certainly will, place at their disposal the goods, the honours, and the
preferment justly the due of others; and in those more numerous and
certainly more unhappy countries, where the rule of the tyrant is
substituted for the law of God, the unwearying flatterer, patient under
blows and abstemious under high-feeding, will assuredly make his way to
power.

Without doubt the Eastern portion of the world, where an hereditary, or
at least traditional, despotism has never ceased since the earliest
social records, and where a mode of thought infinitely more degrading
than any feudalism has become ingrained in the blood and soul of the
chief races, presents far more favourable conditions to the growth and
development of the true adventurer than are offered in any free country.
For in a free country the majority can rise and overthrow the favourite
of fortune, whereas in a despotic country they cannot. Of Eastern
countries in this condition, Russia is the nearest to us; though perhaps
we understand the Chinese character better than the Russian. The Ottoman
empire and Persia are, and always have been, swayed by a clever band of
flatterers acting through their nominal master; while India, under the
kindly British rule, is a perfect instance of a ruthless military
despotism, where neither blood nor stratagem have been spared in
exacting the uttermost farthing from the miserable serfs--they are
nothing else--and in robbing and defrauding the rich of their just and
lawful possessions. All these countries teem with stories of adventurers
risen from the ranks to the command of armies, of itinerant merchants
wedded to princesses, of hardy sailors promoted to admiralties, of
half-educated younger sons of English peers dying in the undisputed
possession of ill-gotten millions. With the strong personal despotism of
the First Napoleon began a new era of adventurers in France; not of
elegant and accomplished adventurers like M. de St. Germain, Cagliostro,