connected with the literature of this political question, and whilst on my various lecturing tours in every direction of the United Kingdom, I was always astonished and painfully surprised upon seeing how little the British public at large cares about India, and what inadequate proportion the authorities bear to the importance of the question. The number of those who formerly busied themselves with a thorough investigation of Central Asia has of late fearfully diminished in England; no wonder that criminal indifference was rapidly spreading, and that astute Russia, making the best of this English national mistake, could easily progress on her way, and feigning amity could, with the assassin's dagger concealed from view, steadily approach unwary England. I am sure that, from the moment when Englishmen will cease to discuss the question whether India ought to be given up or retained, and when solid watchfulness will displace the present apathy, then the position of Great Britain in India and throughout all Asia will change at once. Russia, her great and most formidable rival, will see that the period of constant trumperies is at an end, that she will have to face, henceforward, not the whimsical views of party politicians, but the will of a great and mighty nation, a nation jealous of its honour, and ready to defend her banner with all her available resources.

CHAPTER XIII.

MYSELF AND MY PRESENT BOOK.

To speak of one self is, according to an Oriental saying, "the business of the devil." It is, indeed, a most unpleasant business, and if I do it nevertheless, I feel actuated by motives I cannot leave unexplained on the present occasion. The position of a foreigner, coming forward to defend the interests of a country not his own, of a people to whom he is an alien, is certainly a very rare occurrence in the history of political literature and politics in general. I do not wonder at all to see myself accused as a fanatic, as a maniac, as a man whose fancy is totally incomprehensible, and for whose doings people could find the only explanation in his Hungarian nationality, a view which I frequently found expressed in the following sentence :-" Professor Vambéry is a Hungarian, carrying in his breast, in indelible characters, hatred of Russia. He cannot forget 1848, when General Paskievitch compelled his countrymen to lay down their arms raised against Austria. He is con

tinually brooding revenge, and thence his constant efforts to embroil us with Russia." Well, I dare to say this supposition is utterly false. I entered the arena of political discussion, as I have already stated elsewhere, from motives strictly humanitarian, and I am in no way influenced either by my national feelings involving antipathies against Russia, or by any special predilection for, or unconditional admiration of the English. I have been often taken to task as to why I cared as a student, and as a professor of Oriental languages, for politics in general; politics which lie outside the sphere of a strictly theoretical man, and may be called quite an out of the way occupation for anybody whose attention is supposed to be absorbed by languages, history, and ethnology. My answer has always been, and is even now, that there is a great difference between the student who spends his life in his library, viewing things from a distance, and the traveller, who moves on the field of practical experience, and who, assuredly, is more vividly impressed by what he hears and sees around him. The traveller lives and breathes for a long time, if not during his whole life, with the peoples and nations he came across in his journeys, and whom he has made the special subject of his inquiries. He likes to indulge in speculations about their future; he is eagerly bent upon ameliorating

their condition; and as the future of such nations is intimately connected with the daily question of European politics, the traveller is, so to say, dragged into the field of political speculation, and cannot help becoming a politician himself.

Similar reasons account for my so-called English sympathies. If an Orientalist cannot be prevented from becoming a so-called politician, he should not be censured for following in his political lines the principle of true liberty, and from paying his tribute of admiration to that portion of the European world which he finds to be at the top of our civilisation, and where he perceives all those qualities and conditions which constitute the purest and most perfect light of our western culture. There may be, and there no doubt are, nations more deeply versed in abstruse learning, more peaceful, and more imaginative than the English; but there certainly is none so free and independent in their private and in public life. None can boast of those liberal institutions, none of being able to appreciate so thoroughly the value of individual and independent action in private concerns and in public affairs. Now, I cannot help saying that, with me, liberty and freedom is the highest sign of perfection; and not only do I expect the free man to show an earnest zeal to liberate others, but I consider such a man to be the most

appropriate instrument for accomplishing that purpose. Only a free man is capable of great deeds; only he can wipe out the superstitions and vices of decaying Asia; and for these reasons it is that my sympathies are with the English, whose superior manhood, fearlessness and self-respect, enables them to carry through the regeneration of Asia more successfully than any of the European nations

extant.

I need scarcely say that these sympathies of mine do not interfere with my forming a fair judgment on the drawbacks of the English character, drawbacks which are of little or no harm at all in their doings in Asia, and may at most be an impediment to their internal progress, a state of things which I feel I have neither the right nor the ability to criticise, and which will always remain outside the pale of my political writings.

It is in connection with this view that I found it rather absurd to see myself classified by certain people as belonging to the Conservative party. I have nothing to do with party politics in England, and the only reason for seeing myself identified with the interests of this party may be found in the circumstance that this party has of late years shown a more pronounced tendency to support the Imperial policy; it has manifested greater zeal for the maintenance of