There are besides many other reasons which would recommend, if not the continuance, at all events the preservation, of the line of policy the late Government pursued in this direction; but we shall not dwell on it any longer, having before us the not less interesting part of the question, namely, Russia's position in Turkoman Steppe.

Without getting nervous, or Mervous, as the Duke of Argyll jestingly remarked, about the pile of ruins called Merv, or about my former hosts in the north of Persia, who are the most contemptible ruthless robbers, with whom I cannot have any sympathy, I must say at once that Russia's doings on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea are of a very dubious character, and not at all calculated to soothe the apprehension of native and foreign Jingoes. Russian official writers, such as Professor Martens, and his over-zealous colleagues in England, will certainly come forward with their pious indignation against those who venture to suspect the humanitarian doings of Russia in that quarter of the world. Well, I have not the slightest desire to exculpate and to patronise the adventurous knights-errant of the Turkoman Steppes-I go even further in saying that it would be a real blessing for mankind in Persia to have chastised and brought to order these restless remnants of Turanian savageness-but I cannot acquiesce in seeing Russia entrusted with that work-Russia, which is always anxious to parade philanthropic purpose in the interests of her insatiable earth-hunger, and in her secret aggression upon England. Are we really thought naïve enough to believe that twenty millions of roubles spent hitherto in the desert, and other millions which must be spent in future, have no other aim but to serve the sacred cause of humanity? The detached oasis countries in the Küren mountains will never pay the excessive costs of a firm footing, as little as the Khanates will ever pay the Russo-European administration; and just as the protracted march across the Khirgiz Steppes had to be pursued with the distant but sure scheme upon the Khanates, which are looked upon at St. Petersburg as simple étapes, so will and can the present march across the Hyrcanian have no other object in view but the approach of the fertile district of Eastern Khorasan, viz. to Herat and its environs. There is no doubt as to this ultimate result of the Russian plans, whether or not people in England get Mervous or nervous about it.

A similar prospect, but with later success, opens with reference to the policy of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg in Eastern Turkestan, where, in spite of all the diplomatic skill of the Chinese, Russia will ultimately triumph, driving the big-talking but helpless and weak Chinese army before her as far as she pleases. It is an erroneous belief to fancy that Chinese proficiency in arms has overthrown the rule of the late Yakub Khan, and reconquered the Thien-sban-nan-lu province. No! the rule of the late Atalik Ghazi crumbled from itself whilst he was yet in life, and yet, had, his premature death

not taken place, the disorderly rabble, called Chinese Army, would not have indulged in the easy walk to Kashgar and Yarkend, where the wild confusion and disunion of the Moslem natives, and not military strength, have helped the Chinese to pluck laurels. In this regard I cannot share the opinion expressed in the otherwise very able paper on 'The Chinese in Central Asia,' published in No. 298 of the Quarterly Review. It will take a long time before China can cope with Russia, who, even in the case of a peaceable retrocession of Kuldja, will always have the means of proceeding in her policy of aggression until she has reached the foot of the northern slopes of the Kuen-lun mountains, the north-western continuation of which, namely, the Pamir, is actually almost entirely under her sway.

In attributing such far-seeing and portentous schemes to the actually semi-bankrupt and inwardly rotten state of Russia, I know that I shall, in the eyes of a certain class of politicians, come under the charge of inveterate Russophobia and unjustified black-painting. Accustomed as I might have become during the two last decades of my literary career to such charges, I must nevertheless excuse myself by saying: (1) that I do not look upon it as a mere chance that similar views of mine, exhibited years ago, and ridiculed at that time, have since been fulfilled, and that it is not to the sham gift of divination of the former dervish, but to the autoptical experience of a traveller, that I ascribe this sad success; (2) that it is not the Russia of to-day, but the Russia of the near future, from whom I expect the successful execution of these schemes-schemes which are getting riper every day, every hour, and command therefore the assiduous attention of British statesmen, to whatever party they may belong. Now that the excessive heat of party-struggle is gradually subsiding, and that the thick clouds of passion will not any longer prevent the eye of the practical and sound-judging Englishmen from viewing distant objects in the proper light, I believe the time has come to ask: What is the basis upon which the advanced English Liberals would like to build the policy of a mutual understanding with Russia? Do they seriously believe they will find the necessary guarantee for the safety of the British Empire in the promises and good faith of Russian statesmen, and do they really not anticipate any danger from the conterminous neighbourhood of the northern rival close on the frontiers of India ?

These questions so variously and frequently discussed during the last decades of the present century, far from finding a proper solution, have, particularly in recent times, elicited such fantastic views and such wild theories, that even a foreign bystander may be pardoned when, impelled by curiosity and by a warm interest of long standing in that matter, he allows himself the interpellation. Let us consider these questions one by one, and let us begin with the mutual understanding.

When the English friends of Russia-I mean those who are plus catholique que le Pape-more Russian than the Russians themselves -in order to exculpate the continual aggression of the Court of St. Petersburg, come forward with the analogy of England's similar doings in the South, they have only proved the unavoidableness of future collisions, and their comparison is certainly wrong in reference to England, who would be a thousand times happier were she to stop at her natural frontier of the Suleiman range, and who but reluctantly moves forward in her self-defence to the great disgust of the British taxpayer. It is only the blind who must fail to see that not an unbounded ambition, nor an Imperial' policy, but Russia's secret attacks and insatiable lust of conquest, have forced England to cross the Kheiber and the Bolan.

Here we have a constitutional free people, which clings spasmodically to the strings of the state-purse, and is always unwilling to spend the fruit of its labour upon venturesome undertakings, whilst there we see an unrestrained autocrat, who must lavish the blood and wealth of millions in order to suppress the dismal sound of the clattering of chains in the flourish of idle glory! and this is called analogy of motives? I presume the reader will conceive at once that with such a difference of motives the future prospect of a mutual understanding between England and Russia is a very dark one, and that consequently the idea of exchanging the neighbourhood of the rough, irksome, and barbarian Asiatic for that of the apparently refined European, who wears all kinds of murderous. arms concealed under his dress, is the unhappiest possible in the world. If the Indian subjects of her Majesty had progressed so far in their notions about modern or Western civilisation as to appreciate fully the good intentions of their English masters, and the undeniable change for the better which has already taken place in various departments of social and political life-I mean to say, if they were keen enough to discern between the English and the Russian civilising influence in the East-there would not be the slightest fear or danger from the immediate neighbourhood of Russia. But under the actual conditions, when the question whether India be Dar-ul-Harb (Abode of War) or Dar-ul-Islam (Abode of Peace) is still largely discussed, when the innate love for continual change, so common with all Asiatics, nay, with all societies and men in the period of childhood, gives birth to vague hopes and illusions, at such a time England ought not and cannot let her outspoken rival approach the field of her activity, that enclosure upon the gates of which so many heroes have inscribed their names with blood. What use in denying the fact that the North-Western Provinces, nay, the whole Mohammedan portion of India, are yet much like a powdermill in the close vicinity of which the declared enemy cannot be admitted? Those who believe that England may avert the seditious

designs of Russia by a similar attack upon Turkestan are grossly mistaken; for the utterly coward and unpatriotic inhabitants of the Khanates can hardly be revolutionised, whilst the inimical spark thrown upon the soil of India will necessarily cause the most fearful destruction. With the settled Ozbegs, Tadjiks, Sarts, and Kuramas, any catastrophe like that of the Sepoy revolution of 1857 is wholly unimaginable.

Suffice it to say that the only means left to England to stave off successfully the plots of her rival consists exclusively in unremitting watchfulness, and not in the idle hope of a future good understanding between the two rival Powers. It would be certainly most desirable, in the interest of the civilisation of India, that the two great representatives of our Western culture should come to a mutual understanding; but the dictum of optimist writers, that Asia is big enough for the activity of both great Powers, is unfortunately an empty phrase, and the old Persian poet when saying 'Ten dervishes have room on one carpet, but not two kings in one country,' is pretty near the truth. It is obviously clear that the eventual costs of the policy of extreme watchfulness and of other steps connected with it may find a more useful application in the material and moral development of India; but the acre field which we intend to till and to cultivate must be, before all, made safe against the covetousness of our neighbour. The money spent upon the late Afghan war will be only thrown away if the present Government should undo the work of their predecessors-a work commanded by urgent necessity, and executed as effectually as local conditions and political party spirit in England have permitted.

Pesth: May 1880.

A. VAMBÉRY.

ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG:

RETROSPECTIVE PROPHECY AS A FUNCTION OF SCIENCE.

'Une marque plus sûre que toutes celles de Zadig.'-CUVIER.1

Ir is a usual and a commendable practice to preface the discussion of the views of a philosophic thinker by some account of the man and of the circumstances which shaped his life and coloured his way of looking at things; but, though Zadig is cited in one of the most important chapters of Cuvier's greatest work, little is known about him, and that little might perhaps be better authenticated than it is.

It is said that he lived at Babylon in the time of King Moabdar; but the name of Moabdar does not appear in the list of Babylonian sovereigns brought to light by the patience and the industry of the decipherers of cuneiform inscriptions in these later years; nor indeed am I aware that there is any other authority for his existence than that of the biographer of Zadig, one Arouet de Voltaire, among whose more conspicuous merits strict historical accuracy is perhaps hardly to be reckoned.

Happily Zadig is in the position of a great many other philosophers. What he was like when he was in the flesh, indeed whether he existed at all, are matters of no great consequence. What we care about in a light is that it shows the way, not whether it is lamp or candle, tallow or wax. Our only real interest in Zadig lies in the conceptions of which he is the putative father; and his biographer has stated these with so much clearness and vivacious illustration, that we need hardly feel a pang, even if critical research should prove King Moabdar and all the rest of the story to be unhistorical, and reduce Zadig himself to the shadowy condition of a solar myth.

Voltaire tells us that, disenchanted with life by sundry domestic misadventures, Zadig withdrew from the turmoil of Babylon to a secluded retreat on the banks of the Euphrates, where he beguiled his

''Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe,' Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, Ed. iv. t. i. p. 185.