with the flowing honours of a black beard descending to his waist,
always the most cherished appendage of oriental dignity. He had lived
for twenty years in undisturbed seclusion, if not 'the world
forgetting,' certainly 'by the world forgot,' consoling himself for the
loss of his kingdom in a domestic circle of six hundred wives, but
always 'sighing his soul' towards the mountains and valleys of
Afghanistan, and patiently awaiting the _kismet_, or fate, which was to
restore him to his throne. The preparations thenceforward went rapidly
on. The contingent raised by the Shah was united (more for form than
use) to the British force, and in three months the expedition began its
operations."

But before I conclude this introduction to the letters, which detail the
results of these treaties with the Maharajah, and the march of Shah
Shooja to Cabool, as I have spoken of the leading characters of
Afghanistan, I may be permitted to say a few words about the persons
through whose exertions the Shah has been restored to the throne of that
country--the officers of the British army; and I do so the more
anxiously, because the naval and military glory of our country, which in
my early days was the theme of every song, is now seldom heard of in
society, and those gallant services appear to be nearly forgotten, which
during a long protracted state of warfare, within our own recollection,
placed England in a position to dictate her own terms of peace to the
world:--a state of society which encourages a certain class of persons
the more effectually to abuse the military profession, and to mislead
their deluded followers, by clamouring about the expense of the army,
and the aristocratic bearing of its members, that they may the more
readily carry out their own schemes of personal vanity and demoralizing
political economy.