"DEAR PROFESSOR VAMBÉRY,--"I am very much obliged to you for your interesting and valuable letter about Kandahar, and you have increased my obligation by your permission to publish it, of which I have availed myself. I little thought, when I had the honour of making your acquaintance many years ago at Lord Houghton's [_see_ p. 255], that I should live to need and receive your valued aid in endeavouring to save England's Empire in the East from the only form of death against which not even the gods themselves can guard their favourites--death by suicide. I fear, however, that its present guardians, who have Moses and the prophets, are not likely to be converted--even by one of the dead. At least, the only form of conversion to which they seem disposed, is one which threatens to reverse the boast of Themistocles by converting a great Power into a little one. "Believe me, dear Professor Vambéry, "Very sincerely yours, "LYTTON." In non-English Europe great statesmen seldom or never condescend to write in such terms to mere journalists! And where such encouragements, characteristic of a free nation, are bestowed on the ambitious writer, they urge him on with still greater enthusiasm. And, further, what must be the feelings of the writer who knows all about England's glorious doings in Asia, and from his earliest youth has dreamed of political freedom; who, hampered hitherto by the mediæval prejudices still prevalent in Austria, finds himself all at once able to move and act without restraint, and has not to be ashamed of his low birth? One may say what one likes against the English (and they have no doubt some very glaring faults), but this one thing must be allowed--before all things they are men, and only after that are they British. In the enlightened nineteenth century they have made more progress than any, and a part such as that played by Disraeli and others would be perfectly impossible not only in Germany and Austro-Hungary--still more or less imbued with the spirit of mediævalism--but even in liberty-boasting France. And I further ask who could possibly remain indifferent while keenly watching the _rôle_ played on the world's stage by this small group of islands, how it rules over several hundred millions of people of all colours, tongues, and religions, and educates them up to better things!