looked forward to the coming of the Persian King as to the advent of a deliverer, and would gladly have seen the city given over to the governance of one who, whatever may have been his political claims, was not an alien in his religious faith.[142] Such was the last remnant of the old Afghan monarchy in the hands of Shah Kamran—the only one of the Suddozye Princes who had retained his hold of the country he had governed. His government was at this time a pageant and a name. An old and a feeble man, broken down by long years of debauchery, he had resigned the active duties of administration into the hands of his Wuzeer. He was, perhaps, the worst of the royal princes—the worst of a bad race. His youth had been stained by the commission of every kind of Oriental crime; and now in his old age, if the evil passions of his nature were less prominently developed, it was only because physical decay had limited his power to indulge them. In his younger days he had set no restraint upon himself, and now it was nature only that restrained him. The violent gusts of passion, which had once threatened all who were within his influence, had given place to an almost incessant peevishness and petulance of manner, more pitiable to behold than it was dangerous to encounter. He had once played openly the part of the bandit—placing himself at the head of gangs of armed retainers, plundering houses by night and slaying all who opposed him; now he suffered others to commit the violence which he had before personally enacted, and oppressed, by deputy, the weakness which he could not see smitten before his face. He had once been immoderately addicted to sensual pleasure, and in the pursuit of such gratification—arrested by no feelings of compassion, by no visitings of remorse—had violently seized the objects of his desires, to whomsoever they belonged, and cast them adrift when his appetite was sated; now he sought excitement of another kind, to which age and feebleness were no impediments, and turned from the caresses of women to seek solace from the stimulants of wine. Unfaithful to his friends and unmerciful to his enemies, ingratitude and cruelty were conspicuous in his nature, and these darker features of his character there was little to lighten or relieve. Among his countrymen he was esteemed for a certain kind of courage, and in his younger days he had not been wanting in activity and address.[143] Though naturally haughty and arrogant, there were times when he could assume, for his own ends, a becoming courtesy of demeanour; and, as by assiduous attention to costume, he endeavoured to compensate for the deficiencies of an unattractive person, there was something of a high and princely aspect about the outward bearing even of this degraded man. Short and thickset, with misshapen limbs and an unseemly gait, his appearance was more comely in repose than in action. His face was pitted with the small-pox, and there was a harshness in