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Edinburgh

LIBRARY

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ROBERT CRAIGHEAD, PRINTER,

53 VESEY STREET, N. Y.

AP

4

B63

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THE position of Persia, relatively to other powers, and especially in presence of the complicated and warlike aspect of affairs in the East, gives to that fallen country a degree of interest it would not otherwise possess. The once renowned empire, so long sunk into degradation and decrepitude, has acquired, in recent times, à factitious or reflected importance from the changes that have occurred in other states. Two centuries ago, all that Persia knew of Europe was from the Jesuits and other missionaries who wandered thither in the vain hope of making converts to Christianity, and who, protected and well-treated by Shah Abbas and his successors, but wholly unheeded by their subjects, were frightened out of the country by the usurpation of the fierce Mahmoud Afghan. The rise and consolidation of British power in India, and the commercial enterprise of Englishmen, naturally led to intercourse between England and Persia. By France no attempts were made to establish either diplomatic or trading relations with the Shah and his subjects until early in the present century, when Napoleon's boundless ambition and inveterate animosity to England led him to

project an alliance with Persia, as the means of an attack upon British India. The idea was, perhaps, suggested by a request for assistance against England, made by the Shah to the French emperor in 1805. Desirous to ascertain the military and other resources of the country, Napoleon sent the orientalist Jaubert to procure information. Simultaneously with him, but not in his company, General Romieu was sent on a similar errand. The French Cæsar was a man of foresight; he despatched his emissaries in duplicate, as merchants write letters to the antipodes. In this instance the precaution proved wise: General Romieu had hardly reached his destination when he perished-by poison, as his countrymen affirm, but possibly by one of the malignant maladies common at Teheran, and due to its unhealthy site. Jaubert was less unfortunate: he escaped with three months' captivity in a well sunk in the rock, into which he was let down with ropes, by order of Mahmoud Pasha, governor of Bayazid. From this damp and dismal cell he was released by the death of the rapacious Kourd chief, whom the plague carried off. The information M. Jaubert sent

Voyage en Perse de Messieurs Eugène Flandin, peintre, et Pascal Coste, architecte, attachés à l'ambassade de France en Perse. (Undertaken and published by order of the French Government. The narrative of the journey by M. Eugène Flandin.) Paris, 1851. 2 volumes.

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