place, Persia acts as a cover to Herat,1 which lies on the one road by which a large European force might really advance upon the Indus; and, in the second place, it is not for our interest, or for the interest of humanity at large, that Russia should be turned aside from her, on the whole, useful task of civilizing the barbarians who lie between her present possessions and the base of the great ranges to the north of India, by the temptation of overrunning a half-civilized country, the possession of which would bring her into near neighbourhood with us, both across land and water.

In the earlier part of this century, our Government bestowed at least as much attention on Persia as it deserved, whence arose, not only a large amount of expenditure, but a very considerable amount of knowledge with regard to that country, especially in the Indian services. Of late, the current has set in a different direction, and if we once took too much trouble with the Court of Tehran, we now, perhaps, take too little. The grounds of this carelessness are quite intelligible. We speak with irritation of Turkish barbarism, but Persian barbarism is far worse; and the mixture of "fecklessness" and frivolity with blood and violence is naturally very irritating to Englishmen. Still, however natural our irritation may be, it is probably not for the interest either of Persia or of ourselves to give way to it, and the best way to avoid doing so is to think of Persia, not as in the same category with Egypt or Turkey, but rather as belonging to the same class of powers with which we have, from time to time, been brought in contact since we first began to extend our conquests in India.

2

We carry on relations with her through a minister-plenipotentiary at Tehran, and through two consuls, one of whom is settled at Resht, and the other at Tabreez. Resht is the capital

1 A writer in the Saturday Review of October 10th, speaks as if some intrigue for the transfer of Herat to Persia were going on with the new ruler of Affghanistan, but I have seen no confirmation of the rumour.

2 See in Lady Sheil's and Mr. Watson's books, the story of the Bābees, and of the murder of the Prime Minister in 1851.

of the important province of Ghilan, on the south and southwest of the Caspian, and Tabreez is the most populous place in Persia; the capital of the province of Azerbijan, lying on the great road by which Persia communicates with Europe.

Whether the Persian mission should be under the Foreign Office or the India Office has long been a disputed question. For the present, it has been settled in favour of the former, and that is the reason why I have had no hesitation about including Persia in to-night's lecture. I need hardly, of course, remind you that we have two sets of relations with Asiatic countries the one set Imperial, the other specially Indian. These two interpenetrate and connect with each other at many points, for the horizon of the Indian Viceroy is necessarily wide. Hear the words of one who had the best possible means of knowing what he was talking about:

"Of course, in dealing with independent principalities and powers beyond the bounds of India, the Governor-General must act in concert with the English Cabinet whenever he is dealing with a European State, or with any Oriental nation such as Persia, and China, at whose court there is a representative of Her Majesty. But even subject to this limitation, the Indian Foreign Office yet remains the focus of politics for half Asiathe storehouse of romance of all the East. Murmurs of Dutch aggression in far Sumatra, and whispers of piratical prahus, lurking amid the unexplored isles of the Malayan Archipelago; rumours of French enterprise in the feverish rice-swamps of Cochin-China, and quaint glimpses of Burmese life at the court of the golden-footed monarch of Mandalay,—such are the varied contents of a mail-packet from the southern seas. Out of the west come tidings of pilgrim caravans at Mecca, of pearl-fishers in the Persian Gulf, or of burning slave-ships on the coast of equatorial Africa; the outrages of the Christian Emperor in Abyssinia are not omitted, nor those of the Wahabee fanatic at Riad overlooked. North-eastward, down the Himalayan passes of Bhootan and Nepaul, the life that slowly

stirs among the Lamas and monasteries of Thibet sends now and then a faint pulsation into Bengal; and lately the valley .of Cashmere afforded a passage to envoys from the uncouth Khans of Chinese Tartary. Finally, in the furthest north, beyond Affghanistan and the deserts of the wandering Turkomans, looms the giant form of steadily advancing Russia."

Many of the subjects alluded to in this striking passage are more Imperial than Indian, and, as such, I must say a word or two about them; but I may pass over, as specially Indian, Affghanistan, Burmah, and the affairs of that august personage whom we are pleased to describe as the Imaum of Muscat, but who is more properly described as the Sultan of Oman. Certain other matters, hinted at in the above extract, must also be passed over, because in a single lecture on Asia one has enough to do to include ever so slight a sketch of our relations with independent powers, without taking any account of colonial possessions.

There is one larger question which is at once thoroughly Imperial and thoroughly Indian. I allude of course to the question of Central Asia-a question which is every year growing in importance, and to some remarks on which I must now ask your attention.

CENTRAL ASIA.-The vast space, extending from the Caspian to the frontiers of the Chinese Empire, and which used to figure in our older maps as Independent Tartary, is divided, ---(1.) Into a huge zone of steppes lying along the Caspian and around the Aral, assuming to the eye of the wanderer who has to traverse them the true desert character for many days' march together; and (2.) into a much more favoured and well-peopled country, through which the Jaxartes and the Oxus-the SyrDaria and Amu-Daria of modern geographers—with their affluents, spread wealth and fertility.

1 Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1867, pp. 2, 3; Art. "Foreign Policy of Sir John Lawrence."