance of the Honourable Company, to whom he sells camels at six pounds a head, after compelling his subjects to receive two pounds for them. Ah! well said the poet—

"I would rather be a companion of devils Than the ryot of an unjust king."

"'He has almost doubled the size and resources of his jagir (feof), by the friendship of certain Sahabs who—' (here we must stop Hari Chand's tongue with a look). 'And when the Valiant Company allows him twenty thousand rupees to excavate his canals and improve his land, he—the Lord bless him!—expends half, and lays by the other moiety in his coffers.

"'But,' pursues Hari Chand, delighted that we allow him a reasonably free use of his subject, 'has not the Sahab seen with his own eyes what a prodigious thief he is? Did not the poor Scindian complain yesterday that his camel had been stolen from him? and the peasants, that they were starving? and the Hindoos, that they were ruined? Every man, to be sure, may cut off his own dog's tail! It were well, however, if nothing worse could be said about this Ibrahim.'

"Now Mr. Hari Chand's countenance assumes that deep mysterious expression which courts the operation of 'pumping.' After which, chuckling internally at having secured for himself the acute gratification of being able to tear a man's reputation to shreds, he resumes in a low soft tone of voice, as if the tent walls had ears—

"'He murdered his elder brother! Yes, Sahab, before the battle of Meeanee, Ibrahim was a poor sorry fellow, a cadet who was not even allowed to sit in the presence of the great. But

"The world is a water-wheel, and men the pots upon it; Now their heads are beneath the stones, now they are raised high to heaven."

"'At the battle of Meeanee a matchlock ball pierced the occiput of Ibrahim's brother, and the clan, when they saw their Chief bite the dust, ran away like sheep, headed by Ibrahim Khan, the leader of the flock, who ran a little faster than the rest to show the line of direction. When the Fort of Hyderabad surrendered, one of the first persons that gave up his dangerous sword to the General Sahab, was Ibrahim Khan, who had the address to oust his nephew from the inheritance, and by plentiful foxplay took all the carcase from the tiger.

"'And now,' continues Hari Chand, anxious to improve each fleeting minute, 'Ibrahim, who five years ago was not allowed to show his mouth at Court, sits on a chair before the Collector and pays visits to the Madams—the ladies of the English. He has ventured to boast that one of them is desperately enamoured of him.' ('This,' says Hari Chand to himself, 'will irritate the fools'—ourselves, Mr. Bull—'beyond measure.') 'He drinks curaçoa and brandy like a Sahab. He has become proud. Yesterday, for instance, instead of coming out for miles and miles to meet the Sawari——

"'The Sahab is a servant of the Honourable Company—long be its prosperity! Whose dog is Ibrahimoo,[2] that he should treat the "lords of the sword and pen"[3] in this disgraceful way? that he should send that owl[4] of a nephew to greet them with his hootings, and venture to be absent when they arrive at his grave?[5] Had Smith Sahab the Collector' ('now I have that red-coated infidel on the hip,' thinks Hari Chand) 'been coming with his writers, and his scribes, and his secretaries, and his guards, and all his retinue, Ibrahim would have been present to kiss his feet. And why? Because Smith Sahab is a—good easy man, who allows the bandit to do what he pleases. Ah, well said Nizami—[6]

"The joys of this world!—donkeys have engrossed them. Would to Allah, Nizami had been a donkey!"

"'But perhaps,' continues Hari Chand during a short pause, in which time his mind had been almost preternaturally active, 'it is not so much Ibrahim's crime as that of Kakoo Mall.'

"'And who may Kakoo Mall be?'

"'Kakoo Mall? The Sahab does not know who Kakoo Mall is? Ibrahim's head moonshee, a Khudabadi Banyan of a fellow' (our man, Mr. Bull, is a Sehwani, a Green instead of a Brown), 'and one of the most unscrupulous ruffians that ever carried inkstand in his belt.'

"Thereupon a fierce worrying of Kakoo Mall's character. In common charity I would draw our man off, only that most probably Kakoo Mall is about this time abusing us and Hari Chand to Ibrahim, just as violently as Hari Chand abuses Ibrahim and Kakoo Mall to us.

"'He will, I would swear, do his best that your honours may not be treated with the courtesy due to your rank, and that I, your humble servant, may be insulted.'

"'Very well, moonshee, we will look after him. You may go. At eleven we start for our visit. Be ready to accompany us; and don't be afraid of Kakoo Mall.'

"'Under the shadow of your eagle wings,' replies Hari Chand, with a lovely bow, 'what have I to fear from the puny talons of the carrion crow?'

"We mount our horses, still in native costume, and cross the village, our moonshee ambling by our side, and a few ferocious Afghan servants bringing up the rear, much to the astonishment and quite to the admiration of its inhabitants.

"We reach the courtyard gate of the Talpur's dwelling. Three ragged rascals, with sheathed swords in their hands and daggers in their belts, headed by another nephew, rush up to us as if their intention were to begin by cutting our throats. The young Chief, seizing our hands, chatters forth a thousand congratulations, salutations, and messages, nearly tears us from our saddles, and demands concerning our happiness, in tones which rise high above the whooping and yelling of his followers. One fellow rushes away to pass the word, 'They come.' And out pours a whole rout to witness the event, and, by their presence, to communicate to it all possible importance.

"After jostling and being jostled through half a dozen narrow gateways, we arrive opposite the verandah, under which stands Meer Ibrahim Khan Talpur. I see this reception is to be a poor attempt at court ceremonial.

"We dismount—twenty men pressing forward to hold our stirrups, the whole party yelling 'Bismillah!' (in the name of Allah) as our feet touch the ground. Then Ibrahim Khan, pressing forward, seizes our hands, wrings our arms in their sockets, and—oh, compliment with which we might readily have dispensed!—precipitates himself upon our bosoms, clasping us firmly to a 'corporation,' and applying a rough-bearded chin to the upper portions of both our shoulder-blades consecutively.

"We are led in with our slippers on. Our host has not removed his, consequently we will continue to wear ours. Another volley of inquiries and another series of huggings, as we are led up to the silken ottoman, upon which he, the Chief, and his eldest nephew are to sit, a motley crowd of relations, friends, acquaintances, dependants, and any one who happened to be passing the house at the time, pressing in, looking curiously at us and fearfully at our retainers. All arrange themselves with the noise of a troop of ravens upon the floor.

"Observe, Mr. John Bull, in the corner of the room Hari Chand and Kakoo Mall, almost weeping with joy, throw themselves upon each other, and murmur mezzo-voce thanks to that Heaven which hath thus permitted the tree of hope to put forth green leaves and to bear sweet fruit.

"Charming this choice blossom of true civilization, blooming amid the desert of barbarism around it! Had a violet or a forget-me-not appeared to us in the centre of Ibrahim Khan's courtyard, the sight would scarcely have been more suggestive. What memories it revives! One of them—

"When the fascinating Lady F. Macarthy, an authoress and a femme d'esprit, had sketched with a pencil, stolen from Wit, the character of her bosom friend, Miss Anne Clotworthy Crawley, and published the same, the English world laughed, but Dublin joyed with double joy.

"Dublin joyed thus: firstly, at seeing the picture; secondly, at foreseeing the scene it would occasion when the sketcher and the sketched met for the first time in public. There was much of anticipation, much of vague and happy expectation, in this idea.

"Was it disappointed?

"No! At the next ball, Lady Florence, unwilling to show Miss Crawley that she could not use as well as abuse a friend, and Miss Crawley, as unwilling to show Lady Florence her consciousness of having been abused as she deserved, both with one impulse at the same moment clave the crowd, and—they had been parted at least five days—kissed each other with all the ardour of feminine friendship.

"'And faith,' said every Irishman of the hundred who witnessed the scene—'and 'faith, I disp'hised them both!'

"Kiss on, Kakoo Mall and Hari Chand!

"At the end of the time the host motions away his pipe, and prepares himself to converse and hor! hor! with renewed vigour.

"'Were you at Nasir Khan's fight?'—so the battle of Meeanee is called by the Scindians, as opposed to Sher Mohammed's fight, the battle of Dubbah.

"We reply in the negative, and suspect that we are in for one of our noble host's stock stories.

"'Hor! hor! that was an affair. O Allah, Allah Akbar! was ever the like of it before?'

"'Then you were present, Meer Sahab?'[7]

"'I—yes, indeed I was. I went out with all the vassals of my poor brother' (a broad grin), 'whom you killed. Look at his son, my nephew there' (pointing to the lean scowler sitting by his side). 'Well, you killed his poor father. And, hor! hor! you would have killed me,' pursues Ibrahim, highly amused by the idea, 'but I was a little too sharp even for the Frank.'

"We stimulate him by an inquiry.

"'How?' he vociferates. 'Why, when we went out of the tent to attack you we started to hunt the deer. Some carried swords, others spears, and many sticks, because we wanted to thrash you soundly for your impudence—not to kill you, poor things. My brother—now Allah illumine his grave!—was a simple-minded man, who said, "What can the iron of the Angreez[8] do against the steel of the Beloch?"

"'We drew up in a heap, eager for the onslaught. Presently some guns of yours appeared; they unlimbered: they began to fire. So did ours; but somehow or other we shot over you, you shot into us. I was on the other part of the field, so of course I didn't care much for that. But, a few minutes afterwards, what did we see?—a long red line, with flashing spikes, come sweeping over the plain towards us like a simoom.

"'Allah, Allah! what are these dogs doing? They are not running away? All my poor brother's men put the same question.

"'Then bang went the great guns, phit the little guns; the Franks prayed aloud to the Shaitan with a loud, horrible voice; we to Allah. What a mosque full of mullahs it was, to be sure![9] Who could fight? We howled defiance against them. Still they came on. We stood and looked at them. Still they came on. We rushed and slashed at them, like Rustams. Still they came on—the white fiends.[10] And, by Allah, when we ran away, still they came after us. It was useless to encounter this kind of magic; the head magician sitting all the time on the back of a little bay horse, waving his hat in circles, and using words which those that heard them sounded like the language of devils. I waited till my poor brother fell dead. Then I cried to the vassals, "Ye base-born, will you see your chieftain perish unavenged?" And, having done my best to fight like a soldier, I thought I had a right to run like one—hor! hor!

"'But now tell me—you are an Englishman—is there any chance of the Ameer's ever returning from captivity?'

"The assembly, after being convulsed with laughter during the Chief's account of his prowess at the battle of Meeanee—there are 'toadies' in Scinde as elsewhere—was breathless whilst he awaited our answer to his question.

"'No, Meer Sahab, there is none. The morning of prosperity has at length dawned upon Scinde. It leads to a day that knows no return of night!'

"'Allah Tuhar—the Lord be thy preserver!' There was no laugh as Ibrahim Khan uttered this short prayer.

"We rise; so does every man in the room. Vehemently are we pressed to stay. Vehemently do we refuse. Then there is a rushing to the doors, a whooping for horses, an appearance of the animals, madly kicking and plunging because ten hands are holding each bridle. The Chief accompanies us as far as the main gate of his palace, shaking hands, laughing violently, and catechizing us about our healths and brains; he repeats his delight at having made friendship with us, and, as a conclusion, again clasps us to that development which would not disgrace the fat fame of a Falstaff.

[What can be more true or witty, more picturesque and characteristic, than this picture of a Beloch dinner and tea party?—I. B.]

"'A tea-party! 'What horrible goblins of the past are conjured up by these three syllables!

"The first object that meets our glance, as we near the tents, is a line of Belochies drawn up behind a row of earthen pots, in shape and hue by no means unlike monstrous turnips. These—the turnips—are a present of choice confectionery; material, coarse sugar, rice, flour, spices, and clarified butter—always sent in token of friendship or favour. There are ten pots full for you, the 'great gentleman,' eight for me, the thinner man, one for our moonshee, who looks a profound disgust at not having received two, and the rest for the servants. The latter will obtain, although they cannot claim, possession of the whole, and the result will be a general indigestion, which nothing but a certain preparation of tartar can remove. Half a pound of the foul mixture would place our lives in imminent peril. Another uncomfortable effect of the ceremony is, that in this case, as on all occasions where an Oriental sends you a present, a return is expected, and the amount of the return is supposed exactly to show at what rate you value yourself. We must give vails to all the fellows, otherwise we shall be called 'fly-suckers,' i.e. skinflints—a reputation which you, in your own country and in these days, seem rather to court than to avoid, Mr. Bull; but what the East is not yet sufficiently enlightened to appreciate. We must also send a 'token' to the noble giver of the sweetmeats. If we withhold it, he will not be too shamefaced to apply for it in person. I remarked that, during the visit, he repeatedly admired your ring—a bloodstone with the family crest, a lion rampant, upon it. Send it to him, with an epigrammatic compliment, which I will impromptu for you, and you will earn, as the natives say, a 'great name.'

"'Well, Hari Chand, how progresses the Ameer?'

"'The Ameer? Your exalted intelligence will understand most prosperously, only he has robbed his ryots of all their camels, and now he is quarrelling with the neighbouring jagirdars (country gentlemen) in order to get theirs to cheat the Company with; he has depopulated the land of small birds to feed his twenty hawks; he has been to Hyderabad and has returned stark-staring mad, swearing that he drank two sahibs under the table, and made love to every madam[11] in the place' (Hari Chand is determined to excite our ghairat, or jealousy, on that point by perpetually hammering at it); 'he has married another wife, although people say he has five[12] already; the new one being a devil, fights with all the old ones, who try to poison her; and his eldest daughter, when on a visit to the capital, ran away with a mounted policeman. Wah! wah! Verily, it is a noble family, as the poet said of the people of Cabul—

"A most distinguished race are they; The men can't say 'Yes,' the women can't say 'No.'"'[13]

"'And Kakoo Mall?'

"'Oh, Kakoo Mall! He is making a fortune by sedulously practising all kinds of iniquities. Praised be Allah! what a scoundrel he is! It would take hours to sketch out his villanies even for the exalted intelligence of your honours to comprehend them. But one of these days Kakoo must and will come to a bad end, a very bad end, which may be a warning to mankind.'

"This prediction, Mr. Bull, is simply the result of envy on the part of Hari Chand, who would give one of his eyes for the unlimited powers of doing evil, that good (to himself) might come of it, which he represents Kakoo Mall to enjoy. Of course he alludes piously to the vengeance of the gods, but the reference is an habitual one; the heart knows nothing about what the tongue speaks.

"'Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira decrum est,' is a sentiment which misleads the Eastern as well as the Western would-be criminal. These people theoretically own the idea of retribution in this certain life; practically, they act as if sure to evade it. An unseen, an uncertain punishment has so little effect when threatened from afar! Offended Heaven may so easily be propitiated by vain oblations, and equally vain repentance. And, after all, celestial vengeance so often comes too late—a man may enjoy himself so many years before the blow descends! So they never neglect to threaten one another with the ira deorum, and always sit in the teeth of it themselves.

"Here is the Sawári, the retinue. Meer Ibrahim Khan, all crimson and gold, alights from his steed, a handsome Beloch mare, whose bridle and head-gear are covered with grotesque silver ornaments, and stands a moment patting her, to show off her points and equipments. The saddle is richly mounted—though far inferior to those used by some of the petty Indian princes, whose led horses are decked in harness plated with precious metals studded with diamonds—and there is no deficiency, at the same time no particular attraction, in the abundance of girth, housing, martingale and crupper, with which a gentleman's animal in this part of the world must be lumbered.

"Ibrahim Khan prepares for dinner by dismissing all his attendants but one, Kakoo Mall, who remains to 'toady' his highness, to swear the truth of every falsehood the great man tells, to supply him with an idea or a word whenever conversation does not flow glibly, and to be insulted, 'chaffed' and derided, tour à tour, as the ill-humour or joviality of his Chief prevail. The Ameer's quick glance has detected that we have nought but ale and cognac to offer him; that point settled, he assures his mind by feeling the smooth insides of our wine-glasses, by taking up the spoons, avoiding their handles, by producing brown facsimiles of his thumbs upon the white surface of the salt, by converting the mustard-pot into a scent-bottle, and by correcting any little irritation of the epidermis with our only corkscrews.

"'Will you take a glass of the water of life, Meer Sahab?'

"Perhaps, Mr. Bull, you expect our visitor to drink a few drops of brandy, as the French take un petit verre d'absinthe pour ouvrir l'appetit. If so, a quarter of an hour will convince you of your mistake.

"Ibrahim Khan hands his gold-hilted sabre to the Afghan servant—who receives it at a distance, as if it bit, with a sneering smile, for which he shall presently receive well-merited correction—sees it deposited in the corner of the tent, and then seating himself heavily upon the edge of the cot of honour opposite the dinner-table, he clutches a tumbler, blows warmly into it, polishes the damp interior with his pocket-handkerchief, and prepares to attack the liquid part of his meal.

"We must join him if you please. In Scinde men drink before, in England after, dinner. At home, the object, we say, is to pass time pleasantly over a glass of wine; here, they honestly avow, they drink to get drunk, and wonder what makes you do the same, disclaiming all intention of doing it. The Eastern practice is admirable for securing the object proposed to itself; every one knows that half a bottle upon an empty stomach does the duty of two emptied under converse circumstances. Moreover, the Scindians declare that alcohol before meals whets the appetite, enlivens the spirits, and facilitates digestion. Habit is everything. I should advise you, Mr. John Bull, to follow the Meer's example at humble distance; otherwise a portly old gentleman in a state of roaring intoxication, singing and speechifying, excited combativeness and general benevolence, may be the concluding scene of this feast of unreason.

"The dinner passes off rapidly. Ibrahim Khan eats quite as much as he drinks. Not contented with scooping up masses of boiled rice, hard eggs, and unctuous stews, in his palm, now and then stripping a kabab-stick[14] with his fingers, and holding up a large bone to his mouth with both hands, he proposes after our example to practise the knife and fork. With these articles, the former in the left, the latter in the right fist, he attempts to dissect a roast fowl, which dances away from him, as if it had vitality, over the damask, to the tune of loud hor! hors! Again he tries—again he fails, although he prefaced the second attempt by a Bismillah: 'Heathen dog' (to Kakoo Mall), 'is the soul of thy father in this bit of carrion?' for which gross insult[15] the Hindoo mentally fines his lord a thousand rupees, to be cheated the first opportunity. At last, desperate by the failure of many efforts, he throws away the fork, transfers the knife to his right hand, and grasping with his left the animal's limbs, he tears it piecemeal with a facility which calls for a loud explosion of mirth.

"I never yet saw an Oriental laugh at himself so readily. Generally speaking, childlike, they are nervously and uncomfortably sensitive to ridicule of all kinds. Nothing offends them more lastingly than a caricature, be it the most good-natured. A writer of satire in Persia rarely dies an easy death; and the present race must be numbered amongst things that were, before a man could edit, at Teheran, a number of Punch and live through the day.

"Scindian cookery is, like the country and its native, a link between the Iranian and the Indian systems. Central Asia is pre-eminently the land of good living and of masterly artistes, men as truly great in their exquisite art as Paris or Naples ever produced: it teems with enjoyment to the philosophic bon vivant, who will apply his mind to naturalizing his palate. Amongst the Hindoos, the matériel of the cuisine is too limited, consequently there is a monotony in the succession of rice-dishes and vegetables: moreover, the bilious ghee enters into almost every preparation, the sweets are cloying, and the profuse spices annoying to the tasteful palate. In Scinde there are dawnings of culinary light, which would in a happier moral clime usher in a brilliant day. You have seldom eaten anything better—I will answer for the fact, Mr. Bull—than a salmi of black partridge, with a garnishing of stewed bengans, or egg-plants.

"The repast ends more abruptly than it began. The Scindian, as the boa-constrictor, is always torpid after his ample meal, and he holds to the apothegm of the Salernitan school—

'Post prandium est dormiendum.'

You may observe our guest's fat heavy eyelids winking and drooping with progressive somnolency as the time for his siesta draws nigh. He calls for a cup of lukewarm milk—the invariable and offensive conclusion to dinner here; apologizes for leaving us—he must go to his prayers and attend to his guest-house[16]—promises a return to tea in the evening, calls for his horse, mounts it and retires.

"Now that he has gone, perhaps you also, sir, may have 'letters to write.'

"'Ibrahimoo was so full of wine,' remarks Hari Chand, 'with these eyes I saw him almost tumble over his animal. He go to pray! He went to prepare for the evening's work. As for his guest-house, it is called by all the poor around, "House of Hunger." Your honours, I hear, gave him only beer and brandy. You will see him presently return with a donkey's load of bottles. And I am told that he is going to bring his eldest boy. Ah, your honours must button up your pouches now!'

"Here comes the Ameer with some additions to his former escort, Kakoo Mall; a little brown boy five or six years old, a minstrel, and a servant carrying many 'grey-beards.'

"In few parts of the world do you see prettier children than those of the higher class in Scinde. Their features are delicate and harmonious; the forehead is beautifully bombé; the full, rounded cheek shows almost olive-coloured by the side of the silky black curls; and there is an intelligence and a vivacity which you scarcely expect to see in their large, long, lustrous black eyes. Their forms are equal to their faces; for symmetry and finish they might serve as models to the well-provided Murillo or Correggio. And the simplicity of their dress—a skull-cap, a little silk frock like a night-gown, confined with a waist-shawl in which sticks the tiniest of daggers, and a pair of loose slippers—contrasts most advantageously with the dancing-dog costumes with which your good lady, Mr. Bull, invests her younger offspring, or the unsightly jackets and waistcoats conferred upon Billy when breeched. If you like their dress you will also admire their behaviour. The constant habit of society makes them companionable at an age when your progeny is fit for nothing but confinement in a loose box called a nursery. The boy here stands before his father, or sits with him when ordered, more staidly than one of your adults would do. He listens with uncommon gravity to the conversation of his seniors, answers pithily and respectfully when addressed, and never requires to be lectured upon the text, 'Little children are made to be seen and not heard.' At eight years of age he is master of the usages; he will receive you at the door in the absence of his progenitor, hand you to your proper seat in the room, converse with you, compliment you, call for pipes, offer you sweetmeats, invite you to dinner, and dismiss you without failing in a single point. As a boy he is a little man, and his sister in the harem is a little woman. This you may object to on the score of taste; say that it robs childhood of its chief charm, the natural, the innocent, and all that kind of thing. At any rate, you must own that it also preserves us from the very troublesome displays of the said charm in the form of pertness, selfishness, turbulence, and all the unlovely details comprehended in your 'naughtiness'—the Irish 'boldness.'

"Our admiration of their children is reciprocated by the Orientals. I have heard of a Chief travelling many miles to see the fair and flaxen hair of a 'European baby;' and 'Beautiful as a white child' is almost a proverb amongst the dark-skinned Maharattas.

"We must treat Master Ibrahim—I beg his pardon, Meer Jan Mohammed Khan Talpur, as he sententiously names himself—with especial attention, as a mark of politeness to his father. We insist upon his sitting down—upon the highest seat, too—inquire with interest after his horse and his hawk, look at his dagger, and slip in a hope that he may be as brave a soldier as his father. But we must not tell him that he is a pretty boy, or ask him his age, or say anything about his brothers and sisters, otherwise we offend against the convenances. And when we wish him to be sent home—that venerable maxim,

'Maxima debetur puero reverenda,'

is still venerated in the East—we give him a trifling tohfeh (present), a pocket-pistol or a coloured print, and then he will feel that the object of his mission has been fulfilled. In Central Asia a child's visit is a mere present-trap.

"You admire the row of bottles displayed upon the table—a dozen at least of champagne and sherry, curaçoa and noyau, brandy and gin, soda-water and pale ale. You will wonder still more when you see Ibrahim Khan disposing of their contents recklessly, mixing them (after consumption) by tumblers full, intoxicating himself with each draught, and in each twenty minutes' interval becoming, by dint of pushing his cap off his brow, scratching his head, abusing his moonshee, and concentrating all the energies of mind and body upon his pipe, sober as judges are said to be.

"A faint 'twang-twang' draws your attention to the corner of the tent. As in the ages preceding Darius, so since his time the soirée of Oriental Cæsar, or Chief, never ended without sweet music.

"Remark the appearance of the performer. He is a dark, chocolate-coloured man with a ragged beard, an opium look, sharp, thin features, and a skin that appears never to have known ablution. A dirty, torn cloth wrapped round his temples acts as turban; the rest of the attire, a long shirt of green cotton and blue drawers, is in a state which may be designated 'disgusting.' In his hand is his surando, the instrument of his craft, a rude form of the violin, with four or five sheep-gut strings, which are made to discourse eloquent music by a short crooked bow that contains half the tail of a horse. He is preparing to perform, not in the attitude of a Paganini, but as we see in old Raphaels, and occasionally in the byways of Italy—the instrument resting upon his lap instead of his collar-bone. Before the preliminary scraping ends, whilst the Meer is reviling Kakoo Mall sotto voce, a word or two about the fellow and his race.

"The Langho, or, as he is politely and accurately termed, the Manganhar, or 'asker'[17]—they are the most peremptory and persevering of beggars—is a particular caste in Scindi. Anciently all the great clans had their own minstrels, whose duty it was to preserve their tradition for recital on festival occasions, and to attend the Chief in battle, where they noted everything with an eagle's eye, praising those that fought, and raining showers of curses, taunts, and invectives upon those that fled. This part of their occupation is now gone. In the present day they subsist principally by the charity of the people, and by attending at the houses in which their professional services at marriages and other ceremonies are required. They are idle as well as fond of pleasure, dirty, immoral, and notoriously dishonest. Largesse to a minstrel being a gentlemanly way of wasting one's substance in Scinde, those that employ the 'asker' are provoked to liberality till either the will or the way fail. In the mean time he spends every pice, with all the recklessness of a Western artiste, in drinking, gambling, and the silliest ostentation. He is not expected to live long, and none knows what becomes of him in his old age.

"Our friend the Meer has, I am told by Hari Chand, suffered so much from these men's sneering encomiums upon his valour and conduct in the late war, that he once tried the experiment of paying them liberally to avoid his palace. Finding that the revenues of Persia would be inadequate to carry out the scheme, he has altered his tactics, and now supports half a dozen of these, on the express condition that they never allude to the battles of Meeanee or Dubbah in his presence.

"And now, as Ibrahim Khan looks tired of attempting to converse with our surly Afghans, and of outraging the feelings of his moonshee, we will lend an ear to Music—heavenly maid—as she springs upon us in grimly guise from the head of Aludo, the minstrel.

"The singing will commence with a favourite rhapsod theme—the murder of the great Lord Bahram, the ancestor of the Talpur Princess—by order of Sarfaraz, the Kalhora; and with the deadliest accuracy will it detail how an individual of lowly birth but brave, Shah Baharo, a Scindian, when ordered by the despot to do the deed, refused, saying, 'I will fight the Beloch like a man.' How Sarfaraz made light of Shah Baharo's chivalry and honour, asking, 'Where is Mohammed the Prophet of Allah, and where is Musaylimah the liar?'[18] How Shah Baharo responded with great temper and a prodigious quantity of good advice, the major part of which was à propos of everything; how Sarfaraz cozened and flattered till he found a willing bravo in Ismail Mombiyani the Scindian; how the said Ismail, being a one-handed man, cut down the valiant Bahram from behind with a sword which he held in his left hand, raised a little higher than usual, and drew down the murdered chief's shoulder; how Ismail, after the assassination, cut off Bahram's head; and, finally, how Sarfaraz looked at it, and gave utterance to unchristianlike sentiments.

"All the terrible minuteness of a French novel of the day or an Italian historical romance!

"The sounds that accompany are more remarkable than the words of the song. Each fresh verse is ushered in by a loud howl so strikingly discordant that your every nerve starts at it, and so prolonged that anticipation wearies of looking forward to its close. To which follows the aria, a collection of sharp shatterings, in a key strained at least two notes above the voce di petto, which, nevertheless, must be forced up to the mark, falsetto being unknown here. And, lastly, the conclusion of the phrase—a descent into the regions of the basso till the voice dies away, vaguely growling—lost, as it were, and unable to merge from the depths into which it strayed. Then the howl, the chatterings, the soprano scream, and the growl over again. Half an hour of this work goes to the formation of a Scindian melody.

"Melody!

"Well, yes, melody! You see, sir, all around you are ecstatized, consequently there must be something to attract admiration in the performance. Of all the arts, Music is the most conventional. What do you think Orpheus would have thought of Thalberg—Thalberg of Orpheus? The tradition of all ancient people, Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and others, tell of minstrels who worked miracles by the voice, the guitar, the lute, and the lyre. The Music of the Greeks and Romans is beyond our reach; that of the Hindoo and the Persian is still in its old age,—much the same, I suppose, as it was when it began to exist. Accustomed to his own system, the Indian cannot derive the least pleasure from ours. The noisiness confuses him; his ear cannot detect a phrase, and he is ignorant of its harmony as he would be insensible to discord. He wonders greatly how it is that the European, so superior to him in arms and arts, can be so far behind in this one science, and he turns with eagerness to the strain familiar to his ear; not to the 'Hindostanee melodies,' which are occasionally composed in London, but to an honest, downright bit of barbarism such as we have just now heard.

"After my description, you will be astonished to hear that I could do anything but suffer during the endurance of the minstrel's song. At first all was pure torture. Presently the ear, in its despair, began to make friends with the least harsh sounds, as prisoners do with spiders or jailors. Then, as a note or two became familiar, the utter strangeness wore off, and a sensation of grotesque enjoyment, novel and unexplainable, struggled into existence. At last, when a few years had thoroughly broken my taste to bear what you have just heard, I could listen to it not only without the horror you experience, but also with something more like gratification than composure. Possibly I like it better for the disgust it provoked at first. So the Highlander learns to love his screaming, wheezing bagpipe, the German his putrescent Sauerkraut, the Frenchman haut-goût in game, the Italian his rancid olives, and all the world their snuff and cigars—things which at first they must, as they were human, have hated.

"The songs generally sung by these Eastern jongleurs are legends, ballads, certain erotic verses which are very much admired by every class, and mystical effusions which the learned enjoy, and which the unlearned, being utterly unable to comprehend them, listen to with the acutest sensations of pleasure. The Homer of Scinde is one Sayyid Abd el Latif, a saintly bard, whose Risalo, or collection of distichs upon traditionary themes of the two passions, Love and War, has been set to different musical modes, and is, by the consenting voice of society, admitted to be a perfect chef d'œuvre, a bit of heaven on earth.

"I will translate one of the songs which Aludo sings—a short satirical effusion, directed against the descendants of that celebrated man by some Scindian poet, who appears fond of using the figure irony.

"AN ODE TO THE HOLY MEN OF BHIT.[19] 1. "'Ye monks of Bhit, whose holy care In fast and penance, wake and prayer! Your lips and eyes bespeak a love From low earth weaned to Heaven above! Your hearts have rent all carnal ties, Abjured all pomps and vanities! Not mean will be your meed, I ken, In Heaven's bright realms, ye rev'rend men!' 2. "'And yet, they say, those tuneful throats, With prayers' stem chaunt, mix softer notes; Those mouths will sometimes deign to sip The honey-dew from maiden's lip; And other juice than salt tear dyes With purpling hues those heavy eyes. Ah, ah! twice blest your lot, I ken, Here and hereafter, rev'rend men!'

"You have a small musical snuff-box with you. Mr. John Bull; wind it up, put it in your pocket, and try the effects of a polka or a waltz.

"All are silent in a moment. They start, stare, peer about the room, and look very much scared by the strange sounds. In another minute they will run away from us adepts in the black art. You see how many miracles could be got out of a few such simple contrivances as a grind-organ, an electrical machine, or a magic lantern. Now produce the cause of astonishment whilst I attempt to explain the mechanism of the invention. The sight of something soothes them; their minds become, comparatively speaking, quiet; still they handle the box with constraint, as if it had the power of stinging as well as singing. All are vociferous in praise of the music, probably on account of the curiosity of the thing, as a civilized audience applauds a sonata upon one string, at which it would yawn if performed upon four. Even the Minstrel declares with humble looks that the charm has fled his Surando, that his voice is become like to the crows. This, however, is his politeness, not his belief. In what part of the world, or at what epoch of the creation, did a painter, a musician, or a poet, ever own to himself that he is a dauber, a mar-music, or a poetaster?

"Ibrahim Khan will by no means refuse a 'dish a tea,' especially when offered to him during a short account of the Chinese Empire: the beardless state of the Celestials and the porcelain tower being topics which will at once rivet his attention. Orientals in their cups love to become inquisitive, scientific, theological, and metaphysical. But he qualifies the thin potation with quite an equal quantity of brandy, as in his heart of hearts he has compared the first sip to an infusion of senna disguised by sugar and milk. The Belochies, unlike their neighbours the Persians and Afghans, are not accustomed to the use of Chahi.[20]

"'Meer Ibrahim Khan Talpur, listen! The meetings of this world are in the street of separation. And truly said the poet that the sweet draught of friendly union is ever followed by the bitter waters of parting. To-morrow we wander forth from these pleasant abodes, to return to Hyderabad. My friend, Jan Bool Sahib, is determined to feast his eyes upon the Edens of Larkhana and to dare the Jehannums of Shikarpur.'

"The Chief rises steadily, though intoxicated.

"'You are the King of the Franks. You are the best of the Nazarenes, and, by the blessed Prophet, you almost deserve to be a Moslem! Swear to me that you will presently return and gladden the glance of amity. What is life without the faces of those we love? Wah! wah! I have received you badly. There are no dancing-women in my villages. I would have seized a dozen of the ryots' wives, but Kakoo Mall said—didn't you, you scoundrel——?'

"'Certainly, great Chief!'

"'How can the Haiwans,[21] the Scindees, venture to show their blackened[22] faces in the presence of those exalted lords? If I have failed in anything, pardon me.'

"The tears stand in Ibrahim's eyes. No wonder. He has nearly finished six bottles. He grasps our hands at every comma; at every full stop vigorously embraces us. Yet he is not wholly maudlin. To water the tree of friendship, as he phrases it, he stuffs my cheroot-case into one pocket, and a wine-glass into the other. I must give him your musical box, Mr. Bull, and as an equivalent—I don't wish him to go home and laugh at our beards—I gently extract his best hunting-knife from his waistband and transfer it to my own, declaring that with that identical weapon will I cut the throat of a poetic image called Firak or Separation.

"Now the adieus become general. The minstrel raises his voice in fervent prayer; he has received five rupees and a bottle of bad gin. All the followers put their heads into the tent to bless us, and to see if we have anything more to give them. The Ameer, convinced that there are no more presents to be distributed, prepares to depart, accompanied by his secretary, when Hari Chand, determined upon a final scene, raises the tent-fly and precipitates himself into Kakoo Mall's arms."

APPENDIX E.

POLITICS.

RICHARD'S VIEWS UPON THEM, AND WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE—A SUBJECT TO BE CONTINUED IN THE FUTURE WORK, "LABOURS AND WISDOM OF RICHARD BURTON."

"And now for a serious bit of moralizing, from gay to grave. The radical changes of the last five years in Paris deserve chronicling and deep study. The War and the Commune have made a new world. 'La nation la plus aimable la plus aimée et peut-être la moins aimante,' has been translated, 'The light and joyous character may lie below, but there is a terrible hard upper crust of sulkiness and economy run mad—rage for lucre, and lust pour la revanche.' There is only the ancienne noblesse, the Faubourg St. Germain, the souls loyal to their King and to their Faith, who remain pure. So far, the Parisians are like the Irish Kelt,—a blathering, bumptious, bull-and-blunder loving race. The former have been converted in half a century by politics and polemics into a moping and melancholy brood. It is no longer the fashion in France to speak without an introduction. Men will sit side by side at table d'hôte in dead silence for a month; they travel twenty-four hours in the railway without opening the mouth; and if a loud laugh be heard in public, it is sure to come from some triste Anglais. Even the women, although they still fling the look of hate at a pretty toilette, seem to have abdicated the supremacy of the toilette. Once you never did, now you often see the absence of corsets upon figures that can't stand it. They are badly painted, and it is a sin to paint badly. They are outrées in their dress, and the neglect of these things is a bad sign in Paris. The middle and the lower classes, who used to be à quatre épingles, are mal coiffées, with their petticoats hanging below their dresses, as we were in the days of les Anglaises pour rire. We have learnt many things from our French friends, and amongst the good things, how to dress; but dress never made our women's beauty—it did that of the French.

"The theatres are clearing 27,000,000 of francs (1875), when during the palmiest days of the Empire they never exceeded 17,000,000. Except at the new Opera, the scenery and decorations are those of our penny gaffs. 'Les Italiens' bears the palm of dowdyism, and actors and actresses seem to have decayed with the decorations. The cuisine, except in special instances, has notably fallen off. The bottles are all 'kick,' the famous bread and butter has lost caste. The café au lait is all chicory—maximum water, minimum beans. Mammonolatry is rampant, and the great problem of manufacture and depôt, of store and shop, is how to charge the most for the worst article. Economy has now become a vice instead of a virtue, and 1,852,000 souls manage to pay 12,280,000 francs in taxes per annum.

"It is impossible to pass a day in Paris without hearing and speaking politics. The French, I have said, are sulky, especially with the 'Perfidious,' because she has supplanted them in Egypt, where for so many years England had by a tacit convention supplied the material and France the personal. They question the wisdom of our last dodge. It is the first move in the coming Kriegspiel. I hate half-measures, and I would have bought the Canal wholly out and out, and put a fortress at each end, and taken a mild nominal toll to show my right. I would annex Egypt and protect Syria, occupy the Dardanelles, and after that let the whole world wrangle as much as it pleased. What is the use of having a Navy superior to all the united navies of the rest of the world, if we can't do this? The world will never be still till Constantinople returns to the old Byzantine kingdom; and we might put a Royalty there, say the Duke of Edinburgh, who, being married to the Czar's daughter, would unite the interests of Russia and England. Let the Turk live, but retire into private life; he is a good fellow there, and we can respect El Islam so long as he has nothing to butcher.

Central Europe.

"Let Austria become a mighty empire,—nineteen million Slavs, eight million Germans, five million Hungarians. Let Italy be satisfied with her Unity and Freedom and Progress, and Prussia repose upon her Bismarck, and France keep quiet and look after her health. But as it is, the three Emperors may say to us, 'Gentlemen, you have got what you want; we will follow suit—look on, and don't spoil sport.' Taken per se, this Suez Canal measure is a patch of tinsel gold plastered upon the rags of foreign and continental policy which our ins and outs have kept us up during the last decade, whilst under-authorities are apparently told off to declare periodically that England has lost none of her prestige abroad. Listen to the average politician of the multitude.[1] I do not like the doings of my own party (I am a Conservative); and what irritates me more is, that little as he knows, there is sound truth in what he says.

"The fact is, that England has repudiated the grand old rule of aristocracy which carried her safely through the Titan wars of the early Buonaparte ages, whilst she has not accepted the strong repulsive arm of Democracy, which enabled the Federal to beat down the Confederate. She rejects equally the refined minority and the sturdy majority; she is neither hot nor cold; she sits between two stools, and we all know where that leads to.

"This Suez move would have been a homogeneous part of a strong policy—that is, a policy backed by two millions of soldiers, by a preponderating fleet of ironclads, and by a school of diplomatists, which has not been broken in to 'effacing' themselves. Of our politicians generally, the less said the soonest mended; but I have unbounded confidence in our Premier,[2] in our Navy, and the good heart, rough common sense, firmness, and esprit de corps of our British public. The next shake—and it will be heavy and soon—will give us the Euphrates Valley Railway, despite the cleverness of an Ignatieff. The first disaster will bring on a revival of the Militia Law, and I should not be surprised if we live to see ourselves revolve round again to a general conscription, and the 'do nothings' will eventually go to the wall. It is a pity to tie the hands of so long-sighted a Premier.

"Revenge is still the dream of Paris, and the dream is not of the wise. The three Emperors love the three Empires, and hate one another; the Government and the Lieges are blinded by jealousy; each wishes to be the first in the race, and to see the other two distanced. All are mounted upon a war footing au piéd de guerre; which means that they intend fighting, and Germany especially must fight or she is lost; to her peace is more ruinous than war. France is cutting her way up with the purse instead of the sword. The great Triad might alter the map of Europe. 'The sons of Hermann' would absorb Belgium and Holland; the Muscovite swallow Constantinople with its neighbouring appendages, and Austria convey ('the wise call it') the remainder of Turkey's Slavonic provinces. But they will do nothing of the kind. Germany has proved herself the natural guardian of the Eastern frontier of Europe.

"A Franco-Russian alliance is now, in 1876, in everybody's mouth. France is for the moment safely republican, with a chance of M. Thiers, the kingmaker, succeeding to the Presidency.[3] She casts the blame of the Communal excesses upon the Buonapartists, because she fears them; but she has clean forgotten Legitimists and Orleanists. As regards the Franco-Russian alliance, opinions follow two courses. The sensible and far-seeing, which (like councils of war) never fights, would unite with Russia and temporarily keep the peace. The majority of hot heads and Hotspurs would use it for another 'À Berlin!' to attack Prussia from the east as well as the west.

"Yet, if the truth be told, France is far less ready for war than England. She can hardly raise 400,000 men to defend her own frontiers. We assisted at various reviews, and inspected many of the camps; we saw artillery, cavalry, and infantry equally unfit to face an educated enemy. Every order given by an officer was answered or questioned by a private, 'Mais, ce n'est pas cela du tout, mon Capitaine.' Guns, horses, and men were equally inefficient. True, the chassepot is being changed for the fusil Gras, the sword-bayonet is being supplanted by a neat triangular weapon unfit to cut cabbages and wood, and the six arms manufacturers of France are not wasting an hour. But after seeing the skirmishes and advances in line, one cannot help feeling certain that at this rate half a century will elapse before the Frenchman is ready to fight the Prussian. Meanwhile, every head of man, woman, and child here pay half a franc (fivepence sterling) per diem, and the municipality of Paris spends, I am told, an income inferior only to the six great Powers of Europe.

"The part of the Regal-Republican, Imperial-Republican Capital showing least change is that Conservative quarter which may be called 'Anglo-American Paris.' This 'West End' is bounded north by the Boulevards des Italiens and the Madeleine; south by the Rue Rivoli and the river (a mere ditch, but not so dirty as father Thames); east by the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, and Véfour; west by the Embassy and the Chapel, with the Vendôme Column as a landmark. Here the northern and western barbarians have their King Plenipo, and their Consul, their chaplain and physician, their pet hotels, English (Meurice's), their club and library (Galignani's), their tavern (Byron's, famed for beer), their dentist, their pharmacies, and their shops labelled, 'English (or American) spoken here,'—which generally means, 'I'm a thief, you're a fool.' We can tell a compatriot a mile off—the men by their billycock hats and tweed suits, their open mouths, hats well at back of head, and red guide-books; the women by their wondrous dress and hats—for which there are special shops—their turned-up toes and noses, their manly strides, their taking men's arms, one on each side; and the glum faces of both sexes on the Sabbath, when the guide-book is exchanged for the Common Prayer-book and the Bible. In this region, where the snuffle of the Yankee mixes with the haspirations of the Cockney, the really Parisianized Englishman is never seen, and if compelled to pass through it he hurries with muffled face in trembling haste, like Mahomet rushing down the demon-haunted defiles of El Hidjr.

"Milan is bravely raising a monument to Napoleon III., whilst the popular feeling of young Italy runs strong against the French. The main reasons appear to be the abstraction of Nice, and the domineering tone assumed by the late Empire. Moreover, 'the peoples' (Kossuth still lives at Turin) do not readily pardon their benefactors. Witness the aversion of Spain and Portugal for England since the Peninsular War. In the next campaign the general voice of the younger and more fiery sort, and of that solid power, the Left Centre, will compel the constitutional Government of Victor Emmanuel, despite all his prepossessions and prejudices, to side with Germany against France. This was written years ago, but it is, methinks, still true.

"I was astonished to find the Italianissimo feeling so rampant in Upper Italy, and the people so excited upon the subject, when their Government have set them an example of calmness, common sense, moderation, and constitutional spirit of compromise, which go far to redeem the character of the Latin race, even in this, the darkest day of its history. Because Dante made the Quarnero Gulf finish Italy, and because Petrarch established the Alps as the surroundings of his fair land, their new geographical politicians would absorb Trieste and Istria; and when Jove shall wax wroth, he will probably grant them their silly prayer.

"Trieste has a mixed population. North of Ponte Rosso is Germania, composed of the authorities, the employés, and a few wealthy merchants. They have a maniacal idea of Germanizing their little world, a mania which secures for them abundant trouble and ill-will, for eight millions cannot denationalize thirty-two millions. There are twelve thousand Italians at Trieste who speak a corrupted Venetian; eleven thousand of these are more or less poor, one thousand are perhaps too rich. However, their civilization is all Roman, and they take a pride in it, whilst the exaltés and the Italianissimi hate their rulers like poison. In this they are joined by the mass of the wealthy and influential Israelites, who divide the commerce with the Greeks. The former subscribe handsomely to every Italian charity or movement; and periodically and anonymously memorialize the King of Italy. The lower class take a delight in throwing large squibs, here called by courtesy 'torpedoes,' amongst the unpatriotic petticoats who dare to throng the Austrian balls. The immediate suburbs, country, and villages are Slav, and even in the City some can barely speak Italian. This people detests all its fellow-citizens with an instinctive odium of race, and with a dim consciousness that it has been ousted from its own. Thus the population may be said to be triple. Politics are lively, and the Italianissimi thrive because the constitutional Government, which has taken the place of the old patriarchal despotism, is weak, acting as if it feared them. Austria of to-day is feeble and gentlemanly, and as such is scarcely a match for the actual Italy. Let us lay out a little map of politics immediately around our small corner of the world.

"Being devoted Austrians, we have many anxieties concerning the political health of this admirable country. Austria, once so famed for the astute management, the 'Politiké,' which kept in order the most heterogeneous of households between Bohemia and Dalmatia, and from Hungary to the Milanese, is suffering from a complication of complaints. The first is the economic: her deficit for 1877 is already laid at twenty-six millions of florins; she lives on paper, and she habitually outruns the constable. Secondly, are the modus vivendi with Hungary, the Convention, the Bank, and half a dozen other troubles, which result from the 'chilling dualism' of Count Beust (1867). The inevitable rivalry of a twofold instead of a threefold empire is now deepening to downright hostility. The Slavs complain that the crown of the Empire is being dragged through the mire by the 'Magyarists;' and on December 9th, the Vienna Chamber of Deputies heard for the first time a proposal to substitute Trialism for Dualism. Third, and last, is the Eastern Question, in which the poor invalid is distracted by three physicians proposing three several cures. Doctor Hungary wants only the integrity (!) of Turkey: alliance with England, war with Russia. Doctor Germany, backed by the Archduke Albert, and aided by the army, looks to alliance with Russia, and to the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina when Turkey falls to pieces. Lastly, Doctor Progressist, with the club of the Left, advocates the cold-water treatment, absolute passivity: no annexation, no occupation, no intervention. The triad division seems inveterate: even the Constitutionalist party must split into three—a Centrum, a Left, and a Fortschritts partei. Hence Prince Gortschakoff, not without truth, characterized this mosaic without coherence as 'no longer a State, but only a Government.'

"Austria, like England, is suffering from the manifold disorders and troubles that accompany a change of life. At home we have thrown over for ever the rule of Aristocracy; and we have not yet resigned ourselves to what must inevitably come—Democracy pure and simple. Accordingly, we sit between two stools, with the usual proverbial result. Austria, in 1848, sent to the Limbo of past things the respectable 'paternal government,' with its carcere, its carcere duro, and its carcere durissimo; and threatened to make sausage-meat of M. Ochsenhausen von Metternich. Constitutionalism, adopted by automatism, found the Austrians utterly unfit for freedom; and the last thirty years have only proved that constitutionalism may be more despotic than despotism. Austria has ever been the prey of minorities, German and Magyar. Her Beamter class has adopted the worst form of Latin Bureaucratie. Her Press has one great object in life, that of 'Germanizing' unwilling Slavs. Her fleet has lost Tegetthoff and Archduke Max. Her army, once the best drilled in Europe, and second to none in the ingens magnitudo corporum, has been reduced by short service to a host of beardless boys; and the marvels of the Uchatius gun will not prevent half the regiments being knocked up by a fortnight's work. But these are the inevitable evils of a transition system, and if Austria can only tide over her change of life, she will still enjoy a long, hearty, and happy old age.

"Hence Austro-Hungary is freely denounced as 'disturbing the European Areopagus.' Hence Paskievich declared in 1854 that the road to Stamboul leads through Vienna. Hence Fadajeff, the Panslavist, significantly points out that Europe contains forty millions of Slavs who are not under the White Czar. These ancient Scythians have hitherto shown very little wisdom. Instead of cultivating some general language,—for instance, the old Slavonic, which would have represented Latin,—they are elaborating half a dozen different local dialogues; and, at the last Slav Congress, the Pan-Slav Deputies, greatly to the delight of the Pan-Germanists, were obliged to harangue one another in German. If 'Trialism' be carried out in the teeth of Hungary, what and where can be the capital of the Jugo-Slavs—the Southern and Latin, as opposed to the Pravo-Slavs or orthodox? Where shall be the seat of its Houses? Prague is purely Czech, utterly distasteful to Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. Laibach in Krain is the only place comparatively central; but that means that all would combine to reject Laibach. Meanwhile the Slavs declare that they are treated as Helots, and that they will stand this treatment no longer.

"Austria will hardly declare war against Russia even at the bidding of the Turko-Hungarian alliance—even if menaced with her pet bugbear, the formation of a strong Slav kingdom, or kingdoms, on her south-eastern frontier. She is thoroughly awake to the danger threatened by her friends, that of falling into her four component parts, each obeying the law of gravitation—Styria, Upper and Lower, absorbing herself in Germany, and Dalmatia and Istria merging into Italy. She has made all her preparations for occupying Bosnia, which the Turks are abandoning, and for which it is generally believed they will not fight. Count Andrassy, the rebel of 1848, the Premier of 1876-78, will keep his own counsel and carry out his own plans. He has been unjustly charged with a vacillating and uncertain policy; as if a man who is being frantically pulled diametrically in four opposite directions were not obliged to stoop at times in order to conquer.

"Italy has of late made strong representations at Vienna against the possible occupation of Bosnia by Austria. She knows that the step would for ever debar her from the possessions of Dalmatia; and that the old kingdom, the mother of Emperors, will never rest satisfied till her extensive seaboard is subtended by a proportionate interior. Italy would prefer to occupy Bosnia in propriâ personâ; but, that being hardly possible, she would leave it occupied, or, worst of all, occupied by the Turks. Italy is the deadliest enemy of Austria, and wears the dangerous aspect of a friend. Such is the present standpoint of the Empire,[4] and you see she is still, as she has been for years, a 'political necessity.' We, her well-wishers, can only say to her, in olden phrase, Tu, felix Austria, nube,—'Yea, marry, and take unto thyself the broad and fertile lands lying behind the Dinaric Alps.'

"Meanwhile, Italy, the rival sister of France, the recipient of many favours from her, and, par consequence, her bitterest foe, bides her time, remains quiet as a church mouse, and, like the Scotchman's owl, thinks hard. She is at present the last, the only hope of Latinism. She has shown, since 1870, a prudence, a moderation, an amount of common sense, comparatively speaking, which have surprised the world. Ethnologists, who scoffed at 'Panlatinism,' were overhasty in determining that the game of the Latin race was 'up;' and that the three progressive families of the future are the English (including the German and the Anglo-American), the Slav, and the sons of the Flowery Land. The present standpoint of Italy is this. She has a treaty with Russia which makes her a spectator. She has returned an overwhelming majority of the progressists, who aim at converting her into a Republic; and Italy, classical and mediæval, has never attained her full development except under Republican rule. Meanwhile, her 'citizens and patriots' look forward to recovering Nice, where, in 1860, some 26,000 votes against 160 were polled in favour of annexation to France. She wants an Algeria, and would like to find it at Tunis, with Carthage for capital. And finally, she would fain round off her possessions by annexing from Austria the Trentine, the county of Gorizia, the peninsula of Istria, including the chief emporium, Trieste, and even the kingdom of Dalmatia.

"It was not a little amusing to note the expression of simple amazement with which the general Press of England acknowledged the discovery that Italy 'actually contemplates' this extension of territory. Would they be surprised to hear that such has been her object for the last six hundred years; that in her darkest hour she has never abandoned her claim; that during the last half-century she has urged it with all her might, and that at the present moment she is steadily labouring to the same end? We, who derive experience from the pages of history, firmly believe that the prize would even now be in her hands were it not for Prussia, who calculates upon the gravitation of the Austro-German race, and who already speaks of Trieste as 'our future seaport.' But why, we ask, cannot Italy rest contented with Venice, which, after a century of neglect, might by liberal measures again become one of the principal commercial centres of Europe?

"Under Augustus the whole of Istria was annexed to the tenth region of Italy; the south-eastern limits being the Flumen Arsæ, the modern Arsa, that great gash in the Eastern flank beyond which began Liburnia. Hence Dante sang ('Inferno,' ix. 113-115)—

'Si come a Pola presso del Quarnaro Che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna, Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo.'

Hence Petrarch (Sonnet cxiv.) declares of his Laura, whose praises he cannot waft all the world over—

'——udralo il bel paese, Ch' Apennin parte, e 'l mar circonda e 'l Alpe.'

And who can forget the glorious verse of Alfieri, the first to discern Italy in the 'geographical expression' of the eighteenth century?—

'Giorno verrà, tornerà giorno in cui Redivivi ornai gli Itali staranno, In campo armati,' etc., etc., etc.

"Italy bases her claim to the larger limit, upon geography, ethnology, and sentiment, as well as upon history. Only the most modest of patriots contend that the Isonzo river, the present boundary of Austria, was a capricious creation of Napoleon I. The more ambitious spirits demand the whole southern watershed of the Julian Alps; nor are they wanting who, by 'Alps' understanding the Dinaric chain, would thus include the whole kingdom of Dalmatia inherited from the Romans.

"Ethnologically, again, Istria declares herself Italian, not Austrian. Her 290,000 souls (round number) consist of 166,000 Latins to 109,000 Slavs, the latter a mongrel breed that emigrated between A.D. 800 and 1657; and a small residue of foreigners, especially Austro-German officials. The Italians are, it is true, confined to the inner towns and to the cities of the seaboard; still, these scattered centres cannot forget that to their noble blood Istria has owed all her civilization, all her progress, and all her glories in arts and arms. Lastly, 'sentiment,' as a factor of unknown power in the great sum of what constitutes 'politics,' is undervalued only by the ignorant vulgus. The Istrians are more Italian than the Italians. Since the first constitution of 1848, they have little to complain of the Government in theory, much in practice. Austria, after the fashion of Prussia, unwisely attempts to 'Germanize' her Italian subjects, who in Istria outnumber the Teutons by five to one. The true policy of Austria would be to Italianize the Italians, to Slavonize the Slavs, and to Magyarize the Hungarians; in other words, to elicit the good qualities of her four component races, instead of attempting to unrace them. And her first practical step should be to abolish all idea of 'Germanizing.' If she did not try for it, it might settle itself.

"The chief danger of Italy, at present, is wishing to go too fast. She would run before she can walk steadily: she forgets the past: she ignores that her independence and unity were won for, and not by, her; that each defeat was to her a conquest. She had the greatest statesman in Europe, Cavour; who so disposed his game, opening it in 1854 with the Crimean War, and following it up with a seat for Piedmont amongst the Great Powers in the Congress of Paris, that it led by a mathematical certainty to Solferino in 1859, and to securing Rome for a capital in 1870. But 'milor Camillo' is dead, and Prince Bismarck, who rules in his stead, bluntly says, 'No one can doubt, even beyond the Alps, that an attack upon Trieste and Istria would meet the point of a sword which is not Austrian.' Italy must put her house in order before she can aspire to extend her grounds. Her income is insufficient for her expenses; her gold is paper; her currency is forced, and her heavy taxes breed general discontent. She has a noble estate for agriculture, but her peasants prefer the stocking to the stocks, the Funds, or the Bank. Her Civil Service is half paid, and compelled to pay itself. Her Custom-house duties are a scandal to a civilized power, and her post-office is a farce. Her army cannot compare, in fighting qualities, with that of Prussia, Austria, or even France. Her sailors are not tailors, but she cannot afford a first-rate armour-clad fleet; she was beaten at Lissa, and her seaboard would easily be blockaded by a great maritime power. Moreover, she has that dual Government at Rome, and a terrible skeleton in the cupboard,—her treatment of the Pope.

"The Liberal press and the 'indignation meetings' of Italy have been alternatively severe and sarcastic upon entente cordiale between the Vatican and the Seraglio. But the Papal logic is clear and sound. It says, 'The reverence of Constantine for the Keys transferred the seat of civil empire to the Byzantium, whereas Anti-Christ Russia founded the pseudo-throne of Saint Peter in the far north. We fought against the Moslem when he was an aggressor. Innocent XI., not to mention the crusader-Popes, preached the liberation of Vienna. Pius I. worked up to the Battle of Lepanto. But things are now changed. You, Bulgarian and Bosnian Catholics, have religious liberty, and you will have political liberty when you deserve it! Meanwhile, obey the Sultan, who has nothing to do with Christianity, and shun Anti-Christ—the Czar.' Good logic, I say, cold and clear-drawn; but powerless to purge away the sentiments, the prejudices, and the passions of mankind.

"Italy drives the coach too fast. Patriotic Italians declare that England has no right to hold Malta. Cyprus was under Venice; ergo, they think it should be under Italy. The Trentine, the Southern Tyrol, Istria, and Dalmatia, are in the same conditions. The Latin kingdom has achieved a great position in Japan. She sends her travellers to explore New Guinea. She aims at being the most favoured nation in Egypt, where she lately received a severe schiaffo. The Italian national expedition landed in the dominions of the Khedive without having had the decency to call upon him in Cairo. You know how the Egyptian noticed the affront. Finally, she talks of herself as one of the Powers, ready to occupy the insurgent districts which the Porte cannot reduce. Such is the actual standpoint of United Italy.

"I will now sketch the state of Hungary, whose ambition threatens to make her aggressive, entitled, by the press of England, the 'backbone of the Austrian monarchy;' and praised for the 'superior political organization' with which she has crushed her Slav rivals.

"Since the days, now forgotten, when Prince Esterhazy first flashed, in London society, his diamond jacket upon the dazzled eyes of the 'upper ten thousand,' the name of Hungarian has been a passport to favour amongst us. We meet him in the shape of a Kinsky, an Erdŏdy, or a Hunyadi,—well born, well clad, and somewhat unlearned, except in the matter of modern languages. But he is a good rider, a keen sportsman, and a cool player for high stakes—qualities in one point (only) much resembling Charity. He looks like a gentleman in a drawing-room and in the hunting-field; he is quite at home at a fancy ball; he wears his frogged jacket, his tights and his tall boots, his silks, satins, and furs, with an air; his manners are courteous, cordial, and pleasant; in money matters he has none of the closeness of the cantankerous Prussian, none of the meanness of the Italian; and, lastly, he makes no secret of his sympathy with England, with the English, and with all their constitution-manias. What can you want more? You pronounce him a nice fellow, and all, woman especially, re-echo your words, 'He is such a gentleman!' and—he received the Prince of Wales so enthusiastically!

"But there is another side (politically speaking) to this fair point of view. The Hungarian is a Tartar with a coat of veneer and varnish. Hungary is, as regards civilization, simply the most backward country in Europe. Buda-Pest is almost purely German, the work of the Teutons, who, at the capital, do all the work; you hardly ever hear in the streets a word of Magyar, and the Magyars have only managed to raise its prices and its death-rate to somewhat double those of London. The cities, like historic Gran on the Danube, have attempts at public buildings and streets; in the country towns and villages the thoroughfares are left to Nature; the houses and huts, the rookeries and doggeries are planted higgledy-piggledy, wherever the tenants please; and they are filthier than any shanty in Galway or Cork, in Carinthia or Krain. The Ugrian or Ogre prairies have no roads, or rather they are all road; and the driver takes you across country when and where he wills. The peasantry are 'men on horseback,'—in this matter preserving the customs of their Hun and Tartar ancestors. They speak a tongue of Turkish affinity, all their sympathies are with their blood-kinsmen the Turks, and they have toiled to deserve the savage title of 'white Turks,' lately conferred upon them by Europe.

"Fiume, the only seaport of Hungary, is a study of Hungarian nationality. The town is neatly built, well paved, and kept tolerably clean by Slav and Italian labour, the former doing the coarse, the latter the fine work. The port is, or rather is to be, bran-new. Because Austria chooses to provide a worse than useless, and frightfully expensive—in fact, ruinous—harbour for Trieste, whose anchoring roads were some of the best in Europe, therefore (admire the consequence) Hungary demands a similar folly for her emporium, Fiume, whose anchoring roads are still better. After throwing a few million of florins into the water, the works are committed to the charge of the usual half-dozen men and boys; moreover, as the port is supposed to improve, so its shipping and its business fall off in far quicker ratio. Commerce cannot thrive amongst these reckless, feckless people. There is no spirit of enterprise, no union to make force, no public spirit; the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee are bustling New England centres in comparison with Fiume; and the latter, which might have become the emporium of the whole Dalmatian coast, and a dangerous rival to Trieste, is allowing her golden opportunity to pass away never to return. For when Dalmatia shall have been vitalized by the addition of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, her glorious natural basins—harbours that can hold all the navies of the world—will leave Fiume mighty little to do except what she does now, look pretty and sit in the sun.