Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

This account is not very luminous; and it is painful to observe that the man who was abject, and the man who was lucky, were the two selected for mercy. What proportion had previously been dismissed, is not said. The affair occasioned much discussion, as we all know; and the author speaks doubtfully of the necessity[1] under which the execution took place, as not "satisfactorily ascertained." He speaks even more doubtfully of the _persons_ supposed to be implicated, viz. the Shah and the commander-in-chief, than of the _thing_. Little, indeed, could have been known distinctly, where rumour ascribed to each separately the most contradictory acts and motives. Us it surprises, that Lord Keane has not publicly explained himself under such gloomy insinuations. But, in the mean time, this is plain, that the Shah is entitled to benefit by the doubts hanging over the case, not less than our own officer. The writer suggests as one reason for a favourable judgment on the Shah, "previous acts of humanity in the course of his life." Undoubtedly there are such acts, and there are none well attested in the opposite scale. In particular, he spared the eyes of his brother Mahmood, when, by all oriental policy, he had every temptation to incapacitate an active competitor for the throne. Two considerations heighten the merit of this merciful forbearance; Mahmood was the elder, a fact which slightly improved his title; and Mahmood, in a similar situation, had _not_ spared the eyes of an elder brother.

[1] But afterwards, at page 166, there is a dreadful insinuation that such a necessity might have founded itself on the danger of taking prisoners "in a camp already subsisting on half and quarter rations." Now we, in a paper on Casuistry, (long since published by this journal,) anticipated this shocking plea, contending that Napoleon's massacre of 4000 young Albanians at Jaffa, could draw no palliation from the alleged shortness of provisions, whether true or false; and on the ground that a civilized army, consciously under circumstances which will not allow it to take prisoners, has no right to proceed. Napoleon's condition had not changed from the time of leaving Cairo. We little expected to see a Jaffa plea urged, even hypothetically, for a British army.

We may certainly, therefore, dismiss the charges of cruelty against the Shah, unless hereafter they shall be better established. But in doing this, it is right to make one remark, overlooked by all who have discussed the subject. If these Ghazees were executed as murderers elect, and as substantially condemned by the very name and character which they assumed, the usages of war in all civilized countries would sustain the sentence; though still there is a difficulty where, on one side, the parties were _not_ civilized. But if they were executed as traitors and rebels taken in arms, such an act, _pendente lite_, and when as yet nobody could say _who_ was sovereign, must be thought little short of a murder.

With the remaining charge we shall make short work. The reader would laugh heartily if we should call the Dey of Tunis a _dissenter_, the Pasha of Egypt an old _nonconformist_, or the Turkish sultan a _heretic_. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable relation to the Church of England, or to Protestantism, would not be more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of Asiatic institutions protects him from such reproaches. The effeminate delicacy of easterns, and the morbid principle of seclusion on which they build their domestic honour, will for ever secure both Hindoo Pagans and Mussulmans from blame of this kind, until they pass under the influence of a happier religion. How can _they_ act licentiously, in a way cognizable or proveable, whom rank and usage will not permit to wander, and who cannot have a temptation to wander, from their own harems, authorized by the institutions of their country?

This last charge, indeed, being so intrinsically absurd, is hardly of a nature to have merited any answer, had it not been the one most insisted upon in England, where its ludicrousness is not so apparent, until the mind is recalled from the life of Christendom to that very different life which prevails in Asia. The charge then exhales into vapour; and a man laughs as a ship's company on the broad Atlantic would laugh, if charged with roaming abroad at night.

But why do we notice _personal_ considerations at all, in a case where public relations to Affghanistan should naturally be paramount? We notice them, because our own press dwelt on personal qualities almost exclusively; and since this Cabool tragedy will make the whole Affghan policy immortal, we are anxious, by dispersing the cloud of calumny connected with the object of our choice, to clear the ground for a juster estimate of what was either good or erroneous in our further conduct. Not that personal accomplishments of mind or of body were unimportant in a ruler of simple half-barbarous men; nor again is it to be denied that Dost Mahommed, from advantages of age, (forty-five years against the seventy of the Shah,) and from experience more direct and personal, would, under equal circumstances, have been the better man. But the circumstances were _not_ equal. The Dost could not have been more than a provincial ruler in the land; consequently he could not have undertaken that responsibility for the whole which formed the precise postulate of our Indian government.

Yet because the Dost could _not_ meet our purposes, is it true that the Shah _could_? That is the point we are going to consider; and to have postponed this question to a question of personalities, even if those personalities had been truly stated, is specifically the error which vitiated all the speculations of our domestic press. We say then, that Shah Soojah had a _primâ facie_ fitness for our purposes which the Dost had not; Soojah was the brother, son, and grandson of men who had ruled all Affghanistan; nay, in a tumultuary way, he had ruled all Affghanistan himself. So far he had something to show, and the Dost had nothing; and so far Lord Auckland was right. But he was wrong, and, we are convinced, ruinously wrong, by most extravagantly overrating that one advantage. The instincts of loyalty, and the _prestige_ of the royal title, were in no land that ever was heard of so feeble as in coarse, unimaginative Affghanistan. Money was understood: meat and drink were understood: a jezail was understood but nothing spiritual or ancestral had any meaning for an Affghan. Deaf and blind he was to such impressions and perhaps of all the falsehoods which have exploded in Europe for the last six years, the very greatest is that of the _Edinburgh Review_, in saying that the Suddozye families were "sacred" and inviolable to Affghans. How could such a privilege clothe the _species_ or subdivision, when even the Dooaraunee or entire _genus_ was submitted to with murmurs under the tyranny of accident. In what way had they won their ascendency? By thumps, by hard knocks, by a vast assortment of kicks, and by no means through any sanctity of blood. Sanctity indeed!--we should be glad to see the Affghan who would not, upon what he held a sufficient motive, have cut the throat of any shah or shahzade, padishah, or caliph, though it had been that darling of European childhood--Haroun Alraschid himself.

But how could royalty enjoy any privilege of consecration in a land where it was yet but two generations old? Even those two had been generations of tumultuous struggle. Oftener had the Shah been seen racing for his life on a Arab of the Hedjas, than eating "dillecrout"[1] in peace, or dealing round a card-table grand crosses of the Dooraunee order. The very origin of Affghan royalty fathoms the shallowness of the water on which it floated. Three coincidences of luck had raised Ahmed to the throne. One dark night his master Kouli Khan, for the benefit of all Asia, had his throat cut. This Kouli, or Nadir Shah, was much more of a monster than Ahmed; but not very much less of a usurper. Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar, Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him, "Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder, and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of. Ahmed, after a splendid and tumultuous reign of twenty-six years, died of cancer in 1773. His son Timour feigned distractedly for twenty years. Dying in 1793, Timour left a heap of shahzades, amongst whom our good friend Soojah was almost the youngest. As they call people Tertius, Septimus, or Vicesimus, from their station in the line of birth, let us call _him_--Penultimate Soojah Penultimate, if he was, he could fight as respectably as the rest: and many was the kick he bestowed on antepenultimate Mahmood. From that year 1793, the zenith of the French Revolution, in Affghanistan was nothing but fighting for some ten or fifteen years. Truly a battle royal it was; and if we cannot report to a fraction the "list of the killed and wounded," we know the main results. How many of the fraternal combatants leaped upon the throne, we are not quite sure. Four we can swear to, who were all pulled out by the ears before they had time to adjust the folds of their purple. The case of Eteocles and Polynices was a joke to it; and by the time the row or termashaw was over, and the candles were brought back amongst this happy family, the following was the state of matters--two stone blind, three (if not four) stone dead, and two in exile living upon charity; amongst which last was Penultimate Soojah. It is proper to mention, by the way, as an appendix to the adventures of this old friend, that (improving upon his grandpapa's example) he had run off from his elder brother with the crown jewels; but, like Colonel Blood in our Charles II.'s reign, he benefited only by the glory of this distinguished larceny; for soon after, falling amongst thieves, at the head of whom was our late worthy ally the Seik Maharajah, Runjeet Singh, he in _his_ turn, was effectually cleaned out; and, in particular, his silk "wipe," in which he had wrapped up the famous _Koh-i-noor_, or _summit of glory_, was cleanly forked out of his fob by the artful dodger, old Runjeet, himself. Here was a pleasant commentary on the adage of "_Diamond cut Diamond_." The jewels, originally stolen by Ahmed, were passed on (as in our game of _Hunt the Slipper_) from thief to thief, until at least forty thieves had possessed them for a few weeks or months. All the forty are now dead; and at this moment the _summit of glory_, possibly never once worn by one of them, is a derelict in the hands of the latest murderer at Lahore, of course attracting by its light all hands towards his interesting throat.

[1] "_Dillecrout_."--This is the traditional dish of royalty at our English coronation banquet in Westminster Hall.

We have thus sketched a slender memoir for the leading family of saints amongst the Edinburgh reviewer's holy Suddozyes. Great must have been their sanctity amongst the Affghans. The reader will judge for himself whether that _aureola_, or supernatural glory about their heads, was altogether sufficient to guarantee the throne of King Soojah. And it must not be quite forgotten, that on the roll-call of legitimacy Penultimate Soojah did not stand next for promotion. Prince Caumraum, who commanded at Herat, stood before him equally in active qualities, and in precedence of title; for he was the son of Mahmood. The sons of Zemaun had a still higher precedency.

However, the Affghans, who are essentially democratic by the necessities of their turbulent condition, often make a compromise in their choice of khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits, where they happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are now going, in conclusion, to bring forward one remark, which utterly prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan, or of promise for his own purpose. It is this--no legitimacy of title, and no personal merits, supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the person of Soojah, had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled state. This truth, not hitherto noticed, reveals itself upon inspecting the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic feuds by carrying away all the active, or aspiring, or powerful spirits to continual wars in the Punjaub, in Persia, or India. Thus he sustained their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his son Zemaun after _him_, pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not _that_: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:--it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was, the one resource of prudent Affghan princes, the escape-valve for conspiracy and treason, which Lord Auckland's army had been put in motion to abolish.

Now, _thirdly_, let us examine the machinery by which these plans were to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that, if on the whole perhaps the best instrument at hand, and better essentially than the Dost, very soon, indeed, Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now suppose this otherwise, and that Soojah had continued to be that passive instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and presumed. Even on this supposition, our agent or lieutenant Soojah would have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument?

Simply taxation, energetic taxation. Yet, if _that_ should happen to fail, what was to be the resource? Simply to fine and to amerce--_i.e._ more intense taxation. So, in Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_, the only remedy is "_Saignare et Purgare_." But _lavemens_ had been known to fail. What was to be done in that case? _What is to be done?_ shrieks the Macaronic chorus--Why, of course, "_Purgare et ensuita purgare_." To the present government of India, this organ of administration is all in all. And it was natural to transfer this doctrine to Affghanistan. But in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And, in order to understand them, it may be well to review the possible aspect and modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall.

First, there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian states under their noble civilization, which is paid even thankfully, as the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next, and in the very opposite extreme, is the ruffian levy once raised upon central India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta _chout_, the other the _black mail_ of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government, induced them to allow for the _chout_ as twenty-five per cent advanced out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree, as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or what in Roman law was called _transactio_,)--as a toll or fine in fact, though too arbitrarily assessed.

Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans viewed it in the light of _chout_ or _black mail_, a tribute to be thrown into the one scale if a gleaming sabre lay in the other. King Soojah levying taxes was to him a Mahratta at the least, if he was not even a Pindarree or a Thug. Indeed it is clear that, where the government does nothing for the people, nor pretends to do any thing, where no courts of justice exist, no ambassadors, no police, no defensive militia, (except for internal feuds,) title there can be none to any but a nominal tribute, as a mere peppercorn acknowledgment of superiority: going beyond _that_, taxation is borne only as robbery is borne.

Under these circumstances, and having a motive so strong for reconciling the Affghans to the new government, of all the incidents belonging to sovereignty on our European notions, least and last should we have suffered the Shah to exercise that of taxation. But to exercise it ourselves, that was midsummer madness! If _he_ would have seemed a robber in such a function, what must we have seemed? Besides, it is held by some who have more narrowly watched the Affghan modes of thinking, that, even where they _do_ submit to pay a tax, it is paid as a loan, and on the understanding that the chief receiving it is bound to refund it indirectly, by leading them at some convenient season (which many conceive to be in every alternate year) upon a lucrative foray. But this was exactly what we came to prevent. What we should have done is manifestly this. How much could the Shah have levied on all Affghanistan? A matter of L. 300,000 at most. But this was the _gross_ sum, before deducting any thing for costs of collecting, which costs were often eighty shillings in the pound, besides counting on the _little_ aid of our bayonets as a service wholly gratuitous. The sum netted by the exchequer must have been laughably small; and even in that respect the poor king must often have sighed for his quiet English lodgings on the left bank of the Sutlege. Now, surely this trivial revenue might have been furnished on the following plan. In a country like Affghanistan, where the king _can_ be no more than the first of the sirdars, it is indispensable to raise his revenue, meaning the costs of his courtly establishment, as we ourselves did in England till the period of 1688. And how was _that?_ Chiefly on crown estates, parks, forests, warrens, mines, just as every private subject raised his revenue, reserving all attempt at _taxes_ in the shape of aids, subsidies, or benevolences, for some extraordinary case of war, foreign or domestic. Our kings, English and Scotch, lived like other country gentlemen, on the produce of their farms. Fortunately for such a plan, at that moment there must have been a fine harvest of forfeitures rising to the sickle all over the Affghan land, for rebels were as thick as blackberries. But, if any _deficit_ had still shown itself on the Shah's rent-roll, one half of that L.30,000 a-year which we allowed to the Dost when our prisoner, or of that smaller sum[1] which we allowed to the Shah when our guest, would have made it good. Yet what if we had spent a million sterling through a period of ten years, as a sort of scaffolding for the support of our new edifice whilst yet green and rising? Even in that case, and supposing us to have taken our leave of the Dooraunee throne at the end of one year, after planting it as firmly as it ever could be planted, we should have pocketed six million of pounds sterling that now are gone; whereas we insisted on sinking three millions per annum for the first three years, in some bottomless Affghan Chatmoss, with the effect (seemingly with the intention) of enabling King Soojah to earn universal hatred by netting a few lacs of rupees.

[1] _Smaller sum._--L.20,000 a-year. There was, however, a separate allowance, we believe, to Zemaun, the king's blind brother.

This was the rock on which we split. Had we restrained the king from levying taxes, all might have gone well. Had we restrained ourselves from enforcing his levies, all might have gone decently. And had we prompted the king to inaugurate some great public benefit--as, for instance, by conferring upon the people a simple system of judicial process and distributive justice--both he and we might have become popular; for, even in Affghanistan, there must be multitudes of poor men, peasants and tradesmen in towns, mothers and wives, who sigh for peace, and curse their endless agitations. Yes, even amongst their martial spirits, who now live by war and the passions of war, many are they who would relent from their angry feuds, if it were possible to get justice without them.

The sum, therefore, of that question; viz. of the _How_ and by what machinery Lord Auckland proposed to accomplish his not unstatesmanlike object, is this--that we failed utterly, and chiefly by applying European principles to Oriental communities; and in particular,

1st, By throwing a prodigious stress on the fancied consecration of royalty in a country where it would have snapped under the weight of a L.10 note.

2dly, By enforcing (and even exercising in our own persons as principals) the odious power of taxation, under the monstrous delusion that it was the first of a king's privileges, where in fact, and with some reason, it was viewed as the last of his excesses.

The first was a _negative_ delusion. We fancied a mighty power where simply there was none; fancied a substance where there was not even a shadow. But the second was worse: it was a _positive_ delusion. We fancied a resource where simply there was a snare--a mooring cable where simply there was a rope for our execution--a sheet-anchor where simply there was a rock waiting for our shipwreck.

Not the less, however, we maintain, that whilst in fact our ruin was self-prepared, come it would, sooner or later, from the necessity of Affghan society, had the actual occasion of that ruin been wanting. You build a palace on the waters, and you complain that a monsoon has overthrown it. True; but had there been no monsoon, equally it would have been supplanted by the _natural_ unsteadiness of the waves.

Now, _fourthly_, however, for Cabool, and the crape-bound banners "perituraque castra!" Fourthly and lastly, for the solution of that hideous calamity, whose memory is accursed for ever. But the solution-- is not _that_ plain already? If what we allege be true, if the delusions exposed under the third head are rightly stated, will not _they_ solve the ruin of Cabool? Are not _they_ sufficient? No, nothing will solve it--no causes are sufficient for such a result, unless a strong spirit of delusion had been inflicted from heaven, distraction, frenzy, judicial madness. No dangers from the enemy, no pressure from without, _could_ have accomplished that wreck, had they not been aided by treachery within the counsels of our own hearts.

It is an old saying of any subject too vast or too sad to measure by hurried words--that "_de Carthagine satius est silere, quam parcius dicere_." And in this case, where we have left ourselves too narrow a space to turn round in, and where no space would exhaust the infinities of the affliction, it is not our purpose to heighten, or rhetorically to colour, any one feature of the dismal story. Rhetoric, and art of all kids, we forswear in a tragedy so torturing to our national sensibilities. We pass, in sympathy with the burning wrath of our readers, the madness of dallying and moping over the question--to starve or not to starve. We pass the infamy of entertaining a treaty with barbarians, _commenced_ in this foul insult to a British army--that _after_ we should have submitted to indignities past expression, they (the barbarians) would consider at their leisure whether it would please them to spare our necks; a villany that gallant men _could_ not have sanctioned, an which too certainly was not hurled back in their teeth as it ought to have been. We pass the lunacy of _tempting_ barbarians to a perfidy almost systematic in their policy, by consenting to a conference _outside_ the British cantonments, not even within range of the British guns, not even within the overlooking of British eyes. We pass the lunacy of taking out sixteen men as an escort against a number absolutely unlimited of the enemy, and where no restraint, even of honour or mutual understanding, forbade that unlimited enemy to come armed from head to foot. It is a trifle to add--that no instructions were given to the sixteen men as to what they were to do, or in what circumstances to act; and accordingly that one man only, out of the whole sixteen, attempted any resistance; and this in defiance of warnings eight several times reiterated by English officers, and by friendly Affghans, that treachery was designed. We pass the triple lunacy of treating at all in a case where Sir William M'Naughtan well knew, and himself avowed his knowledge, that no man or party existed amongst the enemy who could pretend to have authority sufficient for ratifying, or for executing, any treat of whatsoever tenor. The Cabool forces perished eventually by the _dissension_ of the two first in command. This is notorious. And yet, to mark the dread fatality which pursued them, the _concord_ of these two officers was even more destructive to their victims than the worst of their disputes. In the one solitary case where they agreed, the two leaders, Elphinstone and Shelton, _sealed_ their doom. That case was this:--Many felt at that time, as all men of common sense feel now, that the Bala Hissar, and not Jillalabad, was the true haven for the army. In resisting this final gleam of hope for the army, both General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton heartily concurred; _and they concurred then first and then last_. This also, this almost incredible fact, should be added to the anecdote--General Elphinstone, when hard pressed by the general wishes on this point, pleaded as a last reason for his obstinacy--that a particular article, essential to the army, was wanting in the Bala Hillar. Subsequently, but after all was over, it turned out that this plea had been the windiest of chimaeras. True, you reply, but perhaps he was deceived. Yes, reader, but by what manner of deception? He was distant from the Bala Hissar by less than two miles; he was then in almost daily communication with it; and yet, upon a matter confessedly one of life and death for 17,000 souls, he took no steps for ascertaining the truth!

But these things we pass, in order to reach a point most superficially treated by Lieutenant Eyre, which was, in truth, the original fountain of the whole calamity. We have said already, that, (guilty as might be the leaders by unexampled fatuity, obstinacy, and improvidence,) in our judgement, the mischief ascended to elder sources than either General Elphinstone or Shelton. And here was the main source, which (on the principle explained above) we shall barely indicate, not saying one word in aggravation. The cantonments--who was it, what man, what men, what council, on whom rests the horrible responsibility of that selection and that execution? We contend that, besides those _directly_ responsible parties, others were so to a criminal extent; every artillery officer was so; and therefore, unless some further explanations are made, Lieutenant Eyre is so. But surely Lieutenant Eyre has exposed the vices of these cantonments. True, he has so; _some_ of the vices, but not all, but not the worst. The ground, he tells us, was bad; the line of fortifications too extensive; the interior overlooked in parts; and (with a view to the accommodation of the envoy) the defences absolutely interrupted in their regular series. True; and therefore, night and day, it became the duty of every artillery officer to cry out, _Delenda est Carthago_. But all this is not the worst. Even a child knows that, under the circumstances of the case, and the known reversionary uses of such a retreat in the event of its being wanted at all, (except as a barrack,) it was of the last importance to destroy all the strong places, nay, even all the cover, strong or not strong, which could shelter an enemy. This was not attempted, or thought of, until it became too late. Next, it was of even more clamorous importance to have the corn magazine _within_ the line of defences: no effort was made in that direction. Now, had these been the only defects of the cantonments, they were enough to argue a constructive treason in those who neglected to denounce then. We know how they operated. These three ruins issued from these most culpable negligences:--1st, Starvation fell in one day upon the British host; and _that_ it was which placed them at the mercy of the enemy. 2dly, The troops were inadequate to the extent of the defences; so that, together with starvation, loss of sleep fell upon the fighting men. 3dly, As another effect from that cause, a perpetual Penelope's web was to be maintained; for as often as detachments went out from cantonments against the many neighbouring forts, before they could possibly have time to destroy these nests of hornets, back they were summoned to the defence of their own _lares_; often in broad daylight, by combined assaults of the enemy on their own ramparts, but always by the approach of night. So that all momentary advantages became idle and useless; none could be followed up, none could be maintained. Lucan says of Caesar, when besieged in the fortified palace of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, that often, whilst thrown on his most difficult defence, the matchless soldier became the assailant--

"Obsessusque gerit, tanta est constantia mentis,
_Offensoris_ opus."

But what _he_ did as a trophy of his superiority, we did by imbecile improvidence and for final ruin. Yet even these shocking neglects or oversights were not the worst. Let us now suggest what _were_. Wherefore were the cantonments placed in proximity so close to Cabool? Let that be answered, and we shall see the early commencement of our infatuation. Two considerations will clench the case, and then we shall leave it. 1st, The cantonments were never meant to act upon the city of Cabool: that task was thrown upon the Bala Hissar from its situation. And yet no trial had ever been made of the power possessed by that fortress. The private houses were known to be forts: not until rebellion commenced was it ascertained of what strength they were; and eventually the city proved more formidable to the Bala Hissar than the Bala Hissar to the city. Such a blunder of ignorance and miscalculation, we believe, was never heard of. But, 2dly, Even that was a trifle by comparison with the capital evil--and the capital evil was this. The enemy was allowed, throughout the autumn of 1841, to accumulate _ad libitum_ in Cabool. Retainers of the chiefs, Ghilzyes and others, gathered unwatched throughout October. Now mark what followed from our choice of cantonments. Had they been fixed fifteen or even ten miles off, the impossibility of marching daily to and from Cabool would have strangled the rebellion in its first three days. The evil which crushed ourselves, of having always at sunset to go homewards, would have been thrown upon the enemy, and with as much more of ruinous effect as the distance was greater. As it never was alleged that the cantonments were meant for the overawing of Cabool, and in effect they were totally inefficient as regarded that city--it is clear that the one great advantage by which the Affghans accomplished our destruction, was coolly prepared for them by ourselves, without the shadow of any momentary benefit for our own interests. Even for provisions, the event showed that we had never looked to Cabool. And there reveals itself the last feature of our perfect madness.

ETCHED THOUGHTS BY THE ETCHING CLUB.

In the Number of _Maga_ of January 1842, we reviewed one of the labours of the Etching Club--_The Deserted Village_. We congratulated the lovers of art upon the resumption of the needle, and showed the advantages which, in some important respects, it has over the graver. Etching, as it is less mechanical, is more expressive. We have from it the immediate impress of the painter's mind; that peculiar autographic character which marks every turn and shade of thought, even transition of thought and feeling, in what may, at first view, seem vagaries of lines; which, we know not how, (nor is the artist himself at the time conscious of the operation,) discriminate innumerable niceties, each having its own effect, and yet tending to one whole. We rarely come at once, _uno ictu_, to a decision. The operation is progressive--from conception to conception, from feeling to feeling, from many shades of uncertainty to decision. The first fresh hand upon any work is obedient to the mind in this process; and hence it is that we so value, so admire, the sketches and drawings of the great masters. We see not only the full complete sentiment of the subject, but how they came to it; we trace it back through all its varieties, and feel a sensible delight in being in possession of the very mind of the master. Were this not the case, how are we to account for the charm felt in turning over a portfolio of old drawings? How exquisitely beautiful are those of Raffaelle and Titian! The sale of the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence proves the high estimation in which these are ever held. Thousands of pounds for a few drawings! What sums were given for Claude's "Liber Veritatis!" and why?--Because these original drawings of the old masters possess this very autographic character that we have described. And this is precisely the case with etching. Nor is it only the case with those of the Italian, but those of every school; and, singularly enough, the Flemish and Dutch painters, whose high finish and elaborate colouring give such great value to their works, were eminently successful in the free and expressive style of etching. Rembrandt we need not speak of--wondrous indeed are his works of the needle. How exquisite are the etchings of Berghem, Both and Karel du Jardin! and, to show how characteristic they are, how different are they from each other! It is to be regretted that this art is of modern invention. What treasures might we not have possessed, had this inestimable secret been known to the ancients! We should not be left to conjecture the merits of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Timanthes, Apelles. We might have had outlines--first thoughts--"etched thoughts," by Phidias himself. And, as the art of design was earlier than any of those names--even coeval with, or prior to, Homer himself--those who engraved and worked in metal their shields, might have handed down to us etchings of Troy itself, and particulars of the siege. Do we lose or gain by not having the ancient book of beauty? But we must be content with what we have, and, in the regret, see the value of the present, looking to future value. Etching, is still old enough to interest by its portraiture of ages gone by. The inventor is not known. Perhaps the earliest specimen is the well-known "Cannon" by Albert Durer, dated 1518; and there is one by him, "Moses receiving the Tables of the Law," dated 1524. The art was soon after practised by Parmegiano, and extended to general use. Yet it is clear that the real power and merit of etching was not known to the inventor, nor to those who, in its early state, applied themselves to it. The first aim seems to have been exact imitation of the graver. Le Bosse, in his treatise on engraving, makes the perfection of the art consist in the close similitude of the graver's work. It was this which at first cramped the artist, and delayed the progress of etching, and gave it not only the appearance, but the reality of inferiority--and often times the name and reputation of inferiority is as prejudicial as the thing itself, and we verily believe that it still has its effect upon the public taste. Artists have not sufficiently taken to etching. We have had more amateurs excel in it than professional artists. There was a collection of amateur etchings at Strawberry Hill, given to Walpole by the etchers. The greater part of them is excellent, though they are mostly copies from other works, but not all. There are some surprising imitations of Rembrandt. The best are by Lady Louisa Augusta Neville, afterwards Lady Carlisle.

Then, again, the union of etching and engraving has certainly retarded the art, and has given it another character. If that union has engrafted freedom on engraving, it has given to the needle too much precision--it has taken from it the working out effects. We have elsewhere noticed that the taste for the precise and labored engraving in landscape, introduced by Woollet, drove out from the field that which was very superior to it. The prints from Claude and Poussin, by Vivares Wood, Mason, and Chatelet, and published by Pond, are infinitely more characteristic of the masters than the works which succeeded them. But we speak here only of imitation. It is in the original handling of artists themselves, not in translated works, and according to the translating phraseology, "done by different hands," that we are to look for the real beauty and power of the art. It is this handwriting of the artist's original mind that constitutes the real beauty; we would not have a touch of the graver to any work professing to be an etching--the graver cannot be used with impunity. If it will admit of any adventitious aid, it may perhaps be, in a very subordinate degree, mezzotint and aquatint. But etching rather improves Prince Rupert's invention than is advantaged by it. The sootiness of mezzotint is dangerous--in bad hands it is the "black art" of Prince Rupert, though the term was applied to a metal of the prince's invention, not to his discovery of mezzotint.

Modern times have brought the art of engraving to a wonderful perfection. Its mechanical work is most exquisite, and reaches the whole effect of picture surprisingly. If the publishing public knew as well what to engrave as our engravers know how to engrave, we should not see our printsellers' windows teem with worthless works beautifully executed. We often wonder, as we stop occasionally to look at the display, where the purchasers are found for things that pain the eye and weary the mind to see--history, or landscape, or familiar life, it matters not, nearly all without feeling, elaborate nothings--obtrusions, unless we are disposed to examine only the work of the engraver; and even then we must lament to see it thrown away, or rather employed in disseminating bad taste. How rarely is it we see even a subject of any value or interest attempted! It is, as in our play-writing, not the subject, but the peculiarity of some actor, that is to be written up to; so the peculiarities of some few flashy favourite artists employ our best engravers, who ought to be far otherwise employed, in making transcripts from the best works, ancient or modern, by which taste may be improved, the mind enlarged, and the heart made to feel as it ought. If our flashy prints are the index of the public taste in this country, we have little of which to boast; and we undoubtedly keep our artists from rising to any worthy aim, by showing them how satisfied we can be with mediocrity, and even some degrees below it. There is, in etching, a lightness and playfulness of execution which excuses, if it does not quite reconcile us to a bad subject. We lose the idea of effort in the freedom. To present to the eye a laboured nothing, is to disgust by the sense of labour alone. We calculate the time and cost, and look for an object worthy the outlay in vain, and become thoroughly dissatisfied. We have a great mind to describe the process of etching, that the lovers of art who read _Maga_, and happen to be ignorant of it, may try their hands--it is very fascinating work, and even the uncertainty in the first attempts, and the very failures, give pleasure in the operation. There is something more pleasant in hoping our labour will turn out well, than knowing it. If there be any whose time hangs heavy on their hands, let them take up etching. Johnson lamented that men did not work with their needles, considering the employment of the hands a great aid to thought--and so it is. Now the etching-needle is the one a man may take up without becoming ridiculous. As there are so many "Handmaids" to the art, from which the whole mystery may be learned, we forbear. We have, however, turned to our friend Gerard Larresse for the purpose of setting down, _secundum artem_, a practical account, and find it not: but we like little old treatises better than modern, there is something unsophisticated in their manner of giving information, and there is no study of periods, which, in their music, steal away the understanding; so we refer to Faithorne. But nevertheless our friend Gerard, if he does not give information, supplies amusement. He thinks every thing best told by an emblem--so receive, reader, his pictorial account of the art; we cannot give his plate, so be content with _his_ description of it, that is, Etching. "This beautiful virgin, sitting at a table, has before her a copperplate, lying on a sand-bag; and near it stands a little monkey, placing a lighted lamp before her. She is attended by Prudence and Diligence, and Practice is setting the tools on an oil-stone. Her chair is of ebony, adorned with figures of Sincerity and Assiduity, wrought in ivory, and mutually embracing; behind which stands Judgment, showing her a little further, Painting, accompanied by Apollo and Diana; he holding up his torch, in order to enlighten Sculpture, and she hers reversed, with purpose to extinguish it; the Genii, in the mean time, are every where busy in providing necessary materials. The eldest offers her a drawing, either redded or whited on the back, and a point or needle for tracing it on the plate; this drawing represents the design he is going about. Others, in an inner apartment, are employed in heating a plate on a chafing-dish, and laying the ground even with a feather. Here, one is etching--there, another biting a plate; others taking and reviewing proofs, with great attention and pleasure--while Fame, having a proof of a portrait in her hand, with her trumpet sounds out at a window the praises of masters or engravers. Honour, crowned with laurel, and bearing a small pyramid, is entering the room, ushering in Annona or Prosperity, who has a cornucopia, or horn filled with fruits. Round the room are set on pedestals divers busts of famous etchers and engravers; as Marc Antonio, Audlan, Edelinck, Vander Meulen, and several other Italian and French, as well as Dutch and German masters. In the off-skip, Europe, Asia, and Africa appear standing in surprise at the sound of the trumpet." There is nothing like example! Who sees in this prophetic enigma, in his "chair of ebony," other than "Ebony" himself, the "_most accomplished Christopher_," beaming with "sincerity," and placid in his "assiduity," with "Judgment" waiting upon him at command, wielding neither crutch nor pen, but, in affable condescension, the contemned needle etching the portrait of his own "Colonsay," and his own famous exploit, to show that one needle in the hand of genius can make a man and a horse too; though nine tailors and nine needles scarcely make up the complement of a man--yet would these nine in one, the renowned of Brentford, scarcely have matched "Christopher on Colonsay!" And as for Fame blowing out of the window, he, in spite of himself and his modesty, is his own trumpeter, and, as _Maga_ reaches them, surprises "Europe, Asia, Africa," and America too. Such is the emblematical representation of etching, and we have embellished it with a first-rate performer.

And now let us turn to "Etched Thoughts by the Etching Club." We find a new name or two added to the list--C.G. Lewis, the renowned and best of etchers; and Severn, whose etchings are new to us, not so his other works of art. We remember his "Ship of the Ancient Mariner," and his expressive, sentimental, figures; and poor Fearnley--now no more--we remember greatly admiring a somewhat large picture of his--"A River-Scene in Norway,"--evidently painted immediately from nature, powerfully, expressively given. Somehow or other he did not take in this country, and quitted it, leaving behind him very beautiful studies strangely undervalued, and sold for little. The fact is, he was too true to the solemnity and sobriety of nature to please a public led away by gaudy display and meretricious colouring. Yet was he a man of more genius--in landscape--than any nine out of ten of our best artists that have, these last ten years, attempted to show nature or art upon our academical walls. Poor Fearnley! We have heard that elsewhere he was appreciated and successful. Stone and Herbert are good additions. Happy is it when the feelings of the artist and poet are in unison; happier still when the poet is himself the artist: and such is the case here. So that, in many cases, they are really "Etched Thoughts"--not etched translations of thoughts; and the work of the pen is not inferior to that of the needle. In the "Deserted Village" was a continuous story; every plate was in connexion with its preceding. In this publication, every artist seems to have been left to his own choice of subject, and to his free fancy.

Cope first comes under our notice. He commences the work with "Love," and a quotation from Spenser. As an etching, it is powerful, but we doubt if quite true: there should be something to account, in such a twilight scene, for the strong light upon the "Ladye-love!" Nor are we quite satisfied with the love of the lover, or the reception it meets with. The man or his guitar, one of the two, if not both, must be out of tune. His "Veteran's Return" tells its tale, and a somewhat mournful one; it is in illustration of some very good and pathetic lines by a member of the club, H.J. Townsend; and as, we believe, they are not to be met with out of "Etched Thoughts," we extract them for the gratification of the reader:--

THE VETERAN'S RETURN.

The old yew, deck'd in even's parting beams,
From his red trunk reflects a ruddier ray;
While, flickering through the lengthen'd shadow, gleams
Of gold athwart the dusky branches play.
The jackdaws, erst so bustling on the tower,
Have ceased their cawing clamour from on high;
And the brown bat, as nears the twilight hour,
Circles--the lonely tenant of the sky.

The soldier there, ere pass'd to distant climes,
On Sabbath morn his early mates would meet;
There list the chant of the familiar chimes,
And the fond glance of young affection greet.
There, too, at eve--before the twilight grey
Led the dark hours, when sprites are wont to walk--
With his sweet Nancy how he joy'd to stray,
And tell his rustic love in homely talk.

Now, home return'd, far other thoughts he owns,
Though still the same the scene that meets his view!
The same sun glistens o'er the lichen'd stones--
Scarce one year more seems to have gnarl'd the yew.
There, too, the hamlet where his boyhood pass'd
Sends, as of old, its curls of smoke to ken--
So near, his stalwart arm a stone might cast
Among the cots that deck the coppiced glen!

But ere the joys of that domestic glade
Can wipe the tear from off his rugged brow,
A stone beneath the yew-tree's ebon shade
Deep o'er his heart a heavier shade doth throw.
(Oh! sad indeed, when thus such tidings come
That stun, even when by slow degrees they steal,)
That tablet tells how cold within the tomb
Are hands whose fond warm grasp he long'd to feel.

The "Painter of the Olden Time."--"His shop is his element, and he cannot, with any enjoyment to himself, live out of it.--Dr South." This is very good. The painter has his back to you, and is at work apparently on a wall. Little wots he of the world without. He is embodying angels, and spreading angelic light; himself, slipshod and loosely girdled, centring the radiance he creates. How differently arrayed are body and mind! By the title, we presume Mr Cope means to satirize some modern fops of the profession. Of all Mr Cope's etchings in the volume, we mostly admire "Love's Enemies." It is from the well-known passage of Shakspeare, "Ah me! for aught that ever I could read," &c. The conception is excellent. War, Death, and Sickness are taking off their prisoner Cupid, chained, from the door of an aged couple willing enough to part with him, while their poor broken-hearted daughter, with disheveled hair, hides her face with her hands; and, above her, the hard father's uplifted crutch is ready to speed the departure. It is lightly etched, in very good keeping; so that the grouping is clear, and the moral is perceptible at a glance. His "Rejected Addresses" is of another cast. Here he is in the common and beggarly world: yet represents he no common beggar; for, though he be often so named, he is one of rare accomplishments. "He can write a capital letter, enough to make any of the 'quality people' cry. The begging-letter people give him a shilling for a letter. He is now on the tramp." The man was a lawyer, and so astute that he can so adjust himself and his shadow, that he will hide in it from your scrutiny any habitual expression of his villany. And Cope has been most happy in this idea.

"Morning Prayer" is introduced with a few elegant lines, we presume by Mr Cope himself. They have no name to them. The figure is graceful, the effect tender; but we confess we have been so satiated with such subjects in the Annuals, that we do not relish this as perhaps we ought. From the same cause, we do not dwell upon "The Mother." "The Wanderer-- the beggar and his dog," is good. The impostor beggar was in sunshine, and which he turned to his purpose: he could cope with the world's broad glare. This is no impostor; and the atmosphere he breathes is suited to his fortunes. The rejecting hand, with its shadow of the dry skinny fingers, is well conceived.

"The Readers," from Boccaccio, is not happy. The figures are not Italian; nor is the costume of the age of the book. His "Girl and Cupid" is a little gem, reminding us of Schidoni. We presume these lines are by the etcher--

"Love, in the virgin breast of beauty lying,
Laughs at the fate for her he doth prepare--
Will swiftly turn her sweetest smiles to sighing,
And flee when she is fixed in despair."

We have seen so many ladies with up-turned eyes, called in the annual catalogues "Meditation," that we will not interrupt the calm of Mr Cope's. C.G. Lewis has but one plate, "A Woodland Dell." A quiet spot of shade and flickering sunshine--a streamlet, and a rural bridge. It is sweetly etched, true to the character.