[134] Dil dâree tifl, dil dâree.
CHAPTER XIX.
Progress of the Russians—Buonaparte—Second Visit to Tullanca—King Abbas Meerzâ—Reflections—Electrifying Machine—Phantasmagoria—Ministers of the Persian Court—Mahomed Hoosein Khan Mervee.
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.
This was not the first time that such experiments had been tried in Persia; for, besides a knowledge of the civil and military arts of Europe, efforts had been made to teach the Seffavean monarchs and their nobles to understand the laws, institutions, and governments of the more civilized world. The sarcastic and penetrating Gibbon, when speaking of the attempt, observes, "Chardin says that European travellers have diffused among the Persians some ideas of the freedom and mildness of our governments: they have done them a very ill office." This may be too severe; but if instruction is of a character to diminish happiness, without furthering improvement, he would be bold who should call it a blessing. A medicine may be excellent in itself, yet, from the peculiar habits and constitution of the patient, it may act as a poison. These and many similar sentences of wisdom I have now and then uttered, when talking about the proposed sudden regeneration of the Eastern world, but I never could obtain a hearing. My plans of slow and almost imperceptible change, which were not confined to the teaching half a dozen individuals, but embraced a whole people in their operation, have been ridiculed as proving nothing but the sluggishness of my understanding. When I have pleaded experience, I have been accused of giving that name to prejudice; my toleration of systems out of my power to alter, and interwoven with every feeling, habit, and enjoyment of the communities in which they prevail, has been referred to my narrow views; and all my pretensions to discernment and judgment have been called in question because I have persuaded myself, and tried to persuade others, that Asiatics, though they are not so fair as we are, though they are of a different religion, speak a different language, and have neither made the same advances in science nor in civilization, are, notwithstanding these disadvantages, not altogether destitute of good and great qualities, both of head and heart.
Liable as I am to such accusations, I must cautiously limit myself to facts, which I know from observation, or have heard from persons worthy of credit; but should my reader detect me in the sin of taking a more favourable view of human nature than its merits, I shall hope to be forgiven; while I pray that the stranger, who visits the land of my nativity, may come to it with a mind disposed rather to dwell on its green and fertile valleys, than upon its rugged rocks and bleak mountains. May he find enough of sound and good feeling among its inhabitants to make him look with indulgence on their failings and excesses. If he quarrels with that luxury and refinement, which, by supplying, multiply the wants of men; if he doubts the good of many of the laws and institutions which belong to an artificial society, the frame and workings of which the labour of a life would not enable him to comprehend, may he contemplate it in a spirit of humility, which rather leads him to question the correctness of his own judgment, than to pronounce, on a superficial glance, that every thing is wrong, which does not accord with his own habits and feelings.