for the vacant throne; and notwithstanding the efforts of a famous king-making vizier, Futteh Khan, the prize fell for a time to the lot of him who is so well known to English readers by the name and style of Shah Soojah.  But his incapacity was soon manifest.  Sometimes a king, sometimes a bandit, and sometimes a fugitive subsisting by the sale of his jewels, his cause at length became altogether hopeless; and after being robbed of his last treasure, the Koh-i-Noor—­as has already been detailed in this Journal[2]—­he took refuge in the British territory.

Futteh Khan, the king-making vizier, had twenty brothers; but one of the younger fry he treated with especial neglect.  ’The son of a woman of the Kuzzilbash tribe, looked down upon by the high-bred Douranee ladies of his father’s household, the boy had begun life in the degrading office of a sweeper at the sacred cenotaph of Lamech.  Permitted, at a later period, to hold a menial office about the person of the powerful Wuzeer, he served the great man with water, or bore his pipe; was very zealous in his ministrations; kept long and painful vigils; saw everything, heard everything in silence; bided his time patiently, and when the hour came, trod the stage of active life as no irresolute novice.  A stripling of fourteen, in the crowded streets of Peshawur in broad day, as the buyers and the sellers thronged the thoroughfares of the city, he slew one of the enemies of Futteh Khan, and galloped home to report the achievement to the Wuzeer.  From that time his rise was rapid.  The neglected younger brother of Futteh Khan became the favourite of the powerful chief, and following the fortunes of the warlike minister, soon took his place among the chivalry of the Douranee Empire.’

The name of this youth is well known in the annals of our time:  he was Dost Mahomed, a gay, bold, frank, daring character, who rose from the excesses of his early years into something resembling a hero of romance.  One of these excesses was committed when he had taken by assault the Palace of Herat.  It consisted in tearing the jewelled waistband from the person of the wife of one of the royal princes—­a terrible outrage in the eyes of these barbarous soldiers of the farther East, who, even when covered with blood, and loaded with rapine, cast down their eyes before the females of their enemies’ household.  In this case, the profaned garment was sent by the lady to her brother, the son of the then Afghan king, and a bloody vengeance followed, not upon the author of the outrage, but on the king-making vizier, who, falling into the hands of the prince whom he had himself placed upon the throne, was literally hacked to pieces.  Dost Mahomed now rose like a rocket.  The base and feeble remains of legitimacy seemed to die away of its own weakness, and the despised younger son of the king-making vizier soon reigned supreme at Cabool.  Let us note that this was in 1826.  The new king, says Mr Kaye, ’had hitherto lived the life of