But the press and the public in England behaved quite differently. The great majority, of course, was optimistic. The terror of the Afghan Campaign in 1842 still filled all hearts with dismay, and after the unsuccessful termination of the Crimean War they easily drifted into the Ostrich policy, said that the advance of Russia towards the frontiers of India was a chimera, and laughed at my firm and consistent assertions that there was danger threatening from the side of Russia. If I were now to publish all the newspaper articles, essays, and parliamentary speeches which appeared at the time to contradict my views, and to pacify the public in England and India, it would display indeed a sad picture of self-deception and a wilful lulling to sleep in fancied security. On my side were only a few staunch Conservatives, since this party, decidedly anti-Russian, had stood out for an energetic policy; but personally I took no notice either of the indifference of the masses or of the scorn and mockery of the optimists. The more they laughed at my ideas the more fervently and zealously did I defend them. I spared neither time nor trouble to bring forward the most striking proofs. I kept up my relations with Central Asia and Persia by constant correspondence. I read the Russian papers industriously, and so I had always an important weapon of defence at hand. The columns of the _Times_ and the fashionable monthly and weekly periodicals were open to me, and I had little difficulty in displaying such activity in writing as would impress even my political opponents, and finally break down the indifference of the great reading public. Many looked upon me as a Magyar thirsting for revenge on Russia, others again were pleased to find in me, a foreigner, a zealous defender of British State interests; and this caused the more surprise, as such concern for foreign State interests is always a rarity, and in England, much envied and little beloved on the Continent, had never been heard of before. Had I been seeking to obtain a public appointment in England, and had I settled there, no doubt my efforts would have appeared in quite another light, and the attention and subsequent acclamation I received would doubtless have been pitched in a lower key. But since, in my humble function of professor, I abode in Hungary, and as a foreigner continued in a foreign land, without ostentation or hope of material preferment, to carry on the defence of British interests on the Continent of Europe, and even persevered in influencing public opinion in England itself, I succeeded in banishing all suspicion of self-interest, and finally in disarming even the bitterest political opponents. Amongst the few who particularly disliked my political energy was Mr. Gladstone, the zealous advocate of an Anglo-Russian alliance in Church and politics. And yet I have been told that he had remarked to a friend, "Professor Vambéry's agitation