And Bacchus to the dance--
The god who shakes the soil of Thebes--be leader.

"But hither Creon, lo! proceeds,
Son of Menoekeus, newly rais'd
The sceptre of this land to sway.
Now at new tokens of the gods,
Methinks, some sage device he plies.
Therefore to special parliament
Hath he by general summons fetch'd
This meeting of the elders."

The next letter largely concerns Persia. And it is necessary to remember
that, in the early part of the nineteenth century, she began, at the
suggestion of France, a most unfortunate war (as regards herself) with
Russia.

In 1826 there was another war, and this cost Persia all the rest of her
possessions in Armenia. The taxation of the people, which the rulers
enforced to enable them to pay the expenses of the war, caused the former
to rise in insurrection in 1829. The death of the Crown Prince in 1833
seemed the crowning blow to the fortunes of Persia, for he had been the
only man who had seriously tried to raise his country from the depths to
which she had fallen.

In 1848 the son of the Shah, who had, through the assistance of Britain
and Russia, obtained the throne, came into office, and he resolved to put
forward claims to Afghanistan and Beluchistan. When the ruler of Herat
agreed that the Shah had claims, the English Government made the Shah sign
an agreement in 1853 that he would give up pressing his claims as regarded