era of the history of India, or of Central Asia, before carefully
consulting the volumes of Mr Kaye.

These volumes, however, comprise between thirteen and fourteen hundred
octavo pages, filled with hard names and minute details, and rendered
more difficult by the unpardonable want of an index. Although a
necessity, therefore, for the more respectable libraries, and a thing
to be hoarded by all collectors as a work of reference, the book has
little chance of being known to the mass of the public; and we
propose, therefore, to arrange the few extracts we are able to give,
in such a way as, with the aid of our own filling up, may convey to
the general reader--what, we suspect, he has never received
before--some distinct idea of one of the most fantastic tricks that
ever made the angels weep.

There is no country in the world more secure from external invasion
than India; but on the west, more especially, nature has interposed
between her and the more civilised powers of Europe and Asia a
succession of rivers, mountains, and deserts, absolutely impassable by
an army of any formidable magnitude. Notwithstanding this, there had
been long an uneasy feeling connected with the idea of the territorial
aggrandisement of Russia, and of late years, by the desire manifested
by that power to interfere in the affairs of Persia. In 1837-38,
therefore, when a Persian army was before Herat, with Russian officers
busy in the camp, it is no wonder that, to previously excited
imaginations, the danger should have seemed to assume a tangible
form. The principality of Herat, although on the other side of
intervening deserts, extending for many hundred miles, was in itself a
fertile and beautiful oasis, where a numerous army might be refreshed
and provisioned, and established as on a vantage-ground. From thence