to be given at any rate. Such conduct would have made any king unpopular; but what must it have been in a king, who could hardly be popular at any rate- a king restored and supported by foreigners? The Affghans hated us; but for the golden image whom we had set up for them to worship, him they hated and despised.

"The surrender of Dost Mahomed," said Sir Alexander Burnes, "has made the country as quiet as Vesuvius after an eruption: how long it will continue so, God only knows." One thing was certain, that it could not continue so for ever. The country hardly ever was quite pacified. As in a volcanic country new craters were perpetually forming-till, at length, at Cabool, came the grand outbreak of the central volcano.

We agree with Lieutenant Eyre's editor, in opposition to the Edinburgh Reviewer, that that outbreak was, to a certain extent, prepared and organized. There is no other way of explaining the simultaneous occurrence of insurrection in different parts of the country, and the warnings we received; nor can we see the difficulty which, in the opinion of the Reviewer, attaches to the formation of such a conspiracy. It needs no very refined organization to combine men who are already united by the freemasonry of a common hatred. Those who plotted the outbreak on a particular day may have been few in number; they knew that, on the first glimpse of success, thousands were ready to follow their lead.

Leaders were not wanting, who had never acknowledged the existing government-such as the chiefs of Nijrow in Kohistan. "Since our first occupation of Cabool," says Lieutenant Eyre, "Nijrow had become a resort for all such restless and discontented characters, as had rendered themselves obnoxious to the existing government." These men, it seems, were guilty of "hatching against the state treasonable designs." Among them were such as "Meer Musjeedee, a contumacious rebel against the Shah's authority, obstinately refusing to make his submission even upon the most favourable terms, openly put himself at the head of a powerful and well-organized party, with the avowed intention of expelling the Feringees, and overturning the existing government.”

...

Contumacious rebellion . . . treasonable designs .. No, no, Lieutenant Eyre. To call these men rebels, and their designs treasonable, was excusable in November 1841; it was then your "métier d'etre royaliste," on behalf of the king whom you were sent there to protect. But it is not so that Englishmen generally will speak of them, even in 1843. The chiefs of Nijrow are in respectable company.

"What want these outlaws, patriots should have?"

There was once a contumacious rebel called Wallace, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered for his treasonable designs. There was once a contumacious rebel called Kosciusko, whose

treasonable designs, though unsuccessful, were only visited with life-long exile. There were, between thirty and forty years since, a great number of contumacious rebels in Spain, whose treason prospered, and so became no treason. As history judges the Scotchmen of the 14th century, the Poles of the 18th, the Spaniards of 1808, so will she judge the Affghan chiefs, who never acknowledged, and ultimately overthrew, the king set up by the Feringees.

The first three pages of Lady Sale's journal, dated September 1841, are most significant of the then state of things. It seems that "a chief, contemptuously designated as a robber"—that is, we presume, an outlaw in arms against the existing government, -appeared in a town where he had no right to appear: that, consequently, a force was sent to apprehend him, who were "fired upon from six forts," whether with any result is not stated. Hereupon a larger force is sent, who reach a pass where (in September,) there was snow, and bitter cold. Beyond this pass the people of the country had fled, abandoning their property, and "their suffering must be severe in the approaching winter." The chiefs are all submission; but the orders were "peremptory to destroy the forts which had fired upon the Shah's troops." Akram Khan-we presume the chief above mentioned is caught, and then we find the Shah has ordered Akram Khan's execution." Meanwhile, the usual payment to certain chiefs has been discontinued, an act not only impolitic, but bordering upon direct dishonesty: and so, at last, there is "a pretty general insurrection" in Kohistan, Cabool itself is discontented, and "all the country about Tezeen and Bhoodkak in a state of revolt. It is only wonderful that this did not take place sooner." So think we.

The desperate opposition through which, from this time (October, 1841), General Sale had to fight his way from Cabool to Jellalabad-the assistance given to his assailants, the Eastern Ghilzies, by bodies of men from Cabool itself-the insults and attacks upon individual officers in and near the city,-all these circumstances, detailed as we find them in Lady Sale's or Lieutenant Eyre's works, force us, judging it is true after the event, but with every allowance we can make, to regard the supineness of the political authorities at Cabool as something perfectly wonderful. As Mirabeau said of the St. Domingo planters, they were sleeping on the edge of the volcano, and its first jets were not enough to wake them. At length, in Lady Sale's Journal, we come to

"Nov. 2. This morning early, all was in commotion in Cabul — the shops were plundered, and the people were all fighting."

An announcement, we think, striking for its simplicity-evidently the real entry of the event, as it then looked, in the

journal of the day. On this "commotion" turned the fate of an army and a kingdom.

It is generally agreed, that active means at first might have repressed the insurrection: but those who had been slow to believe the existence were slow to admit the extent of the danger; nor was it from the beginning so slight as has been represented. The ball, of course, grew by rolling; but it grew with tremendous rapidity. If, on the first day, the insurgents were only a few hundreds, by the next they were truly formidable. Whatever the defects of the position of our force, whatever the blunders of its leaders,-and they appear to have made all that it was possible, and some that it would previously have been impossible, to anticipate-the outbreak, by which an army of 6000 disciplined troops were so immediately induced to take up a defensive position, can never have been contemptible. Every one has felt the justice of Lieutenant Eyre's remarks on the imbecility which first led to the loss, and then prevented the recapture, of the commissariat fort: and, it is clear that the means which alone could enable the force to maintain its position, ought, at any risk, to have been defended, or recovered: still the attempts in furtherance of these objects, ill directed as they were, must have succeeded, had they not been met by a most active resistance, causing a very severe loss to the detachments employed. It is clear that vigorous and well-directed exertions might have resulted in safety and triumph. But it is out of our power to understand, how any one can, after reading Lieutenant Eyre's account of the first three weeks of the siege, feel justified in calling the Affghans "contemptible enemies.' They may seem so to an Edinburgh Reviewer, calmly considering the numerous deficiencies of spirit and sense on our part, which were necessary to counterbalance the superiority of disciplined troops over bands of irregular warriors. Yet no Asiatic nation has successfully resisted us with forces so nearly equal. They did not seem contemptible to the men, on whom, on the occasion of the storm of the Rikabashee fort, (one of the few successful operations undertaken during the siege,) they inflicted a severer loss than that sustained by the conquerors of Ghuznee or Khelât. They did not seem so to Lady Sale, when she noticed how they stood against our guns without having any of their own; when she saw their cavalry, after receiving within a few yards the fire of our advancing columns, rush down the hill upon them-but we must give her own words :

"My very heart leapt to my teeth as I saw the Affghans ride right through them. The onset was fearful. They looked like a great cluster of bees, but we beat them and drove them up again."

(That "great cluster of bees," the close, dark, irregular mass, hanging on the side of the hill, is a true touch of wordpainting). The terrible and disastrous defeat of Beymaroo, on

the 23d November, brought about as it was by an unexampled combination of errors,-a determination, it would seem, to run all the risk possible, to improve and secure no temporary advantage,-marked, as it was, by disgraceful cowardice on the part of some of our troops,-gave rise to exhibitions of daring courage on the part of the Affghans. What are we to say of the Ghazees, estimated by Lady Sale at no more than 150 in number, who, creeping gradually up the side of the hill, charged, sword in hand, upon our square of infantry, broke it, and drove it before them? On our own side, the few Affghan "juzailchees" in our service, who stood by us to the end with a noble and extraordinary fidelity, were about the most efficient part of our army. The truth is, that the Affghans, in these conflicts for the freedom of their land, fully maintained the character which they have long possessed, and which their Rohilla descendants in India, whether as princes or mercenaries, have never forfeited, of being the bravest among the Asiatic nations. And this is not a little to say in their praise. A thoroughly brave man may, it is true, be a thoroughly wicked one; still for nations, even more than individuals, the foundation of all excellence is bravery.

We need not go into any detailed account of the events of the struggle. From the 2d to the 13th November the British forces were struggling to resume a position of superiority; from that date they met with nothing but disaster. On the 15th November Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, the former slightly, the latter desperately, wounded, came into their camp, with a single sepoy, the sole escaped relics of our force at Charekar, announcing by their arrival the complete success of the insurgents in the district of Kohistan. On the 22d November Mahomed Akbar came to aid the revolt. On the 23d occurred the disastrous conflict of Beymaroo, in which our troops were driven into cantonments in utter rout, and saved, in Lieutenant Eyre's judgment, from complete destruction only by the forbearance of their enemies; and, from that point to the evacuation of the cantonments, the picture is one of unvaried and increasing sadness; the hope of victory renounced, the hope of safety growing fainter, provisions becoming scarce, reinforcements impossible; lingering negotiations, alternating with despairing and unsuccessful attempts; within the camp, vacillation, famine, disease, and growing dismay; without, an enemy increasing in strength and confidence, and the worst enemy of all, the terrible winter, gradually creeping on.

In the whole painful and miserable story, as it lies before us,

The Ghazees are a sect of Mussulman fanatics; the Ghilzies a mountain tribe. The war against us had many of the features of a religious war. We read of Mollahs going into all the villages to swear the people to fight to the last, as in a sacred cause, against the infidels.

the most painful feature is the constant recurrence of chances of safety passively neglected, of wasted opportunities, of feats of useless valour. Never did the leaders of a victorious force display more devoted gallantry than was shown by many of the English officers at Cabool. Never in war was made so manifest the all-importance of the one directing mind. Even discipline, for once, was injurious. A body of men, less used to be commanded according to the strict rules of the service, might, perhaps, have been saved, and certainly could hardly have met with so utter a destruction. Had the constitution of an English force permitted it, who can doubt that the officers of the English and Indian regiments might, from among them, have furnished a Xenophon?

But it is impossible, on a contemplation of the whole series of events, not to echo the remark with which Lieutenant Eyre sums up his account of the miserable and disastrous day of battle at Beymaroo, into which were crowded specimens of every one of the errors which, throughout, proved so fatal to us: "It seemed as if we were under the ban of Heaven." No Greek tragedy that ever was constructed bore more strongly the impress of an ever-advancing irresistible fatality—a fatality, however, working to its end, as is the case in all similar events, less through outward circumstances than through the characters of men. In the respective positions, characters, and views of the two English generals, there appears to have been a singular, but unfortunate, adaptation. Whatever incompleteness existed in the unfitness of the one, was filled up by the deficiencies of the other. General Elphinstone's position was, indeed, an unfortunate one for a man, to say the least, of no remarkable vigour of character. Disabled, not only by health, but by an accident on the very first day of the insurrection, from taking an active part in the duties of the defence, or from personally seeing that his orders were obeyed, General Elphinstone was still in command, still the person to whom every proposal must be referred. Dependent on others for the necessary information, it was most natural, though lamentable in its results, that he should distrust his own judgment, and exhibit much consequent indecision. He could not decide upon his own knowledge; and, as the statements of others varied, so did the General's opinion. It has been said that a council of war never fights; General Elphinstone's house, during the siege of the cantonments, was a perpetual council of war.

On the other side, General Shelton, the acting, though not the sole responsible, commander, allowed himself to be overcome by the difficulty of a position, half supreme, half subordinate. Equal in courage to any one in the army, it is clear that he shrunk from an uncertain share of a divided responsibility. If Lady Sale may be trusted, he frequently declined giving any