forward his instructions were, indeed, explicit enough. Briefly they may be defined as to ask for everything and to give nothing. In vain did Dost Mahomed point out that in desiring to regain Peshawur from the Sikhs, he was doing practically no more than England was avowedly bent on doing, on guarding his frontier from danger, and that to exchange Runjeet Singh for his brother Mahomed was but to make his last state worse than his first. Burnes himself fully recognized the justice of his arguments, but Burnes's masters remained obstinately deaf. All they would promise was to restrain Runjeet Singh from attacking Dost Mahomed, provided Dost Mahomed in return bound himself to abstain from an alliance with any other state. At this, says Burnes, the Sirdars only laughed. "Such a promise," said Jubbar Khan, the Ameer's brother, and a staunch champion of the English cause, "such a promise amounts to nothing, for we are not under the apprehension of any aggressions from Lahore; they have hitherto been on the side of the Ameer, not of Runjeet Singh, and yet for such a promise you expect us to desist from all intercourse with Russia, with Persia, with Toorkistan, with every nation but England." To make matters still worse, at this crisis a new actor appeared on the scene, the Russian Vickovitch, bearing letters from Count Simonich and from the Czar himself, though the latter was unsigned, so as to be repudiated or acknowledged as events might require. The Ameer, still willing to please the British, offered to turn the Russian back from his gates, but that, Burnes pointed out, would be contrary to the rule of civilised nations, and Vickovitch was therefore allowed to enter Cabul and to present his letters, which were ostensibly, as those of Burnes had been, of a purely commercial bearing. What Burnes, however, thought of the arrival, he showed plainly enough in a letter written a few days after to a private friend. "We are in a mess here," he writes. "The Emperor of Russia has sent an envoy to Cabul with a blazing letter three feet long, offering Dost Mahomed money to fight Runjeet Singh.... It is now a neck-and-neck race between Russia and ourselves, and if his Lordship would hear reason he would forthwith send agents to Bokhara, Herat, Candahar, and Koondooz, not forgetting Sindh." His Lordship, however, would not hear such reason as Burnes had to offer, and when on March 5th, 1838, certain specific demands were presented by the Ameer, that the English should protect Cabul and Candahar from Persia, that Runjeet Singh should be compelled to restore Peshawur, and various others of the same tendency, Burnes could only, in the name of the British Government, refuse his assent to any and all of them, and then sit down to write a formal request for his dismissal. One more attempt was made by Dost Mahomed to come to terms, but it was of no use. The old ground was traversed again, and only with the old result. As a last resource the Ameer wrote to Lord Auckland in terms almost of humility, imploring him "to remedy the grievances of the Afghans," and to "give them a little encouragement and power." This was the last effort, and it failed. Then the game was up indeed. Vickovitch was sent for and received with every mark of honour; one of the Candahar chiefs came up in haste to Cabul, and on April 26th, 1838, Burnes turned his back on the Afghan capital.

As the Russian here disappears from our story a a few words as to his subsequent career and end may not be out of place. After the departure of the English envoy he flung himself heart and soul into his business; promising men, promising money, promising everything that the Ameer asked. He even proposed to visit Lahore and use his good offices with Runjeet Singh, but that plea failed, owing chiefly to the address of Mackeson, our agent at Lahore. For a time the Russian was all-powerful throughout Afghanistan, but after the repulse of the Persians from Herat and the entry of the English into Cabul his star paled. He proceeded to Teheran to give a full report of his doings to the Russian Minister there, and by him was ordered to proceed direct to St. Petersburg. Arrived there, flattered with hope, for he felt he had done all man could do, he reported himself to Count Nesselrode. The minister refused to see him. "I know no Captain Vickovitch," was the answer, "except an adventurer of that name who is reported to have been lately engaged in some unauthorised intrigues at Cabul and Candahar." Vickovitch understood the answer thoroughly. He knew that severe remonstrance had been sent from London to St. Petersburg; he knew his own Government only too well. He went home, burnt his papers, wrote a few lines of reproach, and blew his brains out.

To return to Cabul. Notwithstanding the Russian promises, and the exultation of his brothers at Candahar, the Ameer felt that he had acted unwisely. Very soon he saw that Russia could do little more than promise, and that England had made up her mind to perform. Despite Russian money and Russian men, the Shah could not force his way into Herat while Eldred Pottinger stood behind the crumbling walls, and a vast army was assembling on the banks of the Indus to drive Dost Mahomed and the whole Barukzye clan from power.

To keep friends with the Afghan ruler and to preserve the independence of his Empire was the obvious policy of the British Government. But the authorities at Simlah, Lord Auckland, Mr. Macnaghten, Mr. Henry Torrens and Mr. John Colvin, had determined that that ruler should be, not the Barukzye Dost Mahomed, a man of proved energy and ability, who had shown himself anxious to cultivate the friendship of England, and who possessed the confidence and the favour of his subjects, but the Suddozye Shah Soojah, who, though born of the legitimate line, was no less a usurper than Dost Mahomed himself, who was regarded by the majority of his countrymen with indifference and contempt, and who more than once had proved alike his inability to administer and to maintain dominion. By what process of reasoning the Viceroy arrived at this remarkable conclusion has never been made perfectly clear, but though he alone, notwithstanding Sir John Hobhouse's generous declaration from the Board of Control, will be, rightly or wrongly, held by posterity responsible for the disastrous events which followed, it is at least to his credit that he left no stone unturned to arrive at the opinions of all competent advisers before deciding on his own. Prominent among these was Mr. McNeill, then our envoy at the Court of Teheran, a man of keen powers of observation and undoubted ability, who may be said to share with Pottinger the glory of the Persian repulse from Herat. His plan, as he impressed more than once on Burnes, was to consolidate the Afghan Empire under Dost Mahomed. Placing no reliance on the sincerity of the Candahar chiefs, he yet entertained a high opinion of the Ameer himself, whom he would have been well pleased to see established in Herat and Candahar as well as in Cabul. McNeill's correspondence, however, had to pass through the hands of Captain, afterwards Sir Claudius, Wade, himself also well versed in the politics of Central Asia, and at that time holding the responsible post of Governor-General's Agent on the North-Western Frontier. Wade forwarded a copy of McNeill's letter to the Governor, and forwarded with it one from himself in which he strongly deprecated the policy of consolidation. To him it seemed better that the Afghan Empire should remain, as it then was, sub-divided into practically independent states, each of whom, as he conceived, would be more likely in their own interests to court our friendship and to meet our views, than if brought under the yoke of one ruler, to whom they could never be