(2) By preventing Russia through Turkestan’s approaches to Afghan and Persia’s eastern border. (3) By precluding her from Persia’s western border through the regions of the Euphrates Valley, (_a_) through making Turkey compact in Asia (Erzeroum and Bayazid); (_b_) through Cyprus guarding the Mediterranean approaches. [124] “... Do you think a man like that, called upon to deal with a Metternich or a Pozzo, has no advantage over an individual who never leaves his chair in Downing Street except to kill grouse? Pah! Metternich and Pozzo know very well that Lord Roehampton knows them....” “Roehampton” is Palmerston. The prophecy of the Congress repeats one in _Contarini_. [125] Of the many passages that may be read in this connection, including that fine ironical one of the Feast of Tabernacles in _Tancred_, paralleled by that about “Moses Lump” in Heine, and the telling chapter in the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_, I will only cite one less familiar from _Alroy_: “... All was silent: alone the Hebrew prince stood, amid the regal creation of the Macedonian captains. Empires and dynasties flourish and pass away; the proud metropolis becomes a solitude, the conquering kingdom even a desert; but Israel still remains, still a descendant of the most ancient kings breathed amid these royal ruins, and still the eternal sun could never arise without gilding the towers of living Jerusalem.” This (with its after-irony of “Alroy’s” seizure by the Kourdish bandits) may be compared with the satire in which Disraeli encountered Mr. Newdegate’s appeals to “prophecy:” “... They have survived the Pharaohs, they have survived the Cæsars, they have survived the Antonines and the Seleucidæ, and I think they will survive the arguments of the right honourable member....” Mr. Morley tells that Mr. Gladstone said that Disraeli asserted that only those nations that behaved well to the Jews prospered. Disraeli, in saying so, however, only repeated a _dictum_ of Frederick the Great. [126] “Say what they like,” so “Herbert” in _Venetia_, “there is a spell in the shores of the Mediterranean Sea which no others can rival. Never was such a union of natural loveliness and magical associations! On these shores have risen all that interests us in the past--Egypt and Palestine, Greece, Rome, and Carthage, Moorish Spain and feudal Italy. These shores have yielded us our religion, our arts, our literature, and our laws. If all that we have gained from the shores of the Mediterranean was erased from the memory of man, we should be savages.” [127] It was translated into Greek, as _Alroy_ was into Hebrew. [128] He mentions it both in his _Home Letters_ and in _Tancred_ as to be acquired by England.