The success of Asiatic affairs depends so much on the influence of personalities that the death of these two men, who had conceived such a real respect and affection for one another, was an almost fatal blow to Warren Hastings’ plans for the improvement of the relationship between Tibet and India. Nevertheless, he kept steadily on with his deliberate policy, and watched for some other opportunity of carrying it to fruition. Persistency of aim and watchfulness for opportunities, making the most of the occasion offered, and decisiveness of action—these were always Hastings’ guiding principles. So when, in February, 1782, news reached Calcutta that the Tashi Lama, in accordance with the Tibetan ideas of reincarnation, had reappeared in the person of an infant, he resolved to send another mission to Tibet to congratulate the Regent. For this duty he selected Captain Samuel Turner, an officer who had distinguished himself at the Siege of Seringapatam and on a mission to Tippoo Sultan, and who was then thirty-three years of age. * * * * * Turner himself was very favourably received at Shigatse, and at his first interview informed the Regent that Warren Hastings had an earnest solicitude to preserve and cultivate the amicable intercourse that had so happily commenced between them; that this correspondence, in its earliest stages, had been dictated by the purest motives of humanity, and had hitherto pointed with unexampled sincerity and steadiness towards one great object, which constituted the grand business of the Tashi Lama’s life—peace and universal good; that the Governor-General, whose attention was always directed towards the same pursuits, was overwhelmed with anxiety lest the friendship which had been established between himself and the Regent might undergo a change, and he had therefore sent a trusted agent to convey his congratulations on the joyful reappearance in the world of the late Tashi Lama, and to express the hope that everything that was expected would at length be effectually accomplished. To this the Regent replied that the present and the late Tashi Lama were one and the same, and that there was no manner of difference between them, only that, as he was yet merely an infant, and his spirit had but just returned into the world, he was at present incapable of action. The Regent assured Turner of the firm, unshaken attachment which the Tashi Lama had entertained for Mr. Hastings to his latest breath, and he was also loud in his encomiums on the occasion that gave birth to their present friendship, which originated entirely in his granting peace to the Bhutanese in compliance with the intercession of the Tashi Lama.