Ten years had elapsed since my first visit to the court of Persia, and many changes had occurred, both in men and measures. The Russians, within this short period, had advanced their frontier from the north of the Caucasus to the banks of the Araxes, a space of above four hundred miles. Buonaparte had laid his plans for chaining the bear of Russia and the lion of Persia, with the design of harnessing them to the his war-chariot, that he might drive in triumph over the rich plains of India. His name was familiar to numbers in Persia, and some few understood the character of his power. Among these was my shrewd old friend Aga Mahomed Câsim-Wâlâ,[135] of Isfahan, who is at once a professor, a poet, a philosopher, and a very inquisitive politician. "This Buonaparte," said he to me one morning, when I paid him a visit in his apartment at the college, "is a wonderful man; he wields empires as if they were clubs. After he has settled with Turkey, he will, unless our king shapes his policy to his liking, give Persia a knock on the head with Russia, and then make use of both to overthrow your power in India. Happen what will," said old Aga Mahomed, "he is a magnificent fellow, a perfect Faringee Chenghiz Khan."[136] I am treading on forbidden ground; I have nothing to say to politics: if I had, this chapter might be more amusing. I could tell of French and English schemes for harlequin-changes, which were to leave my Persian friends no remains of barbarism but their beards! of Mahomedan princes trained to be reformers, of the sudden introduction of the fine arts, and of the roving tribes of Tartary and the wild mountaineers of Fars becoming, by the proper use of a few cabalistical phrases, disciplined regiments. These, and many similar transformations, were meant to prove that we lived in an age when any instructed or enlightened man might, if furnished with the necessary implements of pen, ink, and paper, effect any given change, on any given nation, in a few months.