The maps brought home by Marco Polo, and the information which he communicated, proved invaluable to the Pope's missionaries, and to the Venetian and Portuguese traders and navigators who succeeded him, and aided the gallant Vasco di Gama in discovering the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The Jesuits, however, did not make full use of the advantages which they possessed; for, while employed in constructing their excellent map of the Empire of China, which gained them free access to every part, they lost an opportunity for investigating and describing its natural productions, which might never have occurred again, but for the present movement in China. In the reign of Kang-hi they obtained permission to establish a college for the promotion of Christianity; but his successor regarded the institution with different feelings; and, being jealous of the influence which it was calculated to produce, ordered it to be broken up, and thus deprived us of the means of obtaining much valuable information. Among the few Oriental works which modern scholars have been able to obtain, the only one that has as yet been translated into English, from the Sanscrit, is, a History of the Kings of Cashmere, down to the Mahomedan conquest, entitled, "Raja Tarengini," published in 1835. It was not till about seventy years ago, during the war with Hyder Ali, and the subsequent hostilities between the sovereigns of Mysore, from 1792 to 1799, that the English became acquainted with the state of Southern India; when (to our shame be it spoken) the capture at Seringapatam of the Sultan's library, revealed the fact of an extensive political correspondence with Napoleon Bonaparte, the Directory, and the French governor of the Isle of France; also with the Shah of Persia, with Shah Zeman of Affghanistan, the Maharattas, and many other native princes of India. With so many salient points of tangible danger to defend, it might have been expected that the Government of India would have employed--as Russia does, and as France has ever done--competent officers in their service to travel in Persia, Afghanistan, and, in fact, in all the countries from whence the danger of an invasion was to be apprehended: especially as it was well known that Zeman Shah of Affghanistan had, in 1796, '97, and '98, made attempts to invade India.