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LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B., 
 
 Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College. 
 
 This series is designed for use in secondary schools in accordance 
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 Shakspere's As You Like It. With an introduction by Barrett 
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LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS— Continued. 
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 FOR READING. 
 
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 emy, Newark, N. J. With Portrait of Burns. 
 
 FOR STUDY. 
 
 Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
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 Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, with 
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 De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited, with introduc- 
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 iSgg and igoo. 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 
 
 PROFESSOR OP RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 With full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, and other Explanatory and 
 Illustrative Matter, Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 
 Shakspebe's Merchant of Venice. 
 Edited by Francis B.Gummere, Ph.D., 
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 College. 
 
 Shakspeee's As You Like It. With 
 an Introduction by Barrett Wendell, 
 A.B., Assistant Professor of English 
 in Harvard University, and Notes by 
 William Lyon Phelps, Ph.D., Instruc- 
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 Shakspeee's A Midsummeb Night's 
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 Shakspeee's Macbeth. Edited by 
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 Milton's Paeadise Lost. Books I. 
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 Pope's Homee's Iliad. Books I., 
 VI., XXII., AND XXIV. Edited by 
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 Defoe's Histoby of the Plagite in 
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 The Sib Rogee de Coveelet Papebs, 
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 Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. 
 Edited by the Rev. Huber Grav 
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 Lakeville, Conn. 
 
 Ieving's Tales of a Teavellee. With 
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 Coleeidge's The Rime of the Ancient 
 Maeineb. Edited by Herbert Bates, 
 A.B., formerly Instructor in English 
 in the University of Nebraska. 
 
 Southey's Life or Nelson. Edited by 
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 wood High School, Illinois. 
 
 Cablyle's Essay on Buens. Edited 
 by Wilson Farrand, A.M., Associate 
 Principal of the Newark Academy, 
 Newark, N. J. 
 
 De Quincey's Flight of a Tabtab 
 Teibe (Revolt of the Taetaes). 
 Edited by Charles Sears Baldwin, 
 Ph.D., Instructor in Rhetoric in Yale 
 University. 
 
 Tennyson's The Peincess. Edited by 
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 Geobge Eliot's Silas Mabnee. Edited 
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 Other Volumes are in Preparation. 
 
THOMAS UE (^UIXCEY 
 
Congmans' Q^nglisli (glassies 
 DE QUINCEY'S 
 
 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 CMkLES SEARS BALDWIN, Ph.D. 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN RHETORIC IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 KEW YORK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 
 1896 
 
 X 
 

 (y 
 
 Copyright, 1896 
 
 BY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 /Z- lil'<(£> 
 
 Pretis of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Aster Place, New York 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The ^'Revolt of the 'J'artars'' is essentially like '^ The 
 English Mail Coach/' Both start from fact, both move 
 in dreamland. In order to make this plain, De Quincey's 
 choice and use of material are carefully displayed. To 
 obtrude this historical matter would have been prejudicial 
 to more strictly literary interest ; to omit it, prejudicial 
 to any just estimate of the work and the author. The 
 appendices, therefore, show, so far as was proper within 
 the scope of this volume, the basis of those judgments in 
 the introduction and the notes which do not accord with 
 common fame. Erudition is sometimes proclaimed among 
 De Quincey's merits. A careful examination of this piece, 
 in its revelation of certain habits, impairs this claim. If 
 many other pieces of De Quincey's now reckoned as his- 
 torical were subjected to the same scrutiny, perhaps there 
 would be less said of his erudition, and so of his versa- 
 tility. 
 
 But why should criticism of literature be concerned 
 with erudition, or, for that matter, with versatility ? If 
 a man does well his kind of writing, that is enough. The 
 student of this volume is not asked to admire either a foot- 
 note erudition or a versatility that consists in the jour- 
 nalist's variety of topics. The critical apparatus seeks to 
 concentrate his attention upon De Quincey's high imagi- 
 nation and the range and finish of his expression. 
 
 Mere information necessarily occupies a great deal of 
 space when the subject is so far out of the common as the 
 migration of the Torguts. But wherever the equipment 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 of the average school could be trusted, the student has 
 been directed, not informed. In criticism, too, the editor 
 has tried to direct and stimulate rather than to dogmatize. 
 Where everything is supplied ready-made, even to con- 
 venient labels of characterization, the appeal is only to 
 memory. N"o student is less amenable to education than 
 he who knows his English literature thoroughly at second 
 hand. 
 
 The text here printed is that of Hogg's collective edi- 
 tion (Edinburgh, 1853-1860), which was prepared by the 
 author. The text of the new Edinburgh collective edition 
 (Adam and Charles Black), edited by Professor Masson, 
 has been carefully collated and some of the emendations 
 in punctuation adopted. The text of the original Black- 
 wood article (1837) differs here and there in phrase, no- 
 where in substance. All notes except De Quincey's are 
 relegated to the end of the book. The arrangement of 
 the critical apparatus being throughout such as to facili- 
 tate questioning, the usual specimen examination papers 
 seemed unnecessary. 
 
 The editor returns thanks for assistance to Dr. Nelson 
 Glenn McCrea of Columbia University, and to Mr. Fred- 
 erick AVells AYilliams of Yale University; for the loan of 
 Bergmann's book, to the library of Harvard University. 
 
 C. S. B. 
 
 Yale University, August, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction : 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Biograpliical Sketch of De Quincey .... ix 
 II. The Revolt of the Tartars : 
 
 A. The Kalmucks xxv 
 
 B. The Revolt xxix 
 
 C. De Quincey's Narrative (in General) . . . xxxi 
 
 D. De Quincey's Narrative (in Detail) . . o xxxii 
 
 Suggestions for Teachers xxxix 
 
 Chronological Table xliii 
 
 Revolt of the Tartars 1 
 
 Notes 68 
 
 Appendix A : 
 
 Books bearing upon the Kalmucks and their Revolt . 86 
 Appendix B : 
 
 Selections from the Inscription of the Emperor Kien 
 
 Long, translated into French by Father Amiot . 87 
 
 Appendix C : 
 
 Relations of De Quincey's Narrative to Bergmann's . 90 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. Biographical Sketch of De Quincey. 
 
 The long life of the "English Opium-Eater" (1785- 
 1859) almost covered the history of our country from the 
 Revolution to the Civil War, But he is to be thought of 
 as belonging to the literary movement of the early part 
 of the century, to the time of his boyish idol, Wordsworth, 
 rather than to the time of his later and younger friend 
 Oarlyle; to the time of Irving rather than to the time of 
 Emerson. His father was a Manchester merchant of liter- 
 ary tastes, who died early, leaving to his wife and six surviv- 
 ing children an income of about eight thousand dollars a 
 year. The boy Thomas, brought up among girls and women, 
 was thoughtful and imaginative. ''From my birth," he 
 says, " I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual 
 in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been 
 even from my schoolboy days." ^ Add that he was finely 
 sensitive, and you will see that such a boy, were he English 
 or French or American, would make his own world of 
 dreams and live in that. He missed the education of 
 cricket and football. No Eton or Rugby forced him to 
 be an English boy. When he was only seven, indeed, his 
 big brother William came home from school and put him 
 through a course of daily braivls with factory boys. At 
 length AVilliam was able to bestow this faint praise: 
 "You're honest; you're willing, though lazy; you would 
 pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a 
 
 ' Confessions. 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 monstrous coward, you dou't run away."^ But that is 
 the only physical discipline recorded in a life of intellect- 
 ual experiences. 
 
 "I was sent to various schools, great and small; and was very 
 early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my 
 knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease ; and at 
 fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only 
 composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek 
 fluently, and without embarrassment — an accomplishment which 
 I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in 
 my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading oif the news- 
 papers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore ; for the neces- 
 sity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and 
 combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern 
 ideas, images, relations of things, etc., gave me a compass of diction 
 which would never have been called out by a dull translation of 
 moral essays, etc. ' That boy,' said one of my masters, pointing the 
 attention of a stranger to me, * that boy could harangue an Athe- 
 nian mob better than you or I could address an English one.' He 
 who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, ' and a ripe and 
 good one ; ' and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or 
 reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, 
 to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the 
 care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should 
 expose his ignorance ; and finally, to that of a respectable scholar, 
 at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation." ^ 
 
 Try to pierce through the egotism of the record, which 
 comes, not from vulgar vanity, but from a solitary life, to 
 the high desires and attainments of this precocious boy. 
 True, in his fifteenth year, visiting at Laxton, the country- 
 seat of a family friend. Lady Carbery, he is found acting 
 as literary adviser to the household; but to gain the affec- 
 tion and admiration of this versatile woman, till she was 
 like a sister to him, he must have been more than a prig. 
 The same endearing quality appears in his visit to Ireland 
 
 ^ AidobiograjjJiic Sketches, i. 39, "^Confessions. 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 with a boy of his own age, Lord Westport, and in the pleas- 
 ure Lord Westport's father. Lord Altamont, found in 
 talking with the brilliant boy. This middle-aged Irish 
 peer even kept up for some time a correspondence with 
 De Qaincey. More than Greek and Latin, then, the boy 
 had learned at fifteen. Many years afterward he could 
 write on the Irish rebellions from the first-hand knowl- 
 edge he had picked up then in Ireland. He had an oj^en 
 mind. One thing more. He had already discovered Words- 
 worth's "We are Seven" at a time when the very few 
 people who had heard of Wordsworth, heard only to laugh. 
 He had an independent mind. 
 
 The " great school " mentioned above was the Manches- 
 ter Grammar School, which had been chosen by his guar- 
 dians because it was entitled to certain scholarships at 
 Oxford. De Quincey despised the master and hated the 
 school. He declared that his health was being under- 
 mined for lack of exercise, that he was quite prepared to 
 go up to Oxford. The guardians, with their eyes on the 
 scholarship, rejected all appeals for removal. He asked 
 Lady Oarbery to lend him five guineas to help out the 
 two he had left. She sent him ten. Then De Quincey 
 ran away. 
 
 "I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow, and on 
 its road to the carrier's ; then, ' with Providence ray guide,' I set off 
 on foot, carrying a small parcel, with some articles of dress, under 
 my arm ; a favourite English poet in one pocket, and a small 12mo 
 volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other." ^ 
 
 AVhen De Quincey ran away at seventeen, he was in 
 thought a man. In practical experience he was neither 
 then nor ever afterward more than a child. But would 
 Wordsworth treat him as a man or as a runaway school- 
 boy ? Sorrowfully inclining to the latter view, he gave 
 
 ' Confessions. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 up his plan of going straight to the Lakes, and went wan- 
 dering in Wales. No one should read the account of 
 these years of transition anywhere else than in De Quin- 
 cey's own ''Confessions." The mere facts are compara- 
 tively insignificant. He slept much out of doors; he 
 wrote letters for bed or food; he studied German with a 
 chance acquaintance; he finally went up to London in the 
 hojDC of raising money on his prospects. In London he 
 applied to many Jewish money-lenders in vain. His money 
 gone, he walked the streets, sleeping in one of the empty 
 rooms of a house where a pettifogging lawyer carried on 
 some obscure and doubtful business. Hunger and expos- 
 ure undermined his constitution and gave him a chronic 
 malady of the stomach. None too soon came the reconcil- 
 iation with the guardians from whom he had been hiding. 
 It was arranged that he should live at the university on 
 £100 a year. 
 
 Nothing in the whole life of De Quincey makes less 
 impression ujoon his readers, or seems to have made less 
 impression upon himself, than Oxford. He entered 
 Worcester College, December 17, 1803, and his name 
 remained on the books till 1810; but he might as well 
 have been reading in any other quiet place. He studied 
 ancient philosophy, German literature, and metaphysics. 
 He dipped into Hebrew with a German named Schwartz- 
 burg; he was known to a few as brilliant in conversation. 
 In 1808 he left without a degree; and the explanations of 
 this, both his own and those advanced by his friends and 
 biographers, tend only to strengthen the impression that 
 De Quincey was a dilettante rather than a scholar. This 
 period appears among his imaginative reminiscences only 
 in * ' The English Mail Coach. ' ' He dreams, not of the old 
 colleges, the gardens, the river, Magdalen tower — anything 
 that has passed into the heart of any other man of letters 
 — but of the coach that took him to London, of the " glory 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 of motion," the '' under-sense of indefinite danger," '' the 
 conscious presence of a central intellect in the midst of 
 vast distances." Nothing could better show his aloofness. 
 Before definitely leaving Oxford, De Quincey had corres- 
 ponded at some length with Wordsworth, and had visited 
 Coleridge and Southey. While he was lingering undecided 
 in London, reading a little law, meeting men of letters, 
 he began the systematic use of opium. One of his chief 
 pleasures was to take opium before going to the opera. 
 
 "A chorus, etc., of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in 
 a piece of arras work, the whole of ray past life — not as if recalled 
 by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music; 
 no longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents 
 removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions 
 exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five 
 shillings. And over and above the music of the stage and the orches- 
 tra, I had all around me, in the intervals of the performance, the 
 music of the Italian language talked by Italian women — for the gal- 
 lery was usually crowded with Italians; and I listened with a pleas- 
 ure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and listened, in 
 Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women ; for the less you 
 understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody 
 or harshness of its sounds." ^ 
 
 Opium was used also to heighten the pleasure of min- 
 gling with the London crowd on Saturday night. 
 
 "For the sake, therefore, of witnessing upon as large a scale as 
 possible a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used 
 often on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, 
 without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the 
 markets and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a 
 Saturday night for laying out their wages. Many a family party, 
 consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his chil- 
 dren, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and 
 means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household 
 articles.'"" 
 
 ^ Confessions. ^ Ibid. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 His attitude of mind at this time, and, to some extent, 
 throughout his life, appears significantly in the following: 
 
 "I, whose disease it was to meditate too much, and to observe too 
 little, and who, upon my first entrance at college, was nearly falling 
 into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings 
 which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the ten- 
 dencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. I 
 was, indeed, like a person who, according to the old legend, had 
 entered the cave of Trophonius; and the remedies I sought were to 
 force myself into society, and to keep my understanding in continual 
 activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies I should 
 certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, 
 however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I 
 yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And, at that 
 time, I often fell into these reveries upon taking opium; and more 
 than once it has happened to me, on a summer night, when I have 
 been at an open window, in a room from which I could overlook the 
 sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town 
 
 of L , at about the same distance, that I have sat from sunset to 
 
 sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to move." * 
 
 From this unsettled life De Quincey roused himself to 
 go where he had been strongly drawn since boyhood — to 
 the Westmoreland Lakes and the society of those poets 
 who have since been grouped as the Lake School. Cole- 
 ridge, Southey, and, foremost of all, Wordsworth, were 
 seeking to establish in England a kind of poetry essen- 
 tially different from the poetry of the eighteenth century. 
 The difference appears most strikingly in two character- 
 istics. The eighteenth century preferred the interests of 
 men and women in the city, and held to a somewhat for- 
 mal and conventional expression. Wordsworth and his 
 followers preached and practised a '^ return to nature," 
 that is, a return to the simpler interests of country people, 
 to the love of scenery apart from men and women, and to 
 a more direct and natural expression. Again, the eighteenth 
 
 ' CotifesHt'ojis. 
 
INTR OD UCTION XV 
 
 century discouraged imagination^ whereas imagination was 
 made by these reformers almost the touchstone of true 
 poetry. Though all the great poets of the time caught 
 the spirit of this change, the critics and the public were so 
 slow in following them that for some years the Lake School 
 was a butt of ridicule. It was with the ardour of a disci- 
 ple, then, that De Quincey, at the age of twenty-four, 
 went to be near his heroes of literature. After living for 
 some time with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, he took a 
 lease of their cottage when they removed to a larger one, 
 filled it with books, and spent about ten years in reading, 
 playing with the Wordsworth children, walking and talk- 
 ing to his heart's content with the poets themselves. He 
 thus describes the Vale of Grasmere: 
 
 " Once I absolutely went forwards from Coniston to the very gorge 
 of Hammerscar, from which the whole Vale of Grasmere suddenly 
 breaks upon the A'iew in a style of almost theatrical surprise, with 
 its lovely valley stretching before the eye in the distance, the lake 
 lying immediately below, with its solemn, ark-like island of four and 
 a half acres in size seemingly floating on its surface, and its exquisite 
 outline on the opposite shore, revealing all its little bays and wild 
 sylvan margin, feathered to the edge with wild flowers and ferns. 
 In one quarter, a little wood stretching for about half a mile towards 
 the outlet of the lake ; more directly in opposition to the spectator, 
 a few green fields ; and beyond them, just two bowshots from the 
 water, a little white cottage gleaming from the midst of trees, with 
 a vast and seemingly never-ending series of ascents rising above it 
 to the height of more than three thousand feet." * 
 
 The interior of the cottage is described in the '' Confes- 
 
 '* Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more 
 than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambi- 
 tiously styled in ray family the drawing-room ; but being contrived 
 ' a double debt to pay,' it is also, and more justly, termed the library, 
 
 ^ Antohiofjraphic Sketches, ii , 234. 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 for it happens that books are the only article of ])roperty in which 1 
 am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand, 
 collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, 
 put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with 
 books ; and, furthermore, i)aint me a good fire ; and furniture plain 
 and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And 
 near the fire paint me a tea-table; and (as it is clear that no creature 
 can come to see one such a stormy night) place only two cups and 
 saucers on the tea-tray ; and if you know how to paint such a thing 
 symbolically, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — eternal d 
 pa7-te ante, and d parte post — for I usually drink tea from eight 
 o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning. . . . The next 
 article brought forward should naturally be myself — a picture of the 
 Opium-eater, with his ' little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
 drug ' lying beside him on the table. ... No ; you may as 
 well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, 
 and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may 
 put a quart of ruby-colored laudanum ; that, and a book of German 
 Metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in 
 the neighbourhood." 
 
 Literary leisure lias rarely been more perfectly realized. 
 To most i^eople, indeed to his own family, he was a recluse; 
 but to his few intimates he was the most delightful and 
 profitable of companions. Professor Wilson, who was 
 twice De Quincey's eize, and differed correspondingly in 
 tastes, loved him dearly. The giant and the dwarf used 
 to ramble interminably together, especially at night. 
 These bachelor habits were hardly modified when, in 
 1816, De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, daughter of 
 a neighbouring farmer. The marriage led him to curb his 
 alarming consumption of opium, and combined with his 
 habit of giving money away recklessly to force him into 
 writing for a living. But after a few magazine articles, 
 an important examination of Ricardo's political economy, 
 followed by some original work on the same subject, and a 
 futile attempt to edit a country paper, he relapsed into 
 opium dei)rcssion. It required a supreme effort of Avill 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 and the positive need of his wife and children finally to 
 rouse him to systematic effort. 
 
 In 1821 De Quincey went to live in London as a regular 
 writer for the new London Magazine, just established by 
 the publishers Taylor and Hessey. At their table he met 
 the London literary men of the day, especially Lamb and 
 Hood; and in their magazine appeared the '' Confessions of 
 an English Opium -Eater," which made him famous. 
 Thus he was thirty-six when he came before the public. 
 Indeed, the public might never have heard of him at all 
 but for his need of money. From this time on anecdotes 
 thicken about the little figure of the Opium-Eater. The 
 two things that struck every one most were his wonderful 
 conversation and the confusion in which he worked. Here 
 is a note by Hood : 
 
 " When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. de 
 Quincey . . . and I have found him at home, quite at home, in 
 the midst of a German Ocean of literature in a storm, flooding all 
 the floor, the tables, billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging 
 open, on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst 
 the philosopher, standing with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, 
 seemed to be less speaking than reading from a * handwriting on the 
 wall.' Now^ and then he would diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to 
 the right or left, till I was tempted to inquire with Peregrine in 
 John Bull, ' Do you never deviate ? ' but he always came safely 
 back to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence 
 hunted his topic to the end." ^ 
 
 During his six or seven years' residence in London De 
 Quincey's magazine- writing consisted mainly of essays on 
 German and English literature and philosojDhy, and of 
 translations from the German; but his range was always 
 very wide. On political economy and history he wrote with 
 assurance; on many other subjects with fluency. Gras- 
 
 ' Hood, Literary Meminiscences (quoted by Hogg, De Quincey and 
 his Friends, p. 239). 
 
xviii INTROD UCTION 
 
 mere he Yisited rarely; and in 1828 a growing connection 
 with BlackiooocVs Magazine, through his old friend Pro- 
 fessor Wilson, led to the removal of the whole family to 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 The Edinburgh period, though essentially one in liter- 
 ary activity, is divided into two parts by other considera- 
 tions. During the first third the family lived together in 
 town. In 1835 the elder son, a promising boy of eighteen, 
 died of brain fever. In 1837, the year in wdiich "The 
 Revolt of the Tartars " was written, Mrs. De Quincey died. 
 During the last two thirds, De Quincey had a cottage at 
 Lasswade, not far from town, for the benefit of his chil- 
 dren. His eldest daughter took charge of the household, 
 and De Quincey, sometimes with them, sometimes in Edin- 
 burgh lodgings, sometimes in Glasgow, continued to study 
 and wa-ite in seclusion till his death in 1859. He w-as now 
 famous on both sides of the Atlantic. But though he 
 continued to write w^ithout apparent flagging,^ and though 
 his conversation continued to enchant the few^ who felt its 
 spell, it is impossible not to see that his afflictions and the 
 ultimate effects of opium had exaggerated his eccentricities 
 into something grotesque and pitiable. He was a slovenly 
 old man, unstrung, often confused. Brilliant he was still, 
 but by flashes; gentle and courteous he could not help 
 being, but he had forgotten how to dress, and he feared 
 society. Through his last years there is a painful groping, 
 a pathetic incompetence. But his power of reflection and 
 expression survived all loss of practical efficiency. That 
 died last. At the end, as at the beginning, he w^as "an 
 intellectual creature." 
 
 "Intellectual creature," indeed, is a phrase that sums 
 up what in the man's life is most memorable. He w^as 
 purely a man of letters. Macaulay gave years to politics; 
 Scott was anxious to found estates and a noble family; but 
 all De Quincev cared for was first readins: and thinkinsr, 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 and secondarily talking and writing. His was an inner 
 life. He never travelled farther than Ireland, and after 
 his coming to Grrasmere the externals of his life are insig- 
 nificant. A life so self-centred was, of necessity, egotist- 
 ical, not in vulgar vanity and selfishness, but in habitual 
 spinning out of himself. But, what is more important, it 
 was above all imaginative, moving in the world of art rather 
 than in the world of fact, loving music, speculation^ 
 mystery. 
 
 It is only to look upon these traits from another side to 
 add that he was abstracted, eccentric, incompetent in 
 every-day matters. ^ ' I have just set my hair on fire, ' ' he 
 remarks casually in a letter to his publisher. During the 
 Edinburgh period his lodgings became, as he expressed it, 
 *' snowed up ; " that is, the confusion of books and papers 
 reached the point of crowding out the author. His rem- 
 edy was very simple. He locked the door, took other lodg- 
 ings, and began afresh. "When one knows that this hap- 
 pened more than once, it is easier to believe the anecdotes 
 current about this period. 
 
 "His clothes had generally a look of extreme age, and also of 
 having been made for a person somewhat larger than himself. I 
 believe the real cause of this was that he had got much thinner in 
 those later years, whilst he wore, and did wear, I suppose till the 
 end of his life, the clothes that had been made for him years before. 
 I have sometimes seen appearances about him of a shirt and shirt- 
 collar, but usually there were no indications of these articles of 
 dress. When I came to visit him in his lodgings, I saw him in all 
 stages of costume ; sometimes he would come in to me from his bed- 
 room to his parlour, as on this occasion, with shoes, but no stockings, 
 and sometimes with stockings, but no shoes. When in bed, where I 
 also saw him from time to time, he wore a large jacket — not exactly 
 an under-jacket, but a jacket made in the form of a coat, of white 
 flannel ; something like a cricketer's coat in fact. In the street his 
 appearance was equally singular. He walked with considerable 
 rapidity (he said walking was the only athletic exercise in which he 
 had ever excelled) and with nil odd. one sided, and yet straight- 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 forward motion, moving his legs only, and neither his arms, head, 
 nor any other part of his body — like Wordsworth's cloud — 
 
 'Moving altogether, if lie moved at all.' 
 
 His hat, which had the antediluvian aspect characteristic of the rest 
 of his clothes, was generally stuck on the back of his head, and no 
 one who ever met that antiquated figure, with that strangely dreamy 
 and intellectual face, working its way rapidly, and with an oddly 
 deferential air, through any of the streets of Edinburgh — a sight 
 certainly by no means common, for he was very seldom to be seen in 
 town — could ever forget it. He was very fond of walking, but gen- 
 erally his walks were merely into town to his publisher's office (Mr. 
 Hogg's, then in Nicolson Street) and back again to Lasswade. Till 
 he was nearly seventy he took this walk — one of twelve miles — 
 without inconvenience." ' 
 
 "Roofed by a huge wide-awake, which makes his tiny figure look 
 like the stalk of some great fungus, with a lantern of more than 
 common dimensions in his hand, away he goes down the wooded 
 path, up the steep bank, along the brawling stream, and across the 
 waterfall — and ever as he goes there comes from him a continued 
 stream of talk, concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and 
 othei' kindred matters. Surely if we two were seen by any human 
 eyes, it must have been supposed that some gnome, or troll, or kel- 
 pie, was luring the listener to his doom. The worst of such affairs 
 as this, was the consciousness that, when left, the old man would 
 continue walking on until, weariness overcoming him, he would take 
 his rest, wherever that happened, like some poor mendicant. He 
 used to denounce, with his most fervid eloquence, that barbarous and 
 brutal provision of the law of England, which rendered sleeping in 
 the open air an act of vagrancy, and so punishable, if the sleeper 
 could not give a satisfactory account of himself — a thing which 
 Papaverius never could give under any circumstances." ^ 
 
 " For instance, those who knew him a little might call him a loose 
 man in money matters ; those who knew him closer laughed at the 
 idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other like responsibility 
 with his nature. You might as well attack the character of the 
 nightingale, which may have nipped up your five-pound note and 
 
 • J. R. Findlay {Hogg, ibid., p. 129). 
 
 ^John Hill Burton, T7ie Book Hunter (chapter entitled "Papa- 
 verius," quoted by Hogg, ihid., p. 254). 
 
INTR 01) UCTION xxi 
 
 torn it into shreds to serve as nest-building material. Only immedi- 
 ate, craving necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledg- 
 ment of the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civil- 
 ised society ; and only while the necessity lasted did the acknowledg- 
 ment exist. Take just one example, which will render this clearer 
 than any generalities. He arrives very late at a friend's door, and 
 on gaining adtnissicni — a process in which he often endured impedi- 
 ments — he represents with his usual silver voice and measured 
 rhetoric the absolute necessity of his being then and there invested 
 with a sum of money in the current coin of the realm, the amount 
 limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely 
 states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he 
 discovers, signs that his eloquence is likely to be unproductive, he is 
 fortunately reminded that, should there bo any difficulty in connec- 
 tion with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment 
 in j)osse3sion of a document, which he is prepared to deposit with 
 the lender — a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove a 
 feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience 
 in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which de- 
 velops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable 
 possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled 
 bit of paper, and spreads it out — a fifty-pound bank-note ! The 
 friend, who knew him w^ell, was of opinion that, had he, on deliver- 
 ing over the seven shillings and sixpence, received the bank-note, 
 he would never have heard anything more of the transaction from 
 the other party." * 
 
 Of course it is easy to exaggerate the impression of De 
 Qiiincey's abstraction. He read the papers and was inter- 
 ested in current events, though lie was prone to reflect 
 away from the facts. His conversation, too, was a strong 
 link between him and his fellows. But though this often 
 started among current events, or even in commonplaces, 
 it was almost sure to become imaginative, speculative, 
 sometimes almost rhapsodic. This was the man's great 
 charm, the charm that attached to him a brilliant follow- 
 
 ' John Hill Burton, The Book Hunter (chapter entitled " Papa- 
 verius," quoted by Hogg, ihid., p. 255). 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing and a romantic interest, heightening his fame to this 
 clay. His essay on "Conversation" shows his ideals and 
 gives some hint of his power. What he was in congenial 
 company appears in the following: 
 
 " He did not quite, as Burton had told me he would do, talk maga- 
 zine articles, but the literary habit was notable, though not in the 
 least obtrusive, in all his talk. One effect of this was somewhat trying 
 to an inexperienced listener; for when in the flow of his conversation 
 he came to the close of one of his beautifully rounded and balanced 
 paragraphs, he would pause in order to allow you to have your say, 
 with the result sometimes of rather taking one aback, especially as 
 the subject of conversation often seemed to have been brought, by 
 his conduct of it, to its complete and legitimate conclusion. The 
 listener was apt to feel that he had perorated rather than paused. 
 In his mode of conversing, as in everything else, his courtesy of 
 manner was observable. He never monopolised talk, allowed every 
 one to have a fair chance, and listened with respectful patience to 
 the most commonplace remarks from any one present. The fact 
 that any one was, for the time, a member of the company in which 
 he also happened to be, evidently in his eyes entitled the speaker to 
 all consideration and respect. But he had a just horror of bores, 
 and carefully avoided them." ^ 
 
 "His voice was extraordinary; it came as if from dreamland ; but 
 it was the most musical and impressive of voices. In convivial life, 
 what then seemed to me the most remarkable trait of De Quincey's 
 character, was the power he possessed of easily changing the tone of 
 ordinary thought and conversation into that of his own dreamland, 
 till his auditors, with wonder, found themselves moving pleasantly 
 along with him in a sphere of which they might have heard and read, 
 perhaps, but which had ever appeared to them inaccessible, and far, 
 far away. Seeing that he was always good-natured and social, he 
 would take part, at commencement, in any sort of tattle or twaddle. 
 The talk might be of ' beeves, ' and he could grapple with them if 
 expected to do so, but his musical cadences were not in keeping with 
 such work, and in a few minutes (not without some strictly logical 
 sequence) he could escape at will from beeves to butterflies, and 
 thence to the soul's immortality; to Plato, and Kant, and Schelling, 
 and Fichte; to Milton's early years, and Shakespeare's sonnets; to 
 
 » J. R. Findlay, ibid., p. 127. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge; to Homer and ^schylus; to St. Thomas 
 of Aquin, St. Basil, and St. Chrysostom. But he by no means ex- 
 cluded themes from real life, according to his view of that life, but 
 would recount profound mysteries from his own experiences — visions 
 that had come over him in his loneliest walks among the mountains, 
 and passages within his own personal knowledge, illustrating, if not 
 proving, the doctrines of dreams, of warnings, of second sight, and 
 mesmerism. And whatever the subject might be, every one of his 
 sentences (or of his chapters, I might say) was woven into the most 
 perfect logical texture, and uttered in a tone of sustained melody." ^ 
 "Presently the flood of talk passes forth from them, free, clear, 
 and continuous — never rising into declamation, never losing a cer- 
 tain mellow earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as exqui- 
 sitely jointed together as if they were destined to challenge the criti- 
 cism of the remotest posterity. Still the hours stride over each 
 other, and still flows on the stream of gentle rhetoric, as if it were 
 lahitur et labetur in omne voluhilis cevum. It is now far into the 
 night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about sepa- 
 ration and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress 
 of civilisation, the effect of habit on man in all ages, and the power 
 of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the special, 
 he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours; for, was it not 
 the other night that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, 
 his own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within 
 either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, 
 and having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the 
 extreme unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might 
 indeed nourish kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar 
 vegetable to which it was appropriated, but was not a comfortable 
 place of repose for adult man.'"* 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, he found his most natural expression in 
 talking rather than in writing, and certainly his writing 
 has the discursive character of talk. 
 
 With the exception of " The Logic of Political Econ- 
 omy " and the unimportant novel " Klosterheim," De 
 Quincey's work consists entirely of articles for the reviews. 
 
 ^ R. P. Gillies, Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, ibid., p. 241. 
 ' John Hill Burton, The Book Hunter, ibid., p. 252. 
 
xxW INTRODUCTION 
 
 These cover a very great range of subjects,^ following his 
 reading, which was wide rather than dee^:*. He made pre- 
 tensions to scholarship in many fields, bnt he seems never 
 to have carried on any long and connected research. He was 
 bookish; he preferred reading to writing, his work some- 
 times ^'smells of the lamp," and he delights in pedantic 
 foot-notes; but he cannot, except in the precision of his 
 language, be called scholarly. This characteristic of his 
 work is typical both of his habit of mind and of his time. 
 
 As a critic his value is perhaps overestimated. On the 
 one hand, he united with Coleridge and Carhde in intro- 
 ducing English readers to German literature and j^hiloso- 
 phy. He was also among the first to aj^preciate tlie new 
 poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and to contend for 
 its just jolace in literature. On the other hand, he failed to 
 appreciate French literature, slighted Goethe, scorned 
 Crabbe, preferred Dickens to Thackeray, and ventured to 
 attack the Eepublic of Plato. A recent w^riter in the 
 Saturday Review (vol. 69, p. 17) charges him with being 
 "destitute of the true critical spirit, the sense of the 
 actual." But there is no doubt that, like Macaulay, he 
 did much to give the average reader a more intelligent 
 interest in literature, and to lead him toward culture. A 
 good example of this valuable service is his illuminative 
 essay "' On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth." 
 
 In any case De Quincey's value as a critic is not the 
 measure of his excellence. His most popular and interest- 
 ing works, the works by which he himself set most store, 
 are those pieces of imaginative reminiscence beginning 
 
 ^ An excellent classification of De Quincey's various writings has 
 been made by Professor Masson \\\ chapter xii. of his life of De 
 Quincey (English Men of Letters Series). Compare also the classi- 
 fication in Dr. Shad worth H. Hodgson's essay on " The Genius of De 
 Quincey " {Outcast Essays, reprinted in Hogg's De Quincey and his 
 Friends, p. 314). 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 with the ''Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," and 
 proceeding through the " Suspiria de Profundis " (indud- 
 ing " Levana," " Savannah-la-Mar, " etc.), and the *' Auto- 
 biographic Sketches," to "The Euglish Mail Coach." 
 Not only did these catch the taste of the time and set a 
 fashion on both sides of the Atlantic,^ but they also hold a 
 peculiar place in English literature. 
 
 II. The Eeyolt of the Tartars.^ 
 
 The sub-title of this piece, '' Flight of the Kalmuck 
 Khan and his People," is a more accurate description. In 
 order to appreciate the work as a whole, before examining 
 it in detail, it is necessary to know (1) Avho the Kalmucks 
 are, (2) Avhat are the actual, the historical facts of their 
 revolt, (3) how this historical material was handled by De 
 Quincey. 
 
 A. The Kalmuchs. 
 
 The Kalmucks are Mongol nomads of the Caspian 
 steppes. Thus they belong to that race whose countless 
 hordes crushed alike the armies of China and of Russia in 
 the thirteenth century, seized both thrones, and, pushing 
 far west into Hungary, menaced all Christian Europe.^ 
 Their famous chief Genghis, or Jingis, Khan (1162-1227) 
 is said to have ruled over the largest empire ever brought 
 under a single man. Even Timur (died, 1-105), a much 
 
 ^ Note, for instance, Hawthorne's shorter pieces; and, later, Mitch- 
 ell's Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life. 
 
 ^ Published in Blackwood's Edinburfjh 3Iagazine, 1837 ; repub- 
 lished in Hogg's collective edition. Selections, Grave and Gay, from 
 Writings Published and Unpuhlished, by Thomas De Qtiincey,lSDS- 
 1860, vol. iv. {Miscellanies, vol. ii.) 
 
 ^Consult Fisher's Outlines of Unv'ersal History, pp. 283, 349, 
 351 ; Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History, pp. 240, 248, 277 ; or a 
 cyclopaedia, under the headings Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mongols. 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 lesser chiefs became, in the literature of western Europe, 
 a proverb of wonderful conquest under the name of 
 Tamerlane. 
 
 But no stable empire could be built by men so nearly- 
 savage and so naturally nomadic. The Mongol hordes, 
 disintegrated and scattered, became so involved with the 
 races among which they wandered, that it is difficult to 
 reach a classification. Thus the Kalmucks are grouped by 
 De Quincey among the Tartars; and though in this he 
 varies from the best authorities of his own time, it is not 
 even yet certain whether he is right or wrong. Probably, 
 however, the Kalmucks are descended, not from the Tartar, 
 but from the Kerait branch of the Mongols. The partic- 
 ular Kalmucks with which De Quincey 's narrative has to 
 do were of the tribe called Torguts (Torgotes, Torgouths). 
 In 1616 these Torguts migrated from their country of 
 Sungaria (Jungaria), in Thibet, to the steppes of the 
 Caspian Sea. Though nominally owing allegiance to Rus- 
 sia, they plundered, after their fashion, both the Russian 
 and the Turkish borders, and kept up occasional commu- 
 nication with China. But the connection with Russia 
 gradually strengthening, the Torguts became fairly estab- 
 lished in wide camping-grounds, from the Don on the 
 west, to the Jaik (Ural) and the Caspian Sea on the east, 
 and from Tsaritsin on the north, to the slopes of the Cau- 
 casus on the south. 
 
 As to the main traits of these Mongol nomads all trav- 
 ellers agree. The following extracts are from the narrative 
 of a French engineer, M. de Hell, and his wife: ^ 
 
 " The Kalmucks, all of them nomads, are exclusively engaged in 
 rearing cattle, and know nothing whatever of agriculture. They 
 breed camels, oxen, sheep, and, above all, horses, of which they have 
 an excellent breed ; small, but strong, agile, and of great endurance. 
 
 ^ See Appendix A. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 I have ridden a Kalmuck horse often eighteen and even twenty-five 
 leagues without once dismounting. The Russian cavalry is mounted 
 chiefly on horses from the Caspian steppes. . . . 
 
 " Among the Asiatic races there is none whose features are so dis- 
 tinctly characterized as those of the Mongols. Paint one individual 
 and you paint the whole nation. . . . 
 
 " All the Kalmucks have eyes set obliquely, with eyelids little 
 opened, scanty black eye-brows, noses deeply depressed near the 
 forehead, prominent cheek-bones, spare beards, thin moustaches, 
 and a brownish-yellow skin. The lips of the men are thick and 
 fleshy, but the Avomen, particularly those of high rank, have heart- 
 shaped mouths of no common beauty. All have enormous ears, pro- 
 jecting strongly from the head, and their hair is invariably black. 
 The Kalmucks are generally small, but with figures well rounded, and 
 an easy carriage. . . . 
 
 " Like all inhabitants of vast plains, the Kalmucks have exceed- 
 ingly keen sight. An hour after sunset, they can still distinguish 
 a camel at a distance of three miles or more. . . . They have also 
 an extraordinary faculty for wending their way through their path- 
 less wildernesses. Without the least apparent mark to guide them, 
 they traverse hundreds of miles with their flocks, without ever wan- 
 dering from the right course, 
 
 " The costume of the common Kalmucks is not marked by any 
 very decided peculiarity, the cap alone excepted. It is invariably of 
 yellow cloth trimmed with black lambskin, and is worn by both 
 sexes. I am even tempted to think that there are some superstitious 
 notions connected with it, seeing the difficulty I experienced in pro- 
 curing one as a specimen. The trousers are wide and open below. 
 Persons in good circumstances wear two long tunics, one of which 
 is tied round the waist, but the usual dress consists only of trousers 
 and a jacket of skin, with tight sleeves. . . . The men shave a 
 part of their heads, and the rest of the hair is gathered into a single 
 mass, which hangs on their shoulders. The women wear two tresses, 
 and this is really the only visible criterion of their sex. The princes 
 have almost all adopted the Circassian costume, or the uniform of 
 the Cossacks of Astrakhan, to which body some of them belong. The 
 ordinary foot-gear is red boots with very high heels, and generally 
 much too short. The Kalmucks, like the Chinese greatly admire 
 small feet ; and as they are constantly on horseback, their short boots, 
 which would be torturing to us, cause them no inconvenience. But 
 they are very bad pedestrians ; the form of their boots obliges them 
 
xxviii INTROD UCTION 
 
 to walk on their toes, and they are exceedingly distressed when they 
 have not a horse to mount. . . . 
 
 " The Kalmucks, like all pastoral people, live very frugally. 
 Dairy produce forms their chief aliment, and their favourite beverage 
 is tea. They eat meat also, particidarly horse flesh, which they 
 prefer to any other, but very well done, and not raw, as some writers 
 have asserted. . . . 
 
 "Their dwellings are felt tents, called Mhitkas by the Russians. 
 They are four or five yards in diameter, cylindrical to the height of 
 a man's shoulder, with a conical top, open at the apex to let the 
 smoke escape. The frame is light, and can be taken asunder for the 
 convenience of carriage. The skeleton of the roof consists of a 
 wooden ring, forming the aperture for the smoke, and of a great 
 number of small spars supporting the ring, and resting on the upper 
 circumference of the cylindrical frame. The whole tent is light 
 enough to be carried by two camels. A kihitka serves for a whole 
 family; men, women, and children sleep in it promiscuously with- 
 out any separation. In the centre there is always a trivet, on which 
 stands the pot used for cooking tea and meat. The floor is partly 
 covered with felts, carpets, and mats; the couches are opposite the 
 door, and the walls of the tent are hung with arms, leathern vessels, 
 household utensils, quarters of meat, etc." 
 
 The religion of the Kalmucks is Lamaism or Lamanism. 
 The priests are called Lamas, and the two chief Lamas in 
 Thibet occupy mucli the same position as the mediaeval 
 Popes, in that their supremacy is temporal as well as spir- 
 itual.^ Of these two the Dalai-Lama, though spiritually 
 only the peer, is temporally the superior of the Bantshin 
 Lama. This Thibetan hierarchy is, of course, weakened 
 by the increasing pressure of civilization. But at the time 
 of which De Quincey writes, it was practically unimpaired. 
 Li fact, it was probably the moving power in the great 
 migration. 
 
 Lamaism is the degraded form of Buddhism developed 
 in Thibet and subsequently reformed by Tsong-Kaba. It 
 is remarkable for an elaborate liturgy, an inordinate num- 
 
 ' See the notes on 13 17 and 14 10. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 ber of priests (lamas) of various degrees^ aud, in spite of 
 the perfunctory and superstitious manner in which most of 
 the Kalmucks perform its rites, for a strong hold upon its 
 followers. Not only are these nomads distinctly religious^ 
 but they have resisted centuries of missionary influence, 
 both Christian and Mohammedan. ^ 
 
 B. The Revolt. . 
 
 In the winter of 1770-1771, almost the entire tribe of 
 Torguts, to the number of perhaps 400,000 souls, re- 
 volted in a body from Kussia, and withdrew across the 
 Kirghiz steppes to the frontiers of China. The cause of 
 this remarkable migration is doubtful. The earliest ac- 
 count, that of Father Amiot,^ assigns two reasons: (1) 
 political — the increasing interference of Russia with the 
 nomadic independence of the Torguts; (2) religious — the 
 growing danger of isolation, among encroaching Chris- 
 tians and Mohammedans, from the source and strength of 
 Lamaism. This is the most reasonable explanation thus 
 far offered. De Quincey, however, adopted the interpreta- 
 tion of Bergman n, which makes the revolt a plot of ven- 
 geance carried out by a Torgut prince named Zebek Dorolii. 
 
 In order to place this strange episode in relation to the 
 greater movements of its time, observe what it meant, first 
 to China, then to Russia. China, it would appear, liad 
 been scheming to recall the Torguts to their old home in 
 Sungaria, which had since been brought more fully under 
 Chinese control. Perhaps the astute emperor, Kien Long, 
 thought to steal the defenders of the Russian frontier for 
 
 ^ An excellent philosophical account of Lamanism has been writ- 
 ten by Professor Rhys- Davids for the Encydopoedia Brltwmica. 
 For a more i)opular account, abounding in interesting anecdote, see 
 the travels of Father Hue, cited in Appendix A, especially vol. i., p. 
 116, and vol. ii., pp. 148 and 212. 
 - See Appendix A. 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 the defense of liis own frontier. This, taken conversely, 
 shows the significance of the revolt to Russia. But an 
 added significance on this side appears in the time of its 
 occurrence. It happened just after the great plague at 
 Moscow, and during a period of widespread popular rest- 
 lessness and discontent which culminated in the rebellion 
 of Pougatchef , the false Peter III. Ramband ^ thus sum- 
 marizes the connection: 
 
 " The Cossacks of the Jaik and the Don, and the Zaporogues of the 
 Dnieper, chafed under the new yoke \i. e., the Russian yoke] of au- 
 thority. The tribes of the Volga (Pagan, Mussulman, or Christian, 
 in spite of themselves) only awaited a pretext to recover their lawless 
 liberty, or to reclaim the lands which the Russian colonists had 
 usurped. 
 
 " How little these ungovernable elements accommodated themselves 
 to the laws of a modern State was seen when, in 1770, the Kalmuck- 
 Torgaouts (men, women, and children), to the number of about 
 300,000, with their cattle, their tents, and their carts, abandoned 
 their encampments. Ravaging everything in their road, they crossed 
 the Volga, and retired to the territory of the empire of China. 
 When we add to these malcontents the vagabonds of all kinds — the 
 disfrocked monks, the military deserters, fugitive serfs, highway- 
 men, and Volga pirates — we shall see that Russia, especially in her 
 Oriental part, contained all the materials necessary for an immense 
 Jacquerie." 
 
 Thus Catherine II. had two main motives in the appar- 
 ently foolish pursuit of the Kalmucks: (1) her supremacy 
 over the nomad hordes was at stake; (2) one of her pet 
 projects was to increase the scanty population of her vast 
 territory. This latter purpose, in spite of the introduction 
 of German colonists, had just received so terrible a blow 
 from the ravages of the plague at Moscow that she could 
 hardly endure the loss of a whole tribe, even of nominal 
 subjects. Moreover, there were added two minor consid- 
 erations : (1) the Kalmucks formed an important part of 
 
 ^History uf Russia, vol. ii., pp. 13;], 134. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 her cavalry; and (2) Russia and China were old enemies. 
 It is not surprising, then, that she should have made even 
 so extraordinary an effort to intercept the Kalmuck flight. 
 
 C. De Quincey's Narrative {in General). 
 
 Now how does this curious chapter of history happen to 
 appear among the writings of De Quincey ? In the first 
 place, the range of De Quincey 's topics is remarkably wide. 
 It is no more surprising that he should Avrite on ^' The 
 Revolt of the Tartars " than on '^ The Toilette of a Hebrew 
 Lady." But we have some hints of nearer reasons. De 
 Quincey's interest in China appears also in two long articles 
 for the Titan y reprinted in a pamphlet entitled " China," 
 in 1857. Again, Gibbon, whose great history De Quincey 
 knew well, mentions the revolt in his twenty-sixth chapter, 
 and adds a note (51) referring to the narrative of Father 
 Amiot. Finally, in De Quincey's "Homer and the 
 Homeridse," appears this passage: 
 
 "Some years ago I published a paper on the Flight of the Kal- 
 muck Tartars from Russia. Bergraann, the German from whom 
 that account was chiefly drawn, resided for a long time among the 
 Kalmucks, and had frequent opportunities of hearing musical recita- 
 tions selected from the ' Dschangaeriade.' This is the great Tartar 
 epic," ^ etc. 
 
 Perhaps De Quincey consulted Bergmann's book merely 
 for further evidence as to the extent and accuracy of oral 
 epic traditions. At any rate, by whatever chain of con- 
 nection, he became fascinated by another part of the book, 
 the story of the Kalmuck revolt. 
 
 From this starting point how did De Quincey proceed ? 
 Nowadays the plan would be, even if an author intended 
 merely an historical romance, to consult all the authorita- 
 
 ' Pp. 388, 389, in Hogg's edition. 
 
XXX 11 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tive accounts, compare tliem, and settle upon the true ver- 
 sion, or choose the most interesting. De Quincey puts his 
 ])iece forward as history, and accurate history, but appar- 
 ently he knew only Bergmann's account, and certainly he 
 followed or abandoned this at will.^ 
 
 Such a method, if the piece were to be judged as history, 
 would be open to serious charges. But what De Quincey 
 really desired and achieved was not an accurate account; it 
 was an imaginative realization. Paragraphs 1-3 announce 
 this point of view; it appears again strikingly in paragraphs 
 17, 20, and 29; it leads to a final climax in paragraphs 38- 
 41. Bergmann's narrative suggested to De Quincey's im- 
 agination vivid pictures of great empires, vast distances, 
 unspeakable horror and misery. These pictures are the 
 basis and the strength of the piece. All the rest is merely 
 subsidiary — often striking or penetrative, sometimes mis- 
 taken or absurd, but essentially subsidiary. In short, the 
 piece is not so much a work of history as a work of poetry. 
 In order to appreciate this more fully, it is necessary to ex- 
 amine the style in detail. 
 
 D. De Quincey^ s Narrative (in Detail). 
 
 In studying the style of De Quincey, as it appears in this 
 piece, two main points are to be considered: (1) the con- 
 struction, the way in which the piece is put together, as a 
 whole, and in its separate paragraphs and sentences; (2) 
 the diction, that is, the habit of language, the choice of 
 words. 
 
 i. T7ie construction of the wJiole.—J)e Quincey places 
 as the culmination of the revolt the scene at Lake Tengis, 
 the frightful battle in the water. Bergmann says that 
 after this the Kalmucks had still to skirmish with the tribes 
 
 ^ For a detailed examination of the correspondences and varia- 
 tions, see Appendix C. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 beyond. Why did De Quincey change the place of this 
 incident ? Plainly to gain a climax (see 32 26-35) ; that 
 is, to lead up through the various ills of the march to this 
 most striking horror of all. After this, in his narrative, 
 there is simply the brief subsidence into rest at the end. 
 Here is seen the literary principle of emphasis, which may 
 be stated simply as follows: important parts should have 
 important places. Above all, the interest should increase 
 up to the climax. In another view, the law of emphasis is 
 a law of proportion. The important parts must not only 
 have important places, they must also have most space. In 
 this view the *^ Eevolt of the Tartars " is not so excellent. 
 The introduction is disproportionately long; for the action 
 does not begin until page 26, and there are only sixty-six 
 pages in all. 
 
 This consideration leads naturally to a second recognized 
 law of literature, the principle of unity (see 4 16), which 
 requires that every part of a piece should contribute to one 
 main interest, should unite to produce one main effect. 
 The principle is not carefully observed in this piece; but 
 it will be seen that the various interests of the Eussian 
 commandant, Kichinskoi, the scheming Zebek Dorchi, the 
 bloodthirsty Kirghises, the emperor of China, — all com- 
 bine pretty well to increase one main interest, the tragic 
 greatness and horror of the Kalmuck flight. To this there 
 is one exception, the parenthetical story of the Russian 
 Weseloff (paragraphs 34 and 35). But here De Quincey 
 had at least more art than Bergmann, who tacked the 
 story on at the end. And notice that De Quincey is careful 
 to unite even this with the main narrative by the scene in 
 which Weseloff saves the life of the Khan. 
 
 Indeed, the *' Eevolt of the Tartars" has more unity 
 than is at all common in De Quincey. The most serious 
 charge brought against his writing is that it abounds in 
 digressions. Instead of talking about the one thing that 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 is put forth as his subject, lie seems to be talking of what- 
 ever comes into his head. For example, the piece entitled 
 "The Nation of London,"^ opens as follows, the paren- 
 theses indicating digressions: 
 
 I. London exercises a visible attraction throughout the 
 kingdom [two-page foot-note on ancient Rome]. 
 
 II. Our approach was through rural suburbs, not by any 
 great road [On the great roads how different the approach! 
 (1) in the premonitions of the metropolis (note on trepi- 
 dation and agitation), (2) ia the sense of losing one's 
 identity in the throng — two pages]. 
 
 III. I remember the aAve of our arrival. 
 
 lY. AVhat should we go to see ? There were so many 
 things to see that we could decide on nothing. [I have 
 had in my life three great disappointments — (1) in a paint- 
 ing of Cape Horn (just as people have been disappointed 
 [though, by the way, less reasonably] in the view from 
 Mount Etna, one page); (2) in Garrick's farewell; (3) in 
 the inauguration of George IV. (the very idea of Garrick's 
 farewell was as absurd as our present dilemma — one page)]. 
 
 This habit of corkscrewing through an essay is due 
 somewhat to the fact that from such magazine articles the 
 editors and their readers expected, not the development of 
 a definite line of thought on a fixed subject, but a stream 
 of literary talk. Often, in fact, there is no subject, prop- 
 erly speaking. One of these articles is simply so many 
 pages of reminiscence, brought to a graceful close when 
 the author was tired, or the editor had no more space. 
 But the habit is due mainly to De Quincey's vivid imagina- 
 tion. One picture called up another, until sometimes his 
 very strength in suggestion betrayed him into weakness. 
 
 To whatever due, this discursive habit is De Quincey's 
 great fault — a fault that runs through most of his work. 
 
 ^Autobiographic Sketches, vol. i. De Quincey tells how he first 
 went up to Loudon with Lord Westport. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 "What was pardonable in reminiscence became unpar- 
 donable in the critical essays. It is not enough to say 
 that he never lost his way, that he evcDtually came back to 
 the point, or even that the digressions are often delightful 
 in themselves. There is no denying the grave defect in 
 art. What should be said, however, is that he is capable of 
 perfect unity, for that adds a peculiar charm to '' Levana." 
 
 Coherence is a convenient name for the third great 
 principle of literary construction, which deuiands that the 
 parts should succeed in natural order, without break or jar. 
 Run through the essay rapidly, pausing only to observe 
 how carefully, in most cases, the beginning of each para- 
 graph refers to the thought of the preceding, and leads up 
 to the new stage of the story. ^ This skill in coherence, 
 extending to the nicest adjustment of details, always does 
 much to relieve the strain of De Quincey's digressions. 
 
 ii. Construction of se2)ar ate paragraphs. — Now test the 
 paragraphs separately by these three principles of empha- 
 sis, unity, and coherence. For instance, note the emphatic 
 close of paragraph 1 ; test some of the long paragraphs to 
 see if they contain digressions, or give too much space to 
 subordinate matters; finally, observe how carefully De 
 Quincey is wont to put near the beginning of each sen- 
 tence some word, some cod junction, some demonstrative, 
 some important noun rejoeated, to make a coupling with 
 the preceding sentence. For example, in paragraph 6 
 (11 19): " The very hopelessness of the scheme grounded 
 his hope, and he resolved to execute a vengeance whicli 
 should involve, as it were, in the unity of a well-laid 
 tragic fable, all whom he judged to be his enemies. TJiat 
 vengeance lay," etc. 
 
 iii. Co7istruction of sentences. — De Quincey's sen- 
 tences are long and somewhat formal. He was too re- 
 
 ^ This survey may be helped by the paragraph summaries in Ihe 
 notes. 
 
XXX vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 flective, and too fond of fine distinctions, to cultivate tlie 
 loose, brisk style of disconnected short sentences. So his 
 sentences sound deliberate. Notice the following (18 
 26) : " Meantime, how much it must have co-operated with 
 the other motives previously acting upon Oubacha in sus- 
 taining his determination to revolt, and how powerfully it 
 must have assisted the efforts of all the Tartar chieftains 
 in preparing the minds of their people to feel the necessity 
 of this difficult enterprise, by arming their pride and their 
 suspicions against the Russian Government, through the 
 keenness of their sympathy with the wrongs of their in- 
 sulted prince, may be readily imagined." This suspended 
 form of sentence, which remains incomplete till the last 
 word, is called periodic. It is a favourite form with many 
 classical writers, for instance, Cicero. De Quincey may 
 have caught it either directly from the classics or indirectly 
 from Sir Thomas Browne and his other favourite seven- 
 teenth-century authors. 
 
 iv. Diction. — The term imaginative gives the key to 
 De Quincey 's choice of words because it gives the key to 
 his method. In the preface to his " Autobiographic 
 Sketches," he says: 
 
 "On these (^.e., Confessions, Suspiria, etc.), as modes of impas- 
 sioned prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any 
 Uterature, it is much more difficult to speak justly. . . . Two re- 
 marks only I shall address to the equity of my reader. First, I desire 
 to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to 
 clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world of 
 dreams, where a single false note, a single word in a wrong key, 
 ruins the whole music; and, secondly, I desire him to consider the 
 utter sterility of universal literature in this one department of im- 
 passioned prose." ^ 
 
 The " impassioned prose " ^ of which De Quincey speaks 
 
 ^Autobiographic Sketches, i., xvii. (Hogg's edition). 
 * See Professor Masson's Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other 
 Essays, p. 257. 
 
INTROD UCTIOX xxx vii 
 
 is hardly to be expected iu the historical and critical 
 pieces. But if it appears in only a few pages of the '* Re- 
 volt of the Tartars," those pages are tlie best. They are 
 pre-eminently paragraphs 38 and 41, but also detached 
 passages throughout the piece; for instance, pages 42,43. 
 This style, though it is individual enougli to give De 
 Quincey's boast some countenance, nevertheless smacks of 
 his time. Professor Masson^ thinks it smacks also of Jean 
 Paul Richter. 
 
 Such a style expresses itself naturally in figures. Note 
 the metaphor of the worm and the behemoth (11 10), of 
 the unrolling of a great scroll (30 7), and compare others; 
 but note also that even where there are no explicit figures 
 such as metaphors or similes, there is an habitual sugges- 
 tion of images. The passage from 32 33 to 33 2 shows 
 how De Quincey, so to speak, thought in images. 
 
 Combined with this imao^inative and fio^urative cast it is 
 somewhat surprising to find, what is equally characteristic 
 of De Quincey, a peculiarly fine precision. The only way 
 to appreciate this justly is to scrutinize his words, to test 
 them with the aid of a good dictionary. In the notes 
 many words are marked for such examination. Often the 
 nicety of a phrase will be found to reside in the suggestion 
 of its etymology. De Quincey felt this keenly. In fact, 
 he went even to the extent of pedantry in refining upon 
 derivatives from Greek and Latin. 
 
 Greek and Latin derivatives, especially the latter, pre- 
 dominate in his writing, partly because he was fond of the 
 classics, partly because he preferred dignified and sonorous 
 phrases, mainly because he insisted upon elegant precision. 
 Examine, for instance, the proportion of classical deriva- 
 tives in paragraphs 2 and 3, express some of the sentences 
 in native words, and note the different effect. It will be 
 simpler, more direct; but simplicity and directness are not 
 ^ Life of De Quincey, p. 192. 
 
xxxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in De Quincey's aim or habit. Even these " barbarous and 
 semi-humanised " Kalmucks are made to express themselves 
 with the same choiceness and dignity. Everybody in the 
 story talks like De Quincey, and De Quincey always talks 
 like himself. And instead of judging the work by a 
 standard he would not have owned, instead of dwelling 
 on those aspects in which it is inferior alike to the latest 
 pamphlet of special research and the latest dialect story, it 
 is much more profitable to keep in mind his ideal of elegant 
 precision subservient to a high imagination, and to observe 
 how nearly that ideal was attained. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 The list of books in Appendix A is intended for such ^ 
 teachers as wish to make more than a superficial examina- 
 tion of the historical basis. Appendices B and C are 
 intended for the student also; but these and all the rest of 
 the critical apparatus should be postponed until the essay 
 has been carefully read. 
 
 For the life of De Quincey nothing should be allowed 
 to take the place of De Quincey's own records, especially 
 since he never wrote so well as when he wrote of himself. 
 The briefest, most orderly, most convenient biography is 
 that by Leslie Stephen in the '' Dictionary of National 
 Biography." Professor Masson's biography in the Eng- 
 lish Men of Letters Series (Harper and Brothers) con- 
 tains a compact body of valuable criticism. The " Life of 
 De Quincey " by H. A. Page (2 vols., Xew York, 1877) 
 contains many interesting letters, but is ill put together. 
 Mr. Page, this time under his proper name, Dr. Alex- 
 ander H. Japp, has collected two more volumes of letters 
 and comment under the title of " De Quincey Memo- 
 rials" (United States Book Co., 1891). The collection 
 corrects one's impressions of De Quincey in minor de- 
 tails, but hardly adds anything to the total estimate. Mr. 
 James Hogg has collected in one volume the most in- 
 teresting published reminiscences of De Quincey, and has 
 added some equally interesting reminiscences of his own 
 (" De Quincey and his Friends": London, 1895). This 
 collection relates mainly to the Edinburgh period. It con- 
 tains, among less important matter, Woodhouse's notes of 
 conversations with De Quincey, John Hill Burton's chap- 
 
xl SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 ter entitled '* Pa23averms " in "The Book Hunter," and 
 the recollections of Findla}', Colin Rae-Brown, Jacox, and 
 James Payn. Dr. Shadworth Hodgson's '' The Genius of 
 De Quincey," is also reprinted from " Outcast Essays." 
 
 The most careful and specific examination of the style 
 of De Quincey will be found in Minto's '' Manual of Eng- 
 lish Prose Literature " (Ginn and Co.), part i., chapter i. 
 Among Professor Masson's earlier essays is one on De 
 Quincey's "impassioned prose" ("Wordsworth, Shelles^ 
 Keats, and Other Essays," p. 257). Finally, Professor 
 Masson's new edition of De Quincey's works (Edinburgh: 
 Adam and Charles Black) should be consulted freely. 
 
 Believing that the study of literature in preparatory 
 schools may be orderly and definite without losing either 
 its value or its interest, the editor has grouped his remarks 
 on the style under specific headings. The purpose of this 
 definiteness is, not to insist on certain terms, nor to exclude 
 other sorts of comment. It aims simply to help the stu- 
 dent to order his impressions, and to suggest to the teacher 
 a method. The terms there used are at the basis of Professor 
 AVendell's " English Composition; " they appear also in the 
 text-books of Professors Genung,^ Hill, and Carpenter; and, 
 finally, they are themselves suggestive. For all these 
 reasons they seem to offer one convenient means toward 
 combining the study of literature with the study of rheto- 
 ric, the examination of models with the actual practice 
 in composition. 
 
 Another method of combination is the obvious one of 
 making the pupil write essays about the book he is reading. 
 It is customary, for instance, to require summaries of the 
 pieces read, and compositions on their various phases. In 
 this sort of work two methods are useful — first, to set top- 
 ics for detached paragraphs (De Quincey's Object in 
 Writing the Piece, De Quincey's Peculiar Habits, The Plan 
 » For emphasis Professor Genung's terra is projjoii ion. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xli 
 
 of Zebek Dorclii, The Relations of the Kalmucks to Russia, 
 etc.), insisting oq a fair degree of unity in each paragraph; 
 second, to inculcate habits of order by furnishing at the 
 beginning plans for the more extended essays. Take a 
 single instance : 
 De Quinceifs Knowledge of the Classics. 
 
 1. The training of an English boy in Latin and Greek 
 is long and thorough. 
 
 2. In De Quincey's case this training was made still 
 more effective by his bent in that direction. 
 
 3. The value of such training, in general, is — etc. 
 
 4. In De Quincey's writing this training appears — etc. 
 
 The putting of such paragraph summaries into sen- 
 tences, instead of mere topical headings, tends to induce 
 paragraph unity. Care in expressing the connection be- 
 tween these sentences induces coherence in the whole com- 
 position. ^ After setting two or three such plans, the 
 teacher may call upon the pupil to provide his own. 
 
 But if, instead of writing only about this piece, the 
 student should try his own hand at scenes from the battle 
 of Marathon, or the march of Hannibal, or some of the 
 famous expeditions referred to in paragraph 20, and "re- 
 quired " for entrance examinations, the practice might be 
 at least equally valuable. At any rate, he might then 
 cease to think that his composition must be about litera- 
 ture, must be critical, and might discover its vital rela- 
 tion to his other studies. 
 
 Every pupil of any imagination will be interested in De 
 Quincey's " Confessions," and the kindred pieces of remi- 
 niscence. Read selections from these pieces in class, and 
 encourage further reading at home.'^ That will do quite 
 
 ' This method is followed in the paragraph summaries of the notes. 
 
 ^ The English Mail Coach is published in Cassell's National Li- 
 brary (paper) at ten cents, together with JIurder Considered as One 
 of the Fine Arfs. The latter is neither so useful nor so interesting. 
 
xlii SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 as much in some cases as specific study. Moreover, these 
 are more characteristic of De Quincey aud better as litera- 
 ture than the " Revolt of the Tartars." And, finally, it 
 is not necessary to apply the study of a piece of literature 
 to the study of composition. For further suggestions the 
 teacher is referred to the preceding pages on style and to 
 the notes. 
 
CHRONOLOOIUAL TABLE 
 
 xliii 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 (Compiled from " Lowndes's Bibliographer's Mamial," The Dictionary of National 
 Biography, Ryland's "Chronological Outlines of English Literature,'" and Whit- 
 comb's " Chronological Outlines of American Literature.") 
 
 Life op De Quince y. 
 
 1785. De Quincey born. 
 
 1796. Bath Grammar School 
 
 1800. Winlvfield School. 
 
 Visit to Ireland with 
 Lord Westport, and 
 to Lady Carbery at 
 Laxton. 
 
 1801. Manchester Grammar 
 
 School. 
 
 1802. Escape from school. 
 
 Wanderings in 
 Wales and London. 
 
 1803. Oxford : Worcester 
 
 College. 
 
 1807. Meeting with Cole- 
 
 ridge and Words- 
 worth. 
 
 1808. London, brief law 
 
 studies. 
 
 1809. Grasmere. 
 
 Contemporary 
 Literature. 
 
 17^ 
 
 Byron born. 
 
 Burke, Reflections on 
 the Revolution in 
 France. 
 
 Shelley born. 
 
 1792 
 
 1795. Carlyle and Keats born 
 
 Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge, Lyrical Bal- 
 
 1800. Macaulay born. 
 
 1805. 
 1806. 
 
 1810. 
 1811. 
 1812. 
 
 Scott, Lay of the Last 
 
 Minstrel. 
 Coleridge, Christabel. 
 
 Scott, The Lady of the 
 
 Lake. 
 Jane Austen, Sense 
 
 and Sensibility. 
 Byron, Childe Harold 
 
 '(i. and ii.). 
 
 1814. Scott, Waverley. 
 
 Contemporary History, 
 
 1788. United States Con- 
 
 stitution ratified 
 by eleven States. 
 
 1789. Washington Presi- 
 
 dent. Opening of 
 the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 Whitney invented 
 the cotton-gin. 
 
 1797. John Adams Presi 
 dent. 
 
 1800. Union of Great Bri- 
 tain and Ireland. 
 
 1801. Jefferson President. 
 
 1803. Louisiana Purchase. 
 
 1804. Napoleon Emperor. 
 
 1809. Madison President. 
 
 1812-14. War between 
 England and the 
 Unfted States. 
 
xliv 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.- Continued. 
 
 Life of De Quincet. 
 
 1816. Married Margaret 
 Simpson. 
 
 1819. Studies in political 
 economy. Editor of 
 the Westmoreland 
 Gazette. 
 
 1821. London. Confessions 
 of an English Opi- 
 u m - Ea ter* and 
 translations from 
 Richter in The Lon- 
 don Magazine. 
 Other articles (1823- 
 1824) : Letters to a 
 Young Man ivhose 
 Education has been 
 Neglected, Rosicru- 
 cians and Freema- 
 sons, Dialogues of 
 Three Templar's. 
 
 1826. Translation of Less 
 
 ing's LaocoOn. 
 
 1827. Murder Considered as 
 
 one of the Fine Arts 
 (in Blackwood's 
 Edinburgh Maga- 
 zine). 
 1828-33. Edinburgh. Arti- 
 cles in Btackwood : 
 Toilette of a Hebrew 
 Lady, Dr. Parr and 
 his Contempoi^anes, 
 The Caesars (a se- 
 ries), Charlemagne, 
 Traditions of the 
 EafMns. 
 
 Contemporary 
 Literature. 
 
 1815. 
 
 1816. 
 
 1818. 
 1819. 
 
 1820. 
 
 Wordsworth, The 
 White Doe of Ryl- 
 stone. 
 
 Shelley, Alastor. 
 
 Keats, Endymion. 
 Byron, Don Juan (i. 
 'and ii.). Irving,+ 
 The Sketch-Book. 
 
 Keats, Lamia, and 
 other poems. Scott, 
 Ivanhoe. Shelley, 
 Prometheus Un- 
 bound. 
 
 1822. 
 1824. 
 
 1825. 
 
 1827. 
 
 Lamb, Essays of Elia 
 Landor, Imaginary 
 
 Conversations (i.). 
 Macanlay, Essay on 
 
 Milton. 
 
 Alfred and Charles 
 Tennyson, Poems 
 
 1828. Irving,t Columbus. 
 
 Tennyson, Poems 
 Chiefly Lyrical. 
 
 Contemporary History. 
 
 1815. 
 
 Battle of Waterloo. 
 
 Stevenson's first 
 locomotive. 
 
 1819. Purchase of Florida. 
 Steamers began to 
 cross the Atlantic. 
 
 1821. War of Grecian in- 
 dependence. 
 
 1825. J. Q. Adams Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 1829. Jackson President. 
 
 Catholic Emanci- 
 pation Act in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 1830. William IV. King of 
 
 England. 
 
 * The titles of De Quincey's works are indicated by italics, 
 t American authors are thus indicated. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.- Continued. 
 
 xlv 
 
 Life of De Quincey. 
 
 1832. Klosterheim (a novel) 
 
 1834-40. Autobiographic 
 sketches iu Taifs 
 Edinburgh Maga 
 
 1837. Mrs. De Quincey died 
 Skakspere, Pope (in 
 Encyclopifidia Bri 
 tannica). Flight of 
 A Tartar Tribe 
 (in Blackwood). 
 
 1840. Cottage (Mavis Bush) 
 at Lasswade. 
 
 1840-46. Articles in Black- 
 wood : The Essenes, 
 Style and Rhetoric, 
 Homer and tlie IIo- 
 meridoe, Berkeley 
 and Idealism, Ci- 
 cero, Benjamin of 
 Tudela, The Logic 
 of Political Econo- 
 my, Suspiria de 
 Prqfundis. 
 
 1841-43. Glksgow, long vis- 
 its at the houses of 
 Professor Lushing- 
 ton and Professor 
 Nichol. 
 
 1847. Glasgow again, in 
 lodgings, to assist in 
 establishing the new- 
 North British Daily 
 Mail and the trans- 
 ferred Taifs Maga- 
 zine. The Spanish 
 Military Nun, Joan 
 of Arc. 
 
 Contemporary 
 Literature. 
 
 1831. Poe,t Poems. Whit- 
 tier, + Legends of 
 New England. 
 
 Carlyle, Sartor Resar 
 tus. Browning, 
 Pauline. 
 
 Dickens, Pickwick 
 Holmes,+ Poems. 
 
 Carlyle, The French 
 Revolution. Pres- 
 cott,t Ferdinand 
 and Isabella. Haw- 
 thorne,t Tvvice-Told 
 Tales. 
 
 Dickens, Nicholas 
 Nickleby. 
 
 Poe,t Tales of the 
 Grotesque and Ara 
 besque. 
 
 1837 
 
 1838. 
 1840. 
 
 1841. 
 
 1843. 
 
 1845. 
 
 1847. 
 
 Browning, Pippa 
 Passes. Carlyle, He- 
 roes and Hero-Wor- 
 ship. Emerson, t 
 Essays. 
 
 Macaulay, Essays. 
 Ruskin, Modern 
 Painters (i.). 
 
 Contemporary History . 
 
 1832. English Reform Bil 
 
 1883. Abolition of slavery 
 throughout the 
 British Empire. 
 
 1837. Van Buren Presi- 
 dent. Victoria 
 Queen of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 1841. Harrison President. 
 Tyler President. 
 
 1844. Morse telegraph. 
 Carlyle, Cromwell. 1845. Polk President. 
 
 Poe,t The Raven and 1845-48. War between the 
 
 Other Poems. l United States and 
 
 I Mexico. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte, Janei 
 
 Eyre. Tennyson,! 
 
 The Princess. 
 
 Thackeray, Vanity 
 
 Fair. Longfellow, t 
 
 Evangeline. 
 
xlvi 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. - Concluded. 
 
 Life of De Quincey. 
 
 1848-59. Edinburgh, most of 
 the time in lodgings. 
 
 1849. The English Ilail 
 Coach. 
 
 1851-52. American collective 
 edition of De Quin- 
 cev's works (J. T. 
 Fields). 
 
 1853. English collective edi- 
 tion (James Hogg) 
 begun. 
 
 1857. Visit to his eldest 
 daughter, Mrs. 
 Craig, in Ireland. 
 
 1859. Death, December 8th. 
 
 Contemporary 
 Literature. 
 
 1848. Macaulay, History of 
 England (i. and ii.). 
 Lowell,t A Fable for 
 Critics. 
 
 1850. Tennyson, In Memo- 
 riam. Hawthorne,t 
 The Scarlet Letter. 
 
 1854. Thoreau,t Walden. 
 1856. Motley,t The Rise of 
 the Dutch Republic. 
 
 1858. Tennyson, Idylls of the 
 
 King. 
 
 1859. George Eliot, Adam 
 
 Beae. George Mere- 
 dith, Richard Fev- 
 erel. 
 
 Contemporary History. 
 
 1848. 
 
 1849. 
 1850. 
 
 1852. 
 185.3. 
 
 Second French Re- 
 public. Gold dis- 
 covered in Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Taylor President. 
 
 Fillmore President. 
 
 Napoleon III. Em- 
 peror. 
 Pierce President. 
 
 1854. Crimean War. 
 
 1857' 
 
 1859. 
 
 Buchanan President. 
 The Dred Scott 
 decision. 
 
 Darwin published 
 The Origin of Spe- 
 cies. John Brown's 
 raid on Harper's 
 Ferry. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
PERSONS OF THE STORY.* 
 
 OuBACHA, Khan of the Kalmucks. 
 
 Zebek-Dorcht, a Kalmuck chief, instigator of the flight. 
 
 Erempel, father -in-laiv to Zehek-Dorchi, \ . -n r, i i 
 
 ^ I conspirators with Zeoek. 
 
 LoosANG-DcHALTZAN, Gra7id Lama of r Dorchi 
 
 the Volga Kalmucks, 
 Weseloff, a Russian gentleman, prisoner among the Kalmucks. 
 Elizabeth Petrowna, Empress of Russia. 
 Catherine II. , Empress of Russia, successor to Elizabeth. 
 KiEN Long, Emperor of China. 
 Beketoff, Russian Governor of Astrakhan. 
 KiCHiNSKOi, Russian Commissioner to the Volga Kalmucks. 
 Traubenberg, general in command of the Russian pursuit. 
 * Inserted by the editor. 
 
KEVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 OR, FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN AND HIS 
 
 PEOPLE FROM THE RUSSIAN TERRITORIES 
 
 TO THE FRONTIERS OF CHINA 
 
 1. There is no great event in modern history, or, per- 
 haps it may be said more broadly, none in all history, 
 from its earliest records, less generally known, or more 
 striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards of 
 a principal Tartar nation across the boundless steppes of 5 
 Asia in the latter half of the last century. The ter- 
 minus a quo of this flight, and the terminus ad quern, are 
 equally magnificent; the mightiest of Christian thrones 
 being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. And 
 the grandeur of these two terminal objects is harmoni- 10 
 ously supported by the romantic circumstances of the 
 flight. In the abruptness of its commencement, and 
 the fierce velocity of its execution, we read the wild 
 barbax'ic character of those who conducted the move- 
 ment. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad 15 
 of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark 
 so remote, there is something which recalls to the mind 
 those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the 
 swallow and the leeming, or the life-withering marches 
 of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance 30 
 of Eussia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the 
 rear and the skirts of tlie fugitive vassals, we are re- 
 minded of Miltonic imao^es — such, for instance, as that 
 
4 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 of the solitary hand pursuing through desert spaces and 
 through ancient chaos a rebellious host, and overtaking 
 with volleying thunders those who believed themselves 
 already within the security of darkness and of distance. 
 5 2. I shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this 
 event with other great national catastrophes as to the 
 magnitude of the suffering. But it may also challenge 
 a comparison with similar events under another relation, 
 viz., as to its dramatic capabilities. Few cases, perhaps, 
 
 10 in romance or history, can sustain a close collation with 
 this as to the comj)lexity of its separate interests. fThe 
 great outline of the enterprise, taken in connection with 
 the operative motives, hidden or avowed, and the reli- 
 gious sanctions under which it was pursued, give to the 
 
 15 case a triple characterj 1st, that of a conspiracy, with 
 as close a unity in the incidents, and as much of a per- 
 sonal interest in the moving characters, with fine dra- 
 matic contrasts, as belongs to " Venice Preserved," or to 
 the " Fiesco " of Schiller; 2dly, that of a great military 
 
 20 expeclition, offering the same romantic features of vast 
 distances to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, 
 untried routes, enemies obscurely ascertained, and hard- 
 ships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian 
 expedition of Cambyses — which mark the anabasis of 
 
 25 the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the 
 ten thousand — which mark the Parthian expeditions of 
 the Eomans, especially those of Crassus and Julian — or 
 (as more disastrous than any of them, and, in point of 
 space as well as in amount of forces, more extensive) the 
 
 30 Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon; 3dly, that 
 of a religious Exodus, authorised by an oracle venerated 
 throughout many nations of Asia, an Exodus, there- 
 fore, in so far resembling the great Scriptural Exodus of 
 the Israelites, under Moses and Joshua, as well as in the 
 
 35 very peculiar distinction of carrying along with them 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 5 
 
 their entire families, women, children, slaves, their herds 
 of cattle and of sheep, their horses and their camels. 
 
 3. [This triple character of the enterprise naturally 
 invests it with a more comprehensive interest. , But the 
 dramatic interest which I have ascribed to it, or its fit- 5 
 ness for a stage representation, depends partly upon the 
 marked variety and the strength of the personal agencies 
 concerned, and partly upon the succession of scenical 
 situations. Even the steppes, the camels, the tents, the 
 snowy and the sandy deserts, are not beyond the scale of 10 
 our modern representative powers, as often called into 
 action in the theatres both of Paris and London; and 
 the series of situations unfolded, — beginning with the 
 general conflagration on the Wolga — passing thence to 
 the disastrous scenes of the flight (as it literally was in 15 
 its commencement) — to the Tartar siege of the Russian 
 fortress Koulagina — the bloody engagement with the 
 Cossacks in the mountain passes at Ouchim — the sur- 
 prisal by the Bashkirs, and the advanced posts of the 
 Russian army at Torgau — the private conspiracy at this 20 
 point against the Khan — the long succession of running 
 fights — the parting massacres at the Lake of Tengis 
 under the eyes of the Chinese — and, finally, the tragical 
 retribution to Zebek-Dorchi at the hunting lodge of the 
 Chinese Emj^eror; — all these situations communicate a 25 
 scenical animation to the wild romance, if treated dra- 
 matically; whilst a higher and a philosophic interest 
 belongs to it as a case of authentic history, commemorat- 
 ing a great revolution for good and for evil in the for- 
 tunes of a whole people — a people semi-barbarous, but 30 
 simple-hearted, and of ancient descent. \ 
 
 4. lOn the 21st of January, 1761, the young Prince 
 Oubacha assumed the sceptre of the Kalmucks upon the 
 death of his father. Some part of the power attached to 
 
6 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 this dignity he had already wielded since his fourteenth 
 year, in quality of Vice-Khan, hy the express appoint- 
 ment and with the avowed support of the Russian Gov- 
 ernment. He was now about eighteen years of age, 
 5 amiable in his personal character, and not without title^^ 
 to respect in his public character as a sovereign prince. 
 In times more peaceable, and amongst a people more en- 
 tirely civilised, or more humanised by religion, it is even 
 probable that he might have discharged his high duties 
 
 10 with considerable distinction. But his lot was thrown 
 upon stormy times, and a most difficult crisis amongst 
 tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing 
 forms of superstition, and by a nationality as well as an 
 inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely unpar- 
 
 15 alleled, whilst the circumstances of their hard and trying 
 position under the jealous surveillance of an irresistible 
 lord paramount, in the person of tlie Russian Czar, 
 gave a fiercer edge to the natural unamiableness of the 
 Kalmuck disposition, and irritated its gloomier qualities 
 
 20 into action under the restless impulses of suspicion and 
 permanent distrust. No prince could hope for a cordial 
 allegiance from his subjects or a peaceful reign under the 
 circumstances of the case; for the dilemma in which a 
 Kalmuck ruler stood at present was of this nature: want- 
 
 25 ing the sanction and support of the Czar, he was inevitably 
 too weak from without to command confidence from his 
 subjects, or resistance to his competitors; on the other 
 hand, ^uith this kind of support, and deriving his title 
 in any degree from the favour of the Imperial Court, he 
 
 30 became almost in that extent an object of hatred at 
 home, and within the whole compass of his own terri- 
 tory. He was at once an object of hatred for the past, 
 being a living monument of national independence igno- 
 miniously surrendered, and an object of jealousy for the 
 
 35 future, as one who had already advertised himself to be 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 7 
 
 a fitting tool for the ultimate purposes (whatsoever those 
 might prove to be) of the Russian Court. Coming him- 
 self to the Kalmuck sceptre under the heaviest weight 
 of prejudice from the unfortunate circumstances of his 
 position, it might have been expected that Oiibacha 5 
 would have been pre-eminently an object of detestation; 
 for, besides his known dependence upon the Cabinet of 
 St. Petersburg, the direct line of succession had been 
 set aside, and the principle of inheritance violently sus- 
 pended, in favour of his own father, so recently as nine- 10 
 teen years before the era of his own accession, conse- 
 quently within the lively remembrance of the existing 
 generation. He therefore, almost equally with his father, 
 stood within the full current of the national prejudices, 
 and might have anticipated the most pointed hostility. 15 
 But it was not so: such are the caprices in human affairs 
 that he was even, in a moderate sense, popular — a bene- 
 fit which bore the more cheering aspect, and the prom 
 ises of permanence, inasmuch as he owed it exclusively 
 to his personal qualities of kindness and affability, as 20 
 well as to the beneficence of his government. On the 
 other hand, to balance this unlooked-for prosperity at 
 the outset of his reign, he met with a rival in popular 
 favour — almost a competitor — in the person of Zebek 
 Dorclii, a prince with considerable pretensions to the 25 
 throne, and perhaps, it might be said, with equal pre- 
 tensions. Zebek-Dorchi was a direct descendant of the 
 same royal house as himself, through a different branch. 
 On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing 
 equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal 30 
 qualities, even in those aspects wdiich seemed to a philo- 
 sophical observer most odious and repulsive, promised 
 the most effectual aid ^to the dark purposes of an in- 
 triguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to 
 win a popular support precisely in those points where 35 
 
8 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 Oubacha Avas most defective. He was mucli sujoerior in 
 external appearance to his rival on the throne, and so 
 far better qualified to win the good opinion of a semi- 
 barbarous peo23le; whilst his dark intellectual qualities 
 5 of Machiavelian dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and 
 joerfidy which knew no touch of remorse, were admir- 
 ably calculated to sustain any ground which he might 
 w^in from the simple-hearted people with whom he had 
 to deal, and from the frank carelessness of his uncon- 
 
 10 scions competitor. 
 
 5. At the very outset of his treacherous career, Zebek- 
 Dorclii was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing 
 could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the 
 reigning prince : the choice had been a deliberate act on 
 
 15 the part of Eussia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not the 
 person to recall her own favours with levity, or upon 
 slight grounds. Openly, therefore, to have declared 
 his enmity towards his relative on the throne could have 
 had no effect but that of arming suspicions against his 
 
 30 own ulterior purposes in a quarter where it was most 
 essential to his interest that, for the present, all suspicion 
 should be hoodwinked. (Accordingly, after much medi- 
 tation, the course he took for opening his snares was 
 this: — He raised a rumour that his own life was in 
 
 25 danger from the plots of several Saissang (that is, Kal- 
 muck nobles), who were leagued together, under an 
 oath, to assassinate him-3)and immediately after, assum- 
 ing a well-counterfeited alarm, he fled to Tcherkask, fol- 
 lowed by sixty-five tents. From this place he kept up a 
 
 30 correspondence with the Imperial Court; and, by way 
 of soliciting his cause more effectually, he soon repaired 
 in person to St. Petersburg. Once admitted to personal 
 conferences with the cabinet, he found no difficulty in 
 winning over the Russian counsels to a concurrence with 
 
 35 some of his political views, and thus covertly introduc- 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 9 
 
 ing the point of that wedge which was finally to accom- 
 plish his purposes. In particular, he persuaded the 
 Eussian Government to make a very important altera- 
 tion in the constitution of the Kalmuck State Council, 
 which in effect re-organised the whole political condition 5 
 of the state, and disturbed the balance of power as pre- 
 viously adjusted. Of this council — in the Kalmuck lan- 
 guage called Sarga — there were eight members, called 
 Sargatchi; and hitherto it. had been the custom that 
 these eight members should be entirely subordinate to 10 
 the Khan ; holding, in fact, the ministerial character of 
 secretaries and assistants, but in no respect acting as 
 co-ordinate authorities. That had produced some incon- 
 veniences in former reigns; and it was easy for Zebek- 
 Dorchi to point the jealousy of the Eussian Court to 15 
 others more serious, which might arise in future circum- 
 stances of war or other contingencies. It was resolved, 
 therefore, to place the Sargatchi henceforwards on a foot- 
 ing of perfect independence, and therefore (as regarded 
 responsibility) on a footing of equality with the Khan. 20 
 Their independence, however, had respect only to their 
 own sovereign; for towards Eussia they were placed in 
 a new attitude of direct duty and accountability, by the 
 creation in their favour of small pensions (300 roubles a- 
 year), which, however, to a Kalmuck of that day were 25 
 more considerable than might be supposed, and had a 
 farther value as marks of honorary distinction emanating 
 from a great empress. Thus far the purposes of Zebek- 
 Dorchi were served effectually for the moment: but, 
 apparently, it was only for the moment; since, in the 30 
 further development of his plots, this very dependency 
 upon Eussian influence would be the most serious 
 obstacle in his way. There was, however, another point 
 carried which outweighed all inferior considerations, as 
 it gave him a power of setting aside discretionally what- 35 
 
10 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 soever should arise to disturb his plots: he was himself 
 appointed President and Controller of the Sargatchi. 
 The Russian Court had been aware of his high preten- 
 sions by birtli, and hoped by this promotion to satisfy 
 5 the ambition wdiich, in some degree, was acknowledged 
 to be a reasonable passion for any man occupying his 
 situation. 
 
 6. Having thus completely blindfolded the Cabinet of 
 Russia, Zebek-Dorchi ]3roceeded in his new character to 
 
 10 fulfil his political mission with the Khan of the Kal- 
 mucks. So artfully did he j^i'epai'e the road for his 
 favourable reception at the court of this prince, that he 
 was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor. 
 The 2)ensions of the counsellors Avere so much additional 
 
 15 wealth poured into the Tartar exchequer; as to the ties 
 of dependency thus created, experience had not yet 
 enlightened these simple tribes as to that result. And 
 that he himself should be the chief of these mercenary 
 counsellors was so far from being charged upon Zebek 
 
 20 as any offence or any ground of suspicion, that his 
 relative the Khan returned him hearty thanks for his 
 services, under the belief that he could have accepted 
 this appointment only with a view to keep out other 
 and more unwelcome pretenders, who would not have 
 
 25 had the same motives of consanguinity or friendship 
 for executing its duties in a spirit of kindness to the 
 Kalmucks. The first use which he made of his new 
 functions about the Khan's j^erson was to attack the 
 Court of Russia, by a romantic villainy not easy to be 
 
 30 credited, for those very acts of interference with the 
 council which he himself had prompted."; This was a 
 dangerous step : but it was indispensable to his further 
 advance upon the gloomy path which he had traced out 
 for himself. A triple vengeance was what he medi- 
 
 35tated: 1. upon the Russian Cabinet for having under- 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS H 
 
 valued his own pretensions to tlie throne; 2. upon his 
 amiable rival for having supplanted him; and, 3. upon 
 all those of the nobility who had manifested their sense 
 of his weakness by their neglect, or their sense of his 
 perfidious character by their suspicions. Here was a 5 
 colossal outline of wickedness; and by one in his situa- 
 tion, feeble (as it might seem) for the accomplishment of 
 its humblest parts, how Avas the total edifice to be reared 
 in its comprehensive grandeur ? He, a worm as he was, 
 could he venture to assail the mighty behemoth of Mus- 10 
 covy, the potentate who counted three hundred languages 
 around the footsteps of his throne, and from whose 
 ''lion ramp" recoiled alike "baptized and infidel" — 
 Christendom on the one side, strong by her intellect 
 and her organisation, and the '^ Barbaric East" on the 15 
 other, with her unnumbered numbers ? The match was 
 a monstrous one; but in its very monstrosity there lay 
 this germ of encouragement, that it could not be suc- 
 pected. The very hopelessness of the scheme grounded 
 his hope, and he resolved to execute a vengeance which 20 
 should involve, as it were, in the unity of a well-laid 
 tragic fable, all whom he judged to be his enemies. 
 That vengeance lay in detaching from the Russian 
 Empire the whole Kalmuck nation, and breaking up 
 that system of intercourse which had thus far been 35 
 beneficial to both. This last was a consideration which 
 moved him but little. True it was, that Russia to the 
 Kalmucks had secured lands and extensive pasturage; 
 true it was, that the Kalmucks reciprocally to Russia 
 had furnished a powerful cavalry. But the latter loss 30 
 would be part of his triumph, and the former might be 
 more than compensated in other climates under other 
 sovereigns. Here was a scheme which, in its final 
 accomplishment, would avenge him bitterly on the 
 Czarina, and in the course of its accomplishment might 35 
 
12 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 furnish him with ample occasions for removing his 
 other enemies. It may be readily supposed, indeed, 
 that he who could deliberately raise his eyes to the Rus- 
 sian autocrat as an antagonist in single duel with him- 
 5 self Avas not likely to feel much anxiety about Kalmuck 
 enemies of whatever rank. He took his resolution, 
 therefore, sternly and irrevocably to eUect this astonish- 
 ing translation of an ancient people across the pathless 
 deserts of Central Asia, intersected continually by rapid 
 
 10 rivers, rarely furnished with bridges, and of which the 
 fords were known only to those who might think it for 
 their interest to conceal them, through many nations in- 
 hospitable or hostile; frost and snow around them (from 
 the necessity of commencing their flight in winter), 
 
 15 famine in their front, and the sabre, or even the artil- 
 lery of an offended and mighty empress, hanging upon 
 their rear for thousands of miles. But Avhat was to be 
 their final mark — the port of shelter after so fearful 
 a course of wandering? Two things were evident: it 
 
 20 must be some power at a great distance from Eussia, so 
 as to make return even in that view hopeless; and it 
 must be a power of sufficient rank to insure them pro- 
 tection from any hostile efforts on the part of the 
 Czarina for reclaiming them, or for chastising their 
 
 25 revolt. Both conditions were united obviously in the 
 person of Kien Long, the reigning Emperor of China, 
 who was further recommended to them by his respect 
 for the head of their religion. To China, therefore, 
 and, as their first rendezvous, to the shadow of the 
 
 30 great Chinese Wall, it was settled by Zebek that they 
 sliould direct their flight. 
 
 7. Next came the question of time — ^uhen should the 
 flight commence ? and, finally, the more delicate question 
 as to the choice of accomplices^ To extend the knowl- 
 
 35 edge of the conspiracy too far was to insure its betrayal 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 13 
 
 to the Russian Government. Yet, at some stage of the 
 preparations, it was evident that a very extensive confi- 
 dence must be made, because in no other way could the 
 mass of the Kalmuck population be persuaded to furnish 
 their families with the requisite equipments for so long a 5 
 migration. This critical step, however, it was resolved to 
 defer up to the latest possible moment, and, at all events, 
 to make no general communication on the subject until 
 the time of departure should be definitely settled. In 
 the meantime, Zebek admitted only three persons to 10 
 his confidence; of whom Oubacha, the reigning prince, 
 was almost necessarily one; but him, from his yielding 
 and somewhat feeble character, he viewed rather in the 
 light of a tool than as one of his active accomplices. 
 Those whom (if anybody) he admitted to an unreserved 15 
 participation in his counsels were two only: the great 
 Lama among the Kalmucks, and his own father-in-law, 
 Erempel, a ruling prince of some tribe in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Caspian Sea, recommended to his favour, 
 not BO much by any strength of talent corresponding 20 
 to the occasion, as by his blind devotion to himself, and 
 his passionate anxiety to promote the elevation of his 
 daughter and son-in-law to the throne of the sovereign 
 prince. A titular prince Zebek already was: but this 
 dignity, without the substantial accompaniment of a 25 
 sceptre, seemed but an empty sound to both of these 
 ambitious rebels. The other accomplice, whose name 
 was Loosan-Dchaltzan, and whose rank was that of 
 Lama, or Kalmuck pontiff, was a person of far more 
 distinguished pretensions; he had something of the 30 
 same gloomy and terrific pride which marked the 
 character of Zebek himself, manifesting also the same 
 energy, accompanied by the same unfaltering cruelty, 
 and a natural facility of dissimulation even more pro- 
 found. It was Iw this man that the other question was 35 
 
14 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 settled, as to the time for giving effect to their designs. 
 His own pontifical character had snggested to him 
 that, in order to strengthen their influence with the 
 vast mob of simj)le-minded men whom they were to 
 5 lead into a howling wilderness, after persuading them to 
 lay desolate their own ancient hearths, it was indispens- 
 able that tliey should be able, in cases of extremity, to 
 plead the express sanction of God for their entire enter- 
 prise. This conld only be done by addressing themselves 
 
 10 to the great head of their religion, the Dalai-Lama of 
 Tibet. Him they easily persnaded to countenance their 
 schemes : and an oracle was delivered solemnly at Tibet, 
 to the effect that no ultimate prosperity would attend 
 this great Exodus unless it were pursued through the 
 
 15 years of the tiger and the hare. Now, the Kalmuck 
 custom is to distinguish their years by attaching to 
 each a denomination taken from one of twelve animals, 
 the exact order of succession being absolutely fixed, so 
 that the cycle revolves of course through a period of 
 
 20 a dozen years. Consequently, if the approaching year 
 of the tiger were suffered to escape them, in that 
 case the expedition must be delayed for twelve years 
 more, within which |)eriod, even were no other unfa- 
 vourable changes to arise, it was pretty Avell foreseen 
 
 25 tlict the Russian Government would take the most 
 effectual means for bridling their vagrant propensities 
 by a ring-fence of forts or military posts; to say noth- 
 ing of the still readier plan for securing their fidelity 
 (a plan already talked of in all quarters) by exacting a 
 
 30 large body of hostages selected from the families of the 
 most influential nobles. On these cogent considerations, 
 it. was solemnly determined that this terrific experiment 
 should be made in the next year of the tiger, which 
 happened to fall upon the Christian year 1771. With 
 
 35 respect to tlie month, there was, unhappily for the 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 15 
 
 Kalmucks, even less latitude allowed to tlieir choice 
 tliaii with respect to the year. It was absolutely neces- 
 sary, or it was thought so, that the different divisions of 
 the nation which pastured their flocks on both banks of 
 tlie Wolga should have the means of effecting an instan- 5 
 taneous junction; because the danger of being inter- 
 cepted by flying columns of the imperial armies was 
 precisely the greatest at the outset. Now, from the 
 want of bridges, or sufficient river craft for transport- 
 ing so vast a body of men, the sole means which could 10 
 be depended upon (especially where so many women, 
 children, and camels were concerned) was ice : and this, 
 in a state of sufficient firmness, could not be absolutely 
 counted upon before the month of January. Hence 
 it happened that this astonishing Exodus of a whole 15 
 nation, before so much as a whisper of the design had 
 begun to circulate amongst those whom it most inter- 
 ested, before it was even suspected that any man's 
 wishes pointed in that direction, had been definitively 
 appointed for January of the year 1771. And almost 20 
 up to the Christmas of 1770 the poor sim2:>le Kalmuck 
 herdsmen and their families were going nightly to their 
 peaceful beds, without even dreaming that the fat had 
 already gone forth from their rulers which consigned 
 those quiet abodes, together with the peace and comfort 25 
 which reigned within them, to a withering desolation, 
 now close at hand. 
 
 8. Meantime war raged on a great scale between 
 Russia and the Sultan ; and, until the time arrived 
 for throwing off their vassalage, it was necessary that 30 
 Oubacha should contribute his usual contingent of 
 martial aid. Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent 
 that he should contribute much more than his usual aid. 
 Human experience gives ample evidence that in some 
 mysterious and unaccountable Avay no great design is 35 
 
16 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 ever agitated, no matter how few or how faithful may 
 be the participators, but that some presentiment — some 
 dim misgiving — is kindled amongst those whom it is 
 chiefly important to blind. And, however it might 
 
 '5 have happened, certain it is that already, when as yet no 
 syllable of the conspiracy had been breathed to any man 
 whose very existence was not staked npon its conceal- 
 ment, nevertheless, some vague and uneasy jealousy had 
 arisen in the Russian Cabinet as to the future schemes 
 
 10 of the Kalmuck Khani; and very probable it is that, 
 but for the war then raging, and the consequent j^ru- 
 dence of conciliating a very important vassal, or, at least, 
 of abstaining from what would powerfully alienate him, 
 even at that moment such measures would have been 
 
 15 adopted as must for ever have intercepted the Kalmuck 
 schemes. Slight as were the jealousies of the Imjoerial 
 Court, they had not escaped the Machiavelian eyes of 
 Zebek and the Lama. And under their guidance Ou- 
 bacha, bending to the circumstances of the moment, 
 
 20 and meeting the jealousy of the Eussian Court with 
 a policy corresponding to their own, strove by unusual 
 zeal to efface the Czarina's unfavourable impressions. 
 He enlarged the scale of his contributions, and that so 
 prodigiously that he absolutely carried to head-quarters 
 
 25 a force of 35,000 cavalry fully equipped: some go fur- 
 ther, and rate the amount beyond 40,000; but the 
 smaller estimate is, at all events, within the truth. 
 
 9. AVith this magnificent array of cavalry, heavy as 
 well as light, the Khan went into the field under great 
 
 30 expectations; and these he more than realised. Having 
 the good fortune to be concerned with so ill-organised 
 and disorderly a description of force as that which at 
 all times composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he 
 carried victory along with his banners; gained many 
 
 35 partial successes; [and at last, in a pitched battle, over- 
 
RKVOLT OF THE TARTARS 17 
 
 threw the Turkish force opposed to him with a loss of 
 5000 men left upon the field.) 
 
 10. These splendid achievements seemed likely to 
 operate in various ways against the impending revolt. 
 Ouhacha had now a strong motive, in the martial glory 5 
 acquired, for continuing his connection with the empire 
 in whose service he had won it, and by whom only it 
 could be fully appreciated. He was now a great marshal 
 of a great empire, one of the Paladins around the 
 imperial throne; in China he would be nobody, or 10 
 (worse than that) a mendicant alien, prostrate at the 
 feet, and soliciting the precarious alms, of a prince with 
 whom he had no connection. Besides, it might reason- 
 ably be expected that the Czarina, grateful for the really 
 efficient aid given by the Tartar prince, would confer 15 
 upon him such eminent rewards as might be sufficient 
 to anchor his hopes u^Don Russia, and to wean him from 
 every possible seduction. These were the obvious sug- 
 gestions of prudence and good sense to every man who 
 stood neutral in the case. But they were disappointed. 20 
 The Czarina knew her obligations to the Khan, but she 
 did not acknowledge them. Wherefore ? That is a 
 mystery, perhaps never to be explained. So it was, how- 
 ever. The Khan went unhonoured; no ukase ever pro- 
 claimed his merits; and perhaps, had he even been abund- 25 
 antly recompensed by Russia, there were others who would 
 have defeated these tendencies to reconciliation. Erempel, 
 Zebek, and Loosang the Lama, were pledged life-deep to 
 prevent any accommodation; and their efforts were un- 
 fortunately seconded by those of their deadliest enemies. 30 
 In the Russian Court there were at that time some great 
 nobles pre-occupied with feelings of hatred and blind 
 malice towards the Kalmucks, quite as strong as any 
 which the Kalmucks could harbour towards Russia, and 
 not, perhaps, so well-founded. Just as much as the 35 
 
18 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 Kalmucks hated the Russian yoke, their galling assump- 
 tion of authority, the marked air of disdain, as towards 
 a nation of ugly, stupid, and filthy barbarians, which 
 too generally marked the Russian bearing and language, 
 5 but, above all, the insolent contempt, or even outrages, 
 which the Russian governors or great military command- 
 ants tolerated in their followers towards the barbarous 
 religion and superstitious mummeries of the Kalmuck 
 priesthood — precisely in that extent did the ferocity of 
 
 10 the Russian resentment, and their wrath at seeing the 
 trampled worm turn or attempt a feeble retaliation, 
 re-act upon the unfortunate Kalmucks. At this crisis, 
 it is probable that envy and Avounded pride, upon wit- 
 nessing the splendid victories of Oubacha and Momot- 
 
 15 bacha over the Turks and Bashkirs, contributed strength 
 to the Russian irritation. And it must have been 
 through the intrigues of those nobles about her person 
 who chiefly smarted under these feelings that the 
 Czarina could ever have lent herself to the unwise and 
 
 20 ungrateful policy pursued at this critical period towards 
 the Kalmuck Khan. That Czarina Avas no longer Eliza- 
 beth Petrowna; it was Catherine II. — a princess who did 
 not often err so injuriously (injuriously for herself as much 
 as for others) in the measures of her government. 8he 
 
 25 had soon ample reason for repenting of her false policy. 
 Meantime, how much it must have co-operated with the 
 other motives previously acting upon Oubacha in sus- 
 taining his determination to revolt, and how powerfully 
 it must have assisted the efforts of all the Tartar chief - 
 
 30 tains in preparing the minds of their people to feel the 
 necessity of this difficult enterprise, by arming their 
 pride and their suspicions against the Russian Govern- 
 ment, through the keenness of their sympathy with the 
 wrongs of their insulted prince, may be readily imagined. 
 
 35 It is a fact, and it has been confessed bv candid Russians 
 
RF.VOLT OF THE TARTARS 19 
 
 themselves, when treating of this great dismembermeDt, 
 that the conduct of the Russian Cabinet throughout the 
 period of suspense and during the crisis of hesitation in 
 the Kalmuck Council was exactly such as was most desir- 
 able for the purposes of the conspirators; it Avas such, 5 
 in fact, as to set the seal to all their machinations, by 
 supplying distinct evidences and official vouchers for 
 what could otherwise have been, at the most, matters of 
 doubtful suspicion and indirect presumption. 
 
 11. Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, 10 
 and even allowing their weight so far as not at all to deny 
 the injustice or the impolicy of the imperial ministers, 
 it is contended by many persons who have reviev/ed the 
 affair with a command of all the documents bearing on 
 the case, more especially the letters or minutes of council 15 
 subsequently discovered in the handwriting of Zebek- 
 Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian cap- 
 tive Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks in 
 their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was power- 
 less for any^purpose of impeding or even of delaying 20 
 the revolt. He himself, indeed, was under religiouc 
 obligations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch 
 from the enterprise, or even to slacken in his zeal : for 
 Zebek-Dorchi, distrusting the firmness of his resolution 
 under any unusual pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, 25 
 in the very earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed him- 
 self of the Khan's well-known superstition to engage 
 him, by means of previous concert with the priests and 
 their head the Lama, in some dark and mysterious rites 
 of consecration, terminating in oaths under such terrific 30 
 sanctions as no Kalmuck would have courage to violate. 
 As far, therefore, as regarded the personal share of the 
 Khan in what was to come, Zebek w^as entirely at his 
 ease; he knew him to be so deeply pledged by religious 
 terrors to the prosecution of the conspiracy, that no lion- as 
 
20 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 ours within tlie Czarina's gift could have possibl}' shaken 
 his adhesion: and then, as to threats from the same 
 quarter, he knew him to be sealed against those fears by 
 others of a gloomier character, and better adapted to his 
 5 peculiar temperament. For Oubacha was a brave man 
 as respected all bodily enemies or the dangers of human 
 warfare, but was as sensitive and as timid as the most 
 superstitious of old Avomen in facing the frowns of a 
 priest, or under the vague anticipations of ghostly retri- 
 
 10 butions. But, had it been otherwise, and had there been 
 any reason to apprehend an unsteady demeanour on the 
 23art of this prince at the approach of the critical mo- 
 ment, such were the changes already effected in the 
 state of their domestic politics amongst the Tartars, by 
 
 15 the undermining arts of Zebek-Dorchi and his ally the 
 Lama, that very little importance would have attached 
 to that doubt. All power was now effectually lodged in 
 the hands of Zebek-Dorchi. He was the true and abso- 
 lute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre; all measures of 
 
 20 importance were submitted to his discretion; and nothing 
 was finally resolved but under his dictation. This re- 
 sult he had brought about, in a year or two, by means 
 sufficiently simple: first of all, by availing himself of 
 the prejudice in his favour, so largely diffused amongst 
 
 25 the lowest of the Kalmucks, that his own title to the 
 throne, in quality of great-grandson in a direct line from 
 Ajouka, the most illustrious of all the Kalmuck Khans, 
 stood upon a better basis than that of Oubaclia, who 
 derived from a collateral branch; secondly, with respect 
 
 30 to that sole advantage Avhich Oubacha possessed above 
 himself in the ratification of his title, by improving this 
 difference between their situations to the disadvantage of 
 his competitor, as one who had not scrupled to accept 
 that triumph from an alien power at the price of his 
 
 35 independence which he himself (as he would have it 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 21 
 
 understood) disdained to court; thirdly, by his own tal- 
 ents and address, coupled with the ferocious energy of 
 his moral character; fourthly — and perhaps in an equal 
 degree — by the criminal facility and good-nature of 
 Oubacha; finally (which is remarkable enough, as illus- 5 
 trating the character of the man), by that very new mod- 
 elling of the Sarga or Privy Council which he had used 
 as a principal topic of abuse and malicious insinuation 
 against the Russian Government, whilst, in reality, he 
 first had suggested the alteration to the Empress, and 10 
 he chiefly appropriated the political advantages which it 
 was fitted to yield. For, as he was himself appointed 
 the chief of the Sargatchi, and as the pensions to the 
 inferior Sargatchi passed through his hands, whilst in 
 effect they owed their appointments to his nomination, 15 
 it may be easily supposed that, whatever power existed 
 in the state capable of controlling the Khan being held 
 by the Sarga under its new organisation, and this body 
 being completely under his influence, the final result 
 w^as to throw all the functions of the state, whether 20 
 nominally in the prince or in the council, substantially 
 into the hands of this one man; whilst, at the same 
 time, from the strict league which he maintained with 
 the Lama, all the thunders of the spiritual power were 
 always ready to come in aid of the magistrate, or to 35 
 supply his incapacity in cases which he could not reach. 
 12. But the time was now rapidly approaching for 
 the mighty experiment. , The day was drawing near on 
 which the signal was to be given for raising the standard 
 of revolt, and by a combined movement on both sides of 30 
 the Wolga for spreading the smoke of one vast confla- 
 gration, that should wrap in a common blaze their own 
 huts and the stately cities of their enemies, over the 
 breadth and length of those great provinces in which their 
 flocks were dispersed. The year of the tiger was now 35 
 
22 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 within one little month of its commencement; the fifth 
 morning of that year was fixed for the fatal day when 
 the fortunes and happiness of a whole nation were to be 
 put upon the hazard of a dicer's throw; and as yet that 
 5 nation was in profound ignorance of the whole plan. 
 The Khan, such was the kindness of his nature, could 
 not bring himself to make the revelation so urgently 
 required. It was clear, however, that this could not be 
 delayed; and Zebek-Dorchi took the task willingly upon 
 
 10 himself. But where or how should this notification be 
 made, so as to exclude Eussian hearers? After some 
 deliberation, the following plan was adopted: — Couriers, 
 it was contrived, should arrive in furious haste, one upon 
 the heels of another, reporting a sudden inroad of the 
 
 15 Kirghises and Bashkirs upon the Kalmuck lands, at a 
 point distant about 120 miles. Thither all the Kalmuck 
 families, according to immemorial custom, were required 
 to send a separate representative; and there accordingly, 
 within three days, all appeared. The distance, the soli- 
 
 20 tary ground appointed for the rendezvous, the rapidity 
 of the march, all tended to make it almost certain that 
 no Russian could be present. Zebek-Dorchi then came 
 forward. He did not waste many words upon rhetoric. 
 He unfurled an immense sheet of parchment, visible from 
 
 25 the uttermost distance at which any of this vast crowd 
 could stand; the total number amounted to 80,000; all 
 saw, and many heard. They were told of the oppres- 
 sions of Russia; of lier pride and haughty disdain evi- 
 denced towards them by a thousand acts; of her con- 
 
 30 tempt for their religion; of her determination to reduce 
 them to absolute slavery; of the preliminary measures 
 she had already taken by erecting forts upon many of the 
 great rivers in their neighbourhood ; of the ulterior inten- 
 tions she thus announced to circumscribe their pastoral 
 
 35 lands, until they Avould all be obliged to renounce their 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 23 
 
 flocks, and to collect in towns like Sarepta, there to pur- 
 sae mechanical and servile trades of shoemaker, tailor, 
 and weaver, such as the free-born Tartar had always dis- 
 dained. "Then again," said the subtle prince, "she 
 increases her military levies upon our population every 5 
 year; w^e pour out our blood as young men in her 
 defence, or more often in sujiport of her insolent aggres- 
 sions; and as old men we reap nothing from our suffer- 
 ings, nor benefit by our survivorship where so many 
 are sacrificed." At this point of his harangue, Zebek 10 
 produced several papers (forged, as it is generally be- 
 lieved, by himself and the Lama), contaiuing projects 
 of the Russian court for a general transfer of the eldest 
 sons, taken e7i masse from the greatest Kalmuck fam- 
 ilies, to the imperial court. "Xow let this bo once 15 
 accomplished," he argued, "and there is an end of all 
 useful resistance from that day forwards. Petitions we 
 might make, or even remonstrances; as men of words 
 we might play a bold part; but for deeds, for that sort 
 of language by which our ancestors were used to speak 20 
 — holding us by such a chain, Eussia would make a jest 
 of our wishes, knowing full Avell that we should not dare 
 to make any effectual movement." 
 
 13. Having thus sufBciently roused the angry pas- 
 sions of his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears 25 
 by this pretended scheme against their first-born (an 
 artifice which was indispensable to his puri^ose, because 
 it met beforehand every form of amendment to his pro- 
 posal coming from the more moderate nobles, who would 
 not otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect 30 
 of bold addresses to the Empress before resorting to any 
 desperate extremity)/Zebek-Dorchi opened his scheme 
 of revolt, and, if so, of instant revolt;^ since any prepa- 
 rations reported at St. Petersburg worild be a signal for 
 the armies of Russia to cross into such positions from 35 
 
24 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 all parts of Asia as would effectually intercept their 
 march. It is remarkable, however, that, with all his 
 audacit}' and his reliance upon the momentary excite- 
 ment of the Kalmucks, the subtle prince did not ven- 
 5 ture, at this stage of his seduction, to make so startling 
 a proposal as that of a flight to China. All that he held 
 out for the present was a rapid march to the Temba or 
 some other great river, which they were to cross, and 
 take up a strong position on the farther bank, from 
 10 which, as from a post of conscious security, they could 
 hold a bolder language to the Czarina, and one which 
 would have a better chance of winning a favourable 
 audience. 
 
 14. These things, in the irritated condition of the 
 15 simple Tartars, passed by acclamation; and all returned 
 
 homewards to push forward with the m^st furious speed 
 the preparations for their awful undertaking.^ Rapid 
 and energetic these of necessity were; and in that 
 degree they became noticeable and manifest to the Rus- 
 20 sians who happened to be intermingled with the differ- 
 ent hordes, either on commercial errands, or as agents 
 officially from the Russian Government, some in a finan- 
 cial, others in a diplomatic character. 
 
 15. Amongst these last (indeed at the head of them) 
 35 was a Russian of some distinction, by name Kichinskoi, 
 
 a man memorable for his vanity, and memorable also as 
 one of the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This 
 Kichinskoi had been sent by the Empress as her envoy 
 to overlook the conduct of the Kalmucks; he was styled 
 
 30 the Grand Pristaw, or Great Commissioner, and was 
 universally known amongst the Tartar tribes by this 
 title. His mixed character of ambassador and of polit- 
 ical surveillant, combined with the dependent state of 
 the Kalmucks, gave him a real weight in the Tartar 
 
 35 councils, and might have given him a far greater, had 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 25 
 
 not his outrageous self-conceit, and his arrogant confi- 
 dence in his own authority as due chiefly to his personal 
 qualities for command, led him into such harsh displays 
 of power, and menaces so odious to the Tartar pride, as 
 very soon made him an object of their profoundest 5 
 malice. He had publicly insulted the Khan; and, upon 
 making a communication to him to the effect that some 
 reports began to circulate, and even to reach the Em- 
 press, of a design in agitation to fly from the imperial 
 dominions, he had ventured to say, '* But this you dare 10 
 not attempt; I laugh at such rumours ; yes, Khan, I 
 laugh at them to the Empress; for you are a chained 
 bear, and that you know." The Khan turned away on 
 his heel with marked disdain; and the Pristaw, foaming 
 at the mouth, continued to utter, amongst those of the 15 
 Khan's attendants who staid behind to catch his real 
 sentiments in a moment of unguarded passion, all that 
 the blindest frenzy of rage could suggest to the most 
 presumptuous of fools. It was now ascertained that 
 suspicions had arisen; but at the same time it was ascer- 20 
 tained that the Pristaw spoke no more than the truth in 
 representing himself to have discredited these suspicions. 
 The fact was that the mere infatuation of vanity made 
 him believe that nothing could go on undetected by his 
 all-piercing sagacity, and that no rebellion could prosper 25 
 ■when rebuked by his commanding presence. The Tar- 
 tars, therefore, pursued their preparations, confiding in 
 the obstinate blindness of the Grand Pristaw as in their 
 perfect safeguard; and such it proved — to his own ruin 
 as well as that of myriads besides. 30 
 
 16. Christmas arrived; and, a little before that time, 
 courier upon courier came dropping in, one upon the 
 very heels of another, to St. Petersburg, assuring the 
 Czarina that beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in the 
 very crisis of departure. These despatches came from 35 
 
2G REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 the Governor of Astraclian, and copies were instantly 
 forwarded to Kichinskoi. Now, it happened that be- 
 tween this governor — a Russian named Belvetoff — and the 
 Pristaw had been an ancient feud. The very name of 
 5 Beketoff inflamed his resentment; and no sooner did he 
 see that hated name attached to the despatch than he felt 
 himself confirmed in his former views with tenfold 
 bigotry, and wrote instantly, in terms of the most pointed 
 ridicnle, against the new alarmist, pledging his own head 
 
 10 upon the visionariness of his alarms. Beketoff, however, 
 was not to be put down by a few hard words, or by ridi- 
 cnle: he persisted in his statements; the Russian minis- 
 try were confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants; 
 and some were beginning even to treat the Governor of 
 
 15 Astrachan as a bore, and as the dupe of his own ner- 
 vous terrors, when the memorable day arrived, the fatal 
 5th of January, which for ever terminated the dispute, 
 and put a seal upon the earthly hopes and fortunes of 
 unnumbered myriads. The Governor of Astrachan was 
 
 20 the first to hear the news. Stung by the mixed furies 
 of jealousy, of triumphant vengeance, and of anxious 
 ambition, he sprang into his sledge, and, at the rate of 
 300 miles a-day, pursued his route to St. Petersburg — 
 rushed into the Imperial presence — announced the total 
 
 25 realisation of his worst predictions — and, upon the con- 
 firmation of this intelligence by subsequent despatches 
 from many different posts on the Wolga, he received an 
 imperial commission to seize the person of his deluded 
 enemy, and to keep him in strict captivity. These orders 
 
 30 were eagerly fulfilled; and the unfortunate Kichinskoi 
 soon afterwards expired of grief and mortification in 
 the gloomy solitude of a dungeon — a victim to his own 
 immeasurable vanity, and the blinding self-delusions of 
 a presumption that refused all warning. 
 
 35 17. The Governor of Astrachan had been but too 
 
REVOLT OF TEE TARTARS 27 
 
 faithful a prophet. Perhaps even he was surprised at 
 the suddenness with which the verification followed his 
 reports. Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so 
 solemnly appointed under religious sanctions by the 
 Lama, the Kalmucks on the east bank of the Wolgfa 5 
 were seen at the earliest dawn of day assembling by 
 troops and sqnadrons, and in the tumultuous movement 
 of some great morning of battle. Tens of thousands 
 continued moving off the ground at every half-hour's 
 interval. Women and children, to the amount of two 10 
 hundred thousand and upwards, were placed upon wag- 
 gons, or upon camels, and drcAV off by masses of twenty 
 thousand at once — placed nnder suitable escorts, and 
 continually swelled in numbers by other outlying bodies 
 of the horde, who kept falling in at various distances 15 
 upon the first and second day's march. From sixty to 
 eighty thousand of those who were the best mounted staid 
 behind the rest of the tribes, Avith pur^wses of devasta- 
 tion and plunder more violent than prudence justified, 
 or the amiable character of the Khan could be supposed 20 
 to approve. But in this, as in other instances, he was 
 completely overruled by the malignant counsels of Zebek- 
 Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury of the 
 Tartars discharged itself upon their own habitations. 
 But this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from 25 
 the hardships of their march, had been thought so nec- 
 essary a measure by all the chieftains, that even Oubacha 
 himself was the first to authorise- the act by his own 
 example. He seized a torch previously prepared with 
 materials the most durable as well as combustible, and 30 
 steadily applied it to the timbers of his own palace. 
 Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the 
 portable part of the domestic utensils, and that part of 
 the wood-work which could be applied to the manufac- 
 ture of the long Tartar lances. This cha[)ter in their o5 
 
28 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 memorable day's work being finished, and the whole of 
 their villages throughout a district of ten thousand 
 square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the Tartars waited 
 for further orders. 
 5 18. These, it was intended, should have taken a char- 
 acter of valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind 
 to the Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main 
 motives of their flight. It was the purpose of Zebek- 
 Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, and build- 
 
 10 ings of every description, should be given up to pillage 
 and destruction, and such treatment applied to the 
 defenceless inhabitants as might naturally be expected 
 from a fierce people already infuriated by the spectacle 
 of their own outrages, and by the bloody retaliations 
 
 15 which they must necessarily have provoked. This part 
 of the tragedy, however, was happily intercepted by a 
 providential disappointment at the very crisis of depart- 
 ure. It has been mentioned already that the motive for 
 selecting the depth of winter as the season for flight 
 
 20 (which otherwise was obviously the very worst possible) 
 had been the impossibility of effecting a junction suffi- 
 ciently rapid with the tribes on the west of the Wolga, 
 in the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of 
 ice. For this one advantage, the Kalmuck leaders had 
 
 25 consented to aggravate by a thousandfold the calamities 
 inevitable to a rapid flight over boundless tracts of 
 country, with women, children, and herds of cattle — 
 for this one single advantage; and yet, after all, it was 
 lost. The reason never has been explained satisfacto- 
 
 30 rily, but the fact was such. Some have said that the 
 signals were not properly concerted for marking the 
 moment of absolute departure — that is, for signifying 
 whether the settled intention of the Eastern Kalmucks 
 might not have been suddenly interrupted by adverse 
 
 :35 intelligence. Others have supposed that the ice might 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 29 
 
 not be equally strong on both sides of the river, and 
 might even be generally insecure for the treading of 
 heavy and heavily-laden animals such as camels. But 
 the prevailing notion is that some accidental movements 
 on the 3d and 4th of January of Russian troops in the 5 
 neighbourhood of the Western Kalmucks, though really 
 having no reference to them or their plans, had been 
 construed into certain signs that all was discovered; and 
 that the prudence of the Western chieftains, who, from 
 situation, had never been exposed to those intrigues by 10 
 which Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the pride of 
 the Eastern tribes, now stepped in to save their people 
 from ruin. Be the cause what it might, it is certain 
 that the Western Kalmucks were in some way prevented 
 from forming the intended junction with their brethren 15 
 of the opposite bank; and the result was that at least 
 one hundred thousand of these Tartars were left behind 
 in Russia. This accident it was which saved their Rus- 
 sian neighbours universally from the desolation which 
 else awaited them. One general massacre and confla- 20 
 gration would assuredly have surprised them, to the 
 utter extermination of their property, their houses, and 
 themselves, had it not been for this disappointment. 
 But the Eastern chieftains did not dare to put to hazard 
 the safety of their brethren under the first impulse of the 25 
 Czarina's vengeance for so dreadful a tragedy; for, as 
 they were well aware of too many circumstances by which 
 she might discover the concurrence of the Western 
 people in the general scheme of revolt, they justly 
 feared that she would thence infer their concurrence also 30 
 in the bloody events which marked its outset. 
 
 19. Little did the Western Kalmucks guess Avhat 
 reasons they also had for gratitude on account of an 
 interposition so unexpected, and which at the moment 
 they so generally deplored. Could they but have wit- 35 
 
30 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 nessecl the tliousandtli part of the sufferings which over- 
 took their Eastern brethren in the first month of their sad 
 flight, they would have blessed Heaven for their own 
 narrow escape; and yet these sufferings of the first month 
 5 were but a prelude or foretaste comparatively slight of 
 those which afterwards succeeded. 
 
 20. For now began to unroll the most awful series of 
 calamities, and the most extensive, which is anywhere 
 recorded to have visited the sons and daughters of meu. 
 
 10 It is jDossible that the sudden inroads of destroying 
 nations, such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol 
 Tartars, may have inflicted misery as extensive; but 
 there the misery and the desolation would be sudden, 
 like the flight of volleying lightning. Those who were 
 
 15 spared at first would generally be spared to the end; 
 those who perished at all would perish at once. It is 
 possible that the French retreat from Moscow may have 
 made some nearer approach to this calamity in duration, 
 though still a feeble and miniature approach; for the 
 
 20 French sufferings did not commence in good earnest 
 until about one mouth from the time of leaving Mos- 
 cow; and though it is true that afterwards the vials of 
 wrath were emptied upon the devoted army for six or 
 seven weeks in succession, yet what is that to this Kal- 
 
 25 muck tragedy, which lasted for more than as many 
 months? But the main feature of horror by which 
 the Tartar march was distinguished from the French lies 
 in the accompaniment of women ^ and children. There 
 were both, it is true, with the French army, but not so 
 
 30 
 
 ^ Singular it is, and not generally known, that Grecian women 
 accompanied the anabasis of the younger Cyrus and tlie subse- 
 quent Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon aflfirras that 
 there were "many" women in the Greek army — noXXai ?}6ay 
 Eraipat ev ro5 drftarsv/iiart; and in a late stage of that trying 
 
 35 expedition it is evident that women were amongst the survivors. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 31 
 
 many as to bear any marked proportion to the total 
 numbers concerned. The French, in shorty were merely 
 an army — a host of professional destroyers, whose regu- 
 lar trade was bloodshed, and whose regular element was 
 danger and suffering. But the Tartars were a nation car- 5 
 rying along with them more than two hundred and fifty 
 thousand women and children, utterly unequal, for the 
 most part, to any contest witli the calamities before them. 
 The Children of Israel were in the same circumstances 
 as to the accompaniment of their families; but they 10 
 were released from the pursuit of their enemies in a 
 very early stage of their flight; and their subsequent 
 residence in the Desert was not a march, bvit a continued 
 halt, and under a continued interposition of Heaven for 
 their comfortable support. Earthquakes, again, how- 15 
 ever comprehensive in their ravages, are shocks of a 
 moment's duration. A much nearer approach made to 
 the wide range and the long duration of the Kalmuck 
 tragedy may have been in a jiestilence such as that 
 which visited Athens in the Peloponnesian War, or 20 
 London in the reign of Charles II. There also the 
 martyrs were counted by myriads, and the period of the 
 desolation was counted by months. But, after all, the 
 total amount of destruction was on a smaller scale; and 
 there was this feature of alleviation to the conscious 25 
 pressure of the calamity — that the misery was withdrawn 
 from public notice into private chambers and hospitals. 
 The siege of Jerusalem by Vespasian and his son, taken 
 in its entire circumstances, comes nearest of all — for 
 breadth and depth of suffering, for duration, for the 30 
 exasperation of the suffering from without by ijiternal 
 feuds, and, finally, for that last most appalling expres- 
 sion of the furnace-heat of the anguish in its power to 
 extinguish the natural affections even of maternal love. 
 But, after all, each case had circumstances of romantic 35 
 
32 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 misery peculiar to itself — circumstances without prece- 
 dent, and (wherever human nature is ennobled by Chris- 
 tianity), it may be confidently hoped, never to be 
 repeated . 
 5 21. The first point to be reached, before any hope o' 
 repose could be encoura.£jed, was the river Jaik. Thi 
 was not above 300 miles from the main point of depart- 
 ure on the Wolga; and if the march thither w^as to be 
 a forced one, and. a severe one, it w^as alleged, on the 
 
 10 other hand, that the suffering would be the more brief 
 and transient; one summary exertion, not to be repeated, 
 and all was achieved. Forced the march was, and severe 
 beyond example: there the forew^arning proved correct; 
 but the promised rest proved a mere phantom of the 
 
 15 wilderness — a visionary rainbow, which fled before their 
 hope-sick eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for 
 seven months of hardship and calamity, without a pause. 
 These sufferings, by their very nature, and the circum- 
 stances under wdiich they arose, were (like the scenery of 
 
 20 the stej)pes) somewhat monotonous in their colouring 
 and external features; what variety, however, there was 
 will be most naturally exhibited by tracing historically 
 the successive stages of the general misery, exactly as it 
 unfolded itself under the double agency of weakness 
 
 25 still increasing from within, and hostile pressure from 
 without. Viewed in this manner, under the real order 
 of development, it is remarkable that these sufferings of 
 the Tartars, though under the moulding hands of acci- 
 dent, arrange themselves almost with a scenical propri- 
 
 30 ety. They seem combined as with the skill of an artist; 
 the intensity of the misery advancing regularly with the 
 advances of the march, and the stages of the calamity 
 corresponding to the stages of the route; so that, upon 
 raising the curtain wiiich veils the great catastrophe, we 
 
 oo behold one vast climax of anguish. toAvering upwards by 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 33 
 
 regular gradations, as if coustructed artificially for pictur- 
 esque effect — a result which might not have been sur- 
 prising had it been reasonable to anticipate the same rate 
 of speed, and even an accelerated rate, as prevailing 
 through the later stages of the expedition. But it seemed, 5 
 on the contrary, most reasonable to calculate upon a con- 
 tinual decrement in the rate of motion according to the 
 increasing distance from the headquarters of the pursu- 
 ing enemy. This calculation, however, was defeated by 
 the extraordinary circumstance that the Russian armies 10 
 did not begin to close in very fiercely upon the Kalmucks 
 until after they had accomplished a distance of full 
 2,000 miles: 1,000 miles farther on the assaults became 
 even more tumultuous and murderous: and already the 
 great shadows of the Chinese Wall were dimly descried 15 
 when the frenzy and acharnement of the pursuers, and 
 tlie bloody desperation of the miserable fugitives, had 
 reached its uttermost extremity. Let us briefly rehearse 
 the main stages of the misery, and trace the ascending 
 steps of the tragedy, according to the great divisions of 20 
 the route marked out by the central rivers of Asia. 
 
 22. The first stage, we have already said, was from the 
 AVolga to the Jaik; the distance about 300 miles; the 
 time allowed seven days. For the first week, therefore, 
 the rate of marching averaged about 43 English miles 35 
 a-day. The weather was cold, but bracing; and, at a 
 more moderate pace, this part of the journey might have 
 been accomplished without much distress by a people 
 as hardy as the Kalmucks: as it was, the cattle suffered 
 greatly from over-driving; milk began to fail even for 30 
 the children; the sheep perished by wholesale; and the 
 children themselves were saved only by the innumerable 
 camels. 
 
 23. The Cossacks who dwelt upon the banks of the 
 Jaik were the first among the subjects of Russia to 35 
 
34 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 come into collision Avitli the Kalmucks. Great was their 
 surprise at the suddenness of the irruption, and great 
 also their consternation; for, according to their settled 
 custom, by far the greater part of their number was 
 5 absent during the winter months at the fisheries upon 
 the Caspian. Some who were liable to surprise at the 
 most exposed points fled in crowds to the fortress of 
 Koulagin?., which was immediately invested and sum- 
 moned by Oubacha. He had, however, in his train 
 
 10 only a few light pieces of artillery; and the Russian com- 
 mandant at Koulagina, being aware of the hurried cir- 
 cumstances in which the Khan was placed, and that he 
 stood npon the very edge, as it were, of a renewed 
 flight, felt encouraged by these considerations to a more 
 
 15 obstinate resistance than might else have been advisable, 
 with an enemy so little disposed to observe the usages of 
 civilised warfare. The period of his anxiety was not 
 long: on the fifth day of the siege he descried from the 
 walls a succession of Tartar couriers, mounted upon fleet 
 
 20 Bactrian camels, crossing the vast plains around the for- 
 tress at a furious pace, and riding into the Kalmuck 
 encampment at various points. Great agitation appeared 
 immediately to follow: orders were soon after despatched 
 in all directions; and it became speedily known that 
 
 35 upon a distant flank of the Kalmuck movement a bloody 
 and exterminating l^attle had been fought the day before, 
 in which one entire tribe of the Khan's dependants, 
 numbering not less than 9,000 fighting men, had perished 
 to the last man. This was the oidoss, or clan, called 
 
 80 Feka-Zechorr, between whom and the Cossacks there was 
 a feud of ancient standing. In selecting, therefore, the 
 points of attack, on occasion of the present hasty inroad, 
 the Cossack chiefs were naturally eager so to direct their 
 efforts as to combine with the service of the Empress 
 
 35 some gratification to their own party hatreds : more espe- 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 35 
 
 ciallj as the present was likely to be their final opportu- 
 nity for revenge, if the Kalmuck evasion should 2)rosper. 
 Having, therefore, concentrated as large a body of Cos- 
 sack cavalry as circumstances allowed, they attacked the 
 hostile ouloss with a precipitation which denied to it all 5 
 means for communicatiag with Oubacha; for the neces- 
 sity of commanding an ample range of pasturage, to 
 meet the necessities of their vast flocks and herds, had 
 separated this ouloss from the Khan's liead-cpiarters by 
 an interval of 80 miles; and thus it was, and not from 10 
 oversight, that it came to be thrown entirely upon its 
 own resources. These had proved insufficient: retreat, 
 from the exhausted state of their horses and camels, 
 no less than from the prodigious encumbrances of their 
 live stock, was absolutely out of the question: quarter 15 
 was disdained on the one side, and would not have 
 been granted on the other: and thus it had happened 
 that the setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from 
 the first opening of the revolt) threw his parting ra3'S 
 upon the final agonies of an ancient ouloss, stretched 20 
 upon a bloody field, who on that day's dawning had 
 styled themselves an indeioendent nation. 
 
 24. Universal consternation was diffused through the 
 wide borders of the Khan's encampment by this disas- 
 trous intelligence; not so much on account of the num- 25 
 bers slain, or the total extinction of a powerful ally, as 
 because the position of the Cossack force was likely to 
 put to hazard the future advances of the Kalmucks, or 
 at least to retard and hold them in check until the heav- 
 ier columns of the Russian army should arrive upon their 30 
 flanks. The siege of Koulagina was instantly raised; 
 and that signal, so fatal to the happiness of the women 
 and their children, once again resounded through the 
 tents — the signal for flight, and this time for a flight 
 more rapid than ever. About 150 miles ahead of their 35 
 
36 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 present position, there arose a tract of hilly country, 
 forming a sort of margin to the vast sea-like expanse of 
 champaign savannahs, steppes, and occasionally of sandy 
 deserts, which stretched away on each side of this mar- 
 5 gin hotli eastwards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the 
 centre of this hilly range lay a narrow defile, through 
 which passed the nearest and the most practicable route 
 to the river Torgai (the farther bank of which river 
 offered the next great station of security for a general 
 
 10 halt). It was the more essential to gain this pass before 
 the Cossacks, inasmuch as not only would the delay in 
 forcing the pass give time to the Russian pursuing 
 columns for combining their attacks, and for bringing 
 up their artillery, but also because (even if all enemies 
 
 15 in pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held 
 by those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure 
 geography of these pathless steppes — that the loss of this 
 one narrow strait amongst the hills would have the effect 
 of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case 
 
 20 where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon 
 a circuit of at least 500 miles extra; besides that, after 
 all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgai 
 at a point ill fitted for the passage of their heavy bag- 
 gage. The defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved 
 
 25 to gain; and yet, unless they moved upon it with the 
 velocity of light cavalry, there was little chance but that 
 it would be found pre-occupied by the Cossacks. They 
 also, it is true, had suffered greatly in the bloody action 
 with the defeated ouloss ; but the excitement of vic- 
 
 30 tory, and the intense sympathy with their unexampled 
 triumph, had again swelled their ranks, and would prob- 
 ably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their sim- 
 ple countrymen from the Caspian. The question, there- 
 fore, of pre-occupation was reduced to a race. The 
 
 35 Cossacks were marching upon an oblique line not above 
 
BE VOLT OF THE TARTARS 37 
 
 50 miles longer than that which led to the same point 
 from the Kalmuck head-quarters before Koulagina; and 
 therefore, without the most furious haste on the part of 
 the Kalmucks, there was not a chance for them, bur- 
 dened and "trashed"^ as they were, to anticipate so 5 
 agile a light cavalry as the Cossacks in seizing this 
 important pass. 
 
 25. Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on 
 hearing this exposition of the case. For they easily 
 understood that too capital an interest (the sumina 10 
 rerum) was now at stake, to allow of any regard to 
 minor interests, or what w^ould be considered such in 
 their present circumstances. The dreadful week al- 
 ready passed — their inauguration in misery — was yet 
 fresh in their remembrance. The scars of suffering were 15 
 impressed not only upon their memories, but upon their 
 very persons and the persons of their children. And 
 they knew that, where no speed had much chance of 
 meeting the cravings of their chieftains, no test would 
 be accepted, short of absolute exhaustion, that as much 20 
 had been accomplished as could have been accomplished. 
 Weseloff, the Eussian captive, has recorded the silent 
 wretchedness with which the women and elder boys 
 assisted in drawing the tent-ropes. On the 5tli of 
 January all had been animation, and the joyousness of 25 
 indefinite expectation; now, on the contrary, a brief but 
 bitter experience had taught them to take an amended 
 calculation of what it was that lay before them. 
 
 26. One whole day and far into the succeeding night 
 had the renewed flight continued ; the sufferings had been 30 
 
 * " Trashed''^ : — This is an expressive word used by Beaumont 
 and Fletcher in their *'Bonduca," &e., to describe the case of a 
 person retarded and embarrassed in flight, or in pursuit, by 
 some encumbrance, whether thing or person, too valuable to be 
 left behind. 
 
38 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 greater than before; for the cold had been more intense; 
 and many perished out of the living creatures through 
 every class, except only the camels — whose powers of 
 endurance seemed equally adapted to cold and to heat. 
 5 The second morning, however, brought an alleviation to 
 the distress. Snow had begun to fall; and, though not 
 deep at present, it was easily foreseen that it soon would 
 be so; and that, as a halt would in that case become un- 
 avoidable, no plan could be better than that of staying 
 
 10 where they were; especially as the same cause would 
 check the advance of the Cossacks. Here then was the 
 last interval of comfort which gleamed upon the unhappy 
 nation during their whole migration. For ten days the 
 snow continued to fall with little intermission. At the 
 
 15 end of that time keen, bright, frosty weather succeeded; 
 the drifting had ceased; in three days the smooth ex- 
 panse became firm enough to support the treading of 
 the camels; and the flight was recommenced. But dur- 
 ing the halt much domestic comfort had been enjoyed, 
 
 20 and for the last time universal plenty. The cows and 
 oxen had perished in such vast numbers on the previous 
 marches, that an order was now issued to turn what 
 remained to account by slaughtering the whole, and 
 salting whatever part should be found to exceed the 
 
 25 immediate consumption. This measure led to a scene 
 of general banqueting and even of festivity amongst all 
 who were not incapacitated for joyous emotions by dis- 
 tress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the 
 few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. 
 
 30 Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already per- 
 ished, exclusively of the many thousand allies who had 
 been cut down by the Cossack sabre. And the losses in 
 reversion were likely to be many more. For rumours 
 began now to arrive from all quarters, by the mounted 
 
 35 couriers whom the Khan had despatched to the rear and 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 39 
 
 to each flank as well as in advance, that large masses of 
 the imperial troops Avere converging from all parts of 
 Central Asia to the fords of the River Torgai, as the 
 most convenient point for intercepting the flying tribes; 
 and it was by this time well known that a powerful divi- 5 
 sion was close in their rear, and was retarded only by the 
 numerous artillery which had been judged necessary to 
 support their operations. New motives were thus daily 
 arising for quickening the motions of the wretched 
 Kalmucks, and for exhausting those who were already 10 
 but too much exhausted. 
 
 27. It was not until the 2d day of February that 
 the Khan's advanced guard came in sight of Ouchim, 
 the defile among the hills of Mougaldchares, in which 
 they anticipated so bloody an opposition from the Cos- 15 
 sacks. A pretty large body of these light cavalry had^ 
 in fact, pre-occupied the pass for some hours; but the 
 Khan, having two great advantages — namely, a strong 
 body of infantry, who had been conveyed by sections 
 of five on about 200 camels, and some pieces of light 30 
 artillery which he had not yet been forced to abandon 
 — soon began to make a serious impression upon this 
 unsupported detachment; and they would probably at 
 any rate have retired; but at the very moment when 
 they were making some dis^Dositions in that view Zebek- 25 
 Dorchi appeared upon the rear with a body of trained 
 riflemen, who had distinguished themselves in the war 
 with Turkey. These men had contrived to crawl unob- 
 served over the cliffs which skirted the ravine, availing 
 themselves of the dry beds of the summer torrents, and 30 
 other inequalities of the ground, to conceal their move- 
 ment. Disorder and trepidation ensued instantly in 
 the Cossack files; the Khan, who had been waiting with 
 the elite of his heavy cavalry, charged furiously upon 
 them; total overthrow followed to the Cossacks, and a 35 
 
40 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 slaughter sncli as in some measure avenged the recent 
 bloody extermination of their allies, the ancient ouloss of 
 Feka-Zechorr. The slight horses of the Cossacks were 
 nnable to support the weight of heavy Polish dragoons and 
 5 a body of trained cameleers (that is, cuirassiers mounted 
 on camels) ; hardy they Avere, but not strong, nor a match 
 for their antagonists in weight; and their extraordinary 
 efforts through the last few days to gain their present 
 position had greatly diminished their powers for effect- 
 
 10 ing an escape. Very few, in fact, did escape; and the 
 bloody day at Ouchim became as memorable amongst the 
 Cossacks as that which, about twenty days before, had sig- 
 nalised the complete annihilation of the Feka-Zechorr. ^ 
 28. The road was now open to the river Irgitch, and 
 
 15 as yet even far beyond it to the Torgau; but how long 
 this state of things would continue was every day more 
 doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received that a 
 large Russian army, well appointed in every arm, was 
 advancing upon the Torgau, under the command of 
 
 20 General Traubenberg. This officer was to be joined on 
 his route by ten thousand Bashkirs, and pretty nearly 
 the same amount of Kirghises — both hereditary enemies 
 
 ' There was another ouloss equally strong with that of Feka- 
 Zechorr, viz.,* that of Erketunn, under the government of Assarcho 
 and Machi, whom some obligations of treaty or other hidden mo- 
 tives drew into the general conspiracy of revolt. But fortunately 
 the two chieftains found means to assure the Governor of Astra- 
 chan, on the first outbreak of the insurrection, that their real 
 wishes were for maintaining the old connection with Russia. The 
 Cossacks, therefore, to whom the pursuit was intrusted, had 
 instructions to act cautiously and according to circumstances on 
 coming up with them. The result was, through the prudent 
 management of Assarcho, that the clan, without compromising 
 their pride or independence, made such moderate submissions as 
 satisfied the Cossacks ; and eventually both chiefs and people 
 received from the Czarina the rewards and honours of exemplary 
 fidelity. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 41 
 
 of the Kalmucks, both exasperated to a point of madness 
 by the bloody trophies which Oubacha and Momotbacha 
 had, in late years, won from such of their compatriots as 
 served under the Sultan. The Czarina's yoke these wild 
 nations bore with submissive patience, but not the hands 5 
 by which it had been imposed; and, accordingly, catch- 
 ing with eagerness at the present occasion offered to their 
 vengeance, they sent an assurance to the Czarina of their 
 perfect obedience to her commands, and at the same time 
 a message significantly declaring in what spirit they 10 
 meant to execute them, viz., *' that they would not trou- 
 ble her Majesty with prisoners." 
 
 29. Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a 
 race for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, 
 and concurrently with nations as fierce and semi-human- 15 
 ised as themselves, besides that they had been stung 
 into threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride 
 and military abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish 
 Sultan. The forces, and more especially the artillery, of 
 Russia were far too overwhelming to bear the thought 20 
 of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even with a 
 less dilapidated state of their resources than they could 
 reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the 
 Torgau. In their speed lay their only hope — in strength 
 of foot, as before, and not in strength of arm. On- 25 
 ward, therefore, the Kalmucks pressed, marking the 
 lines of their wide-extending march over the sad soli- 
 tudes of the steppes by a never-ending chain of corpses. 
 The old and the young, the sick man on his couch, the 
 mother with her baby — all were dropping fast. Such 30 
 sights as these, with the many rueful aggravations inci- 
 dent to the helpless condition of infancy — of disease 
 and of female weakness abandoned to the wolves amidst 
 a howling wilderness, continued to track their course 
 through a space of full two tliousand miles; for so much, 35 
 
42 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 at the least, it was likely to prove, including the circuits 
 to which they were often compelled by rivers or hostile 
 tribes, from the point of starting on the Wolga, until 
 they could reach their destined halting ground on the 
 5 east bank of the Torgau. For the first seven weeks of 
 this march their sufferings had been embittered by the 
 excessive severity of the cold; and every night — so long 
 as wood was to be had for fires, either from the lading 
 of the camels, or from the desperate sacrifice of their 
 
 10 baggage-waggons, or (as occasionally happened) from the 
 forests which skirted the banks of the many rivers which 
 crossed their path — no spectacle was more frequent than 
 that of a circle, composed of men, women, and ciiildren, 
 gathered by hundreds round a central fire, all dead and 
 
 15 stiff' by the return of the morning light. Myriads were 
 left behind from pure exhaustion, of whom none had a 
 chance, under the combined evils which beset them, of 
 surviving through the next twenty-four hours. Frost, 
 however, and snow at length ceased to persecute; the 
 
 20 vast extent of the march at length brought them into 
 more genial latitudes, and the unusual duration of the 
 march was gradually bringing them into more genial 
 seasons of the year. Two thousand miles had at last been 
 traversed; February, March, April, were gone; the 
 
 25 balmy month of May had opened; vernal sights and 
 sounds came from every side to comfort the heart-weary 
 travellers; and, at last, in the latter end of May, cross- 
 ing the Torgau, they took up a position where they hoped 
 to find liberty to repose themselves for many weeks in 
 
 30 comfort as well as in security, and to draw such supplies 
 
 from the fertile neighbourhood as might restore their 
 
 shattered forces to a condition for executing, witli less of 
 
 wreck and ruin, the large remainder of the journey. 
 
 30. Yes; it was true that two thousand miles of wan- 
 
 35 dering had been completed, but in a period of nearly 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 43 
 
 five months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least 
 two hundred and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing of 
 herds and fiocks past all reckoning. These had all per- 
 ished : ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, not one 
 survived — only the camels. These arid and adust creat- 5 
 ures, looking like the mummies of some antediluvian 
 animals, without the afi'ections or sensibilities of flesh and 
 blood — these only still erected their speaking eyes to the 
 eastern heavens, and had to all appearance come out from 
 this long tempest of trial unscathed and hardly dimin- 10 
 ished. The Khan, knowing how much he was individu- 
 ally answerable for the misery which had been sustained, 
 must have wept tears even more bitter than those of 
 Xerxes, wdien he threw his eyes over the myriads whom 
 he had assembled : for the tears of Xerxes were unmin- 15 
 gled with remorse. AYhatever amends were in his power 
 the Khan resolved to make, by sacrifices to the general 
 good of all personal regards; and accordingly, even at 
 this point of their advance, he once more deliberately 
 brought under review the whole question of the revolt. 20 
 The question was formally debated before the Council, 
 whether, even at this point, they should untread their 
 steps, and, throwing themselves ujoon the Czarina's 
 mercy, return lo their old allegiance. In that case, 
 Oiibacha professed himself willing to become the scape- 25 
 goat for the general transgression. This, he argued, 
 was no fantastic scheme, but even easy of accomplish- 
 ment; for the unlimited and sacred power of the Khan, 
 so well known to the Empress, made it absolutely ini- 
 quitous to attribute any separate responsibility to the 30 
 people — upon the Khan rested the guilt, upon the Khan 
 would descend the imperial vengeance. This proposal 
 was applauded for its generosity, but was energetically 
 opposed by Zebek-Dorchi. Were they to lose the whole 
 journey of two thousand miles ? Was their misery to 35 
 
44 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 perish without fruit? True it was that they had yet 
 reached only the half-way house; but, in that respect, the 
 motives were evenly balanced for retreat or for advance. 
 Either way they would have pretty nearly the same 
 5 distance to traverse, but wdth this difference — that, for- 
 wards, their route lay through lands comparatively fertile; 
 backwards, through a blasted wilderness, rich only in 
 memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to Kalmuck eyes 
 by the trophies of their calamity. Besides, though the 
 
 10 Empress might accept an excuse for the past, would she 
 the less forbear to suspect for the future ? The Czarina's 
 pardon they might obtain, but could they ever hope to 
 recover her confidence 9 Doubtless there would now be a 
 standing presumption against them, an immortal ground 
 
 15 of jealousy; and a jealous government would be but an- 
 other name for a harsh one. Finally, whatever motives 
 there ever had been for the revolt surely remained unim- 
 paired by anything that had occurred. In reality, the 
 revolt was, after all, no revolt, but (strictly sjoeaking) a 
 
 20 return to their old allegiance; since, not over one 
 hundred and fifty years ago (viz., in the year 1616), their 
 ancestors had revolted from the Emperor of China. 
 They had now tried both governments; and for them 
 China was the land of promise, and Eussia the house of 
 
 25 bondage. 
 
 31. Spite, however, of all that Zebek could say or do, 
 the yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of the 
 Khan's proposal; the pardon of their prince, they per- 
 suaded themselves, w^ould be readily conceded by the 
 
 30 Empress: and there is little doubt that they would at 
 this time have thrown themselves gladly upon the impe- 
 rial mercy; when suddenly all was defeated by the arrival 
 of two envoys from Traubenberg. This general had 
 reached the fortress of Orsk, after a very painful march, 
 
 35 on the 12th of April; thence he set forwards towards 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 45 
 
 Oriembourg; which he reached upon the 1st of June, 
 having been joined on his route at various times during 
 the month of May by the Kirghises and a corps of ten 
 thousand Bashkirs. From Oriembourg he sent forward 
 his official offers to the Khan, which were harsh and 5 
 peremptory, holding out no specific stipulations as to 
 pardon or impunity, and exacting unconditional submis- 
 sion as the preliminary price of any cessation from 
 military operations. The personal character of Trau- 
 benberg, which was anything but energetic, and the con- 10 
 dition of his army, disorganised in a great measure by 
 the length and severity of the march, made it probable 
 that, with a little time for negotiation, a more concilia- 
 tory tone would have been assumed. But, unhappily for 
 all parties, sinister events occurred in the meantime, 15 
 such as effectually put an end to every hope of the kind. 
 32. The two envoys sent forward by Traubenberg had 
 reported to this officer that a distance of only ten days' 
 march lay between his own head-quarters and those of 
 the Khan. Upon this fact transpiring, the Kirghises, 20 
 by their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, entreated 
 the Russian general to advance without delay. Once 
 having placed his cannon in position, so as to command 
 the Kalmuck camp, the fate of the rebel Khan and his 
 people would be in his own hands: and they would 25 
 themselves form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, 
 however ['wliy has not been certainly explained), refused 
 to march, grounding his refusal upon the condition of 
 his army, and their absolute need of refreshment. 
 Long and fierce was the altercation; but at length, see- 30 
 ing no chance of prevailing, and dreading above all other 
 events the escape of their detested enemy, the fero- 
 cious Bashkirs went off in a body by forced marches. In 
 six days they reached the Torgau, crossed by swimming 
 their horses, and fell upon the Kalmucks, who were dis- 35 
 
46 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 persed for many a league in search of food or provender 
 for their camels. The first day's action was one vast 
 succession of independent skirmishes, diffused over a 
 field of thirty to forty miles in extent; one party often 
 5 breaking up into three or four, and again (according to 
 the accidents of the ground) three or four blending into 
 one; flight and 2:)nrsuit, rescue and total overthrow, 
 going on simultaneously, under all varieties of form, in 
 all quarters of the plain. The Bashkirs had found 
 
 10 themselves obliged, by the scattered state of the Kal- 
 mucks, to ^\)\\t up into innumerable sections; and thus, 
 for some hours, it had been impossible for the most prac- 
 tised eye to collect the general tendency of the day's for- 
 tune. Both the Khan and Zebek-Dorchi were at one 
 
 15 moment made prisoners, and more than once in immi- 
 nent danger of being cut down; but at length Zebek 
 succeeded in rallying a strong column of infantry, 
 which, with the support of the camel-corps on each 
 flank, compelled the Bashkirs to retreat. Clouds, how- 
 
 20 ever, of these wild cavalry continued to arrive through 
 the next two days and nights, followed or accompanied 
 by the Kirghises. These being viewed as the advaiiced 
 parties of Traubenberg's army, the Kalmuck chieftains 
 saw no hope of safety but in flight; and in this way it 
 
 25 happened that a retreat which had so recently been 
 brought to a pause was resumed at the very moment 
 when the unhappy fugitives were anticipating a deep 
 repose without further molestation the whole summer 
 through. 
 
 30 33. It seemed as though every variety of wretched- 
 ness were predestined to the Kalmucks, and as if their 
 sufferings were incomplete unless they were rounded and 
 matured by all that the most dreadful agencies of sum- 
 mer's heat could superadd to those of frost and winter. 
 
 35 To this sequel of their story I shall immediately revert. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 47 
 
 after first noticing a little romantic episode which oc- 
 curred at this point between Oubacha and his unprinci- 
 pled cousin Zebek-Dorchi. 
 
 34. There was at the time of the Kalmuck flight from 
 the Wolga a Russian gentleman of some rank at the court 5 
 of the Khan, whom, for political reasons, it was thought 
 necessary to carry along with them as a captive. For 
 some weeks his confinement had been very strict, and in 
 one or two instances cruel. But, as the increasing dis- 
 tance was continually diminishing the chances of escape, 10 
 and perhaps, also, as the misery of the guards gradually 
 withdrew their attention from all minor interests to their 
 own personal sufferings, the vigilance of the custody 
 grew more and more relaxed ; until at length, npon a peti- 
 tion to the Khan, Mr. Weseloff was formally restored 15 
 to liberty; and it was understood that he might use his 
 liberty in whatever way he chose, even for returning 
 to Russia, if that should be his Avish. Accordinglv, he 
 was making active preparations for his journey to St. 
 Petersburg, when it occurred to Zebek-Dorchi that, not 20 
 improbably, in some of the battles which were then 
 anticipated with Traubenberg, it might happen to them 
 to lose some prisoner of rank, in which case the Russian 
 Weseloff would be a pledge in their hands for negotiat- 
 ing an exchange. Upon this plea, to his own severe 25 
 affliction, the Russian was detained until the further 
 pleasure of the Khan. The Khan's name, indeed, was 
 used through the whole affair; but, as it seemed, with 
 so little concurrence on his part, that, when Weseloff in 
 a private audience humbly remonstrated upon the 30 
 injustice done him, and the cruelty of thus sporting 
 with his feelings by setting him at liberty, and, as it 
 were, tempting him into dreams of home and restored 
 happiness only for the purpose of blighting them, the 
 good-natured prince disclaimed all participatiou in the 35 
 
48 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 affair, and went so far in proving liis sincerity, as even to 
 give liim permission to effect his escape; and, as a ready 
 means of commencing it without raising suspicion, the 
 Khan mentioned to Mr. Weseloff that he had just then 
 5 received a message from the Hetman of the Bashkirs, 
 soliciting a private interview on the banks of the Tor- 
 gau at a spot pointed out : that interview was arranged 
 for the coming night; and Mr. AVeseloff might go in the 
 Khan's suite, which on either side was not to exceed 
 
 10 three persons. AVeseloff was a prudent man, acquainted 
 with the world, and he read treachery in the very outline 
 of this scheme, as stated by the Khan — treachery against 
 the Khan's person. He mused a little, and then com- 
 municated so much of his suspicions to the Khan as 
 
 15 might put him on his guard; but, upon further consid- 
 eration, he begged leave to decline the honour of accom- 
 panying the Khan. The fact was that three Kalmucks, 
 who had strong motives for returning to their country- 
 men on the west bank of the AVolga, guessing the inten- 
 
 30 tions of Weseloff, had offered to join him in his escape. 
 These men the Khan would probably find himself 
 obliged to countenance in their project; so that it became 
 a point of honour with Weseloff to conceal their inten- 
 tions, and therefore to accomplish the evasion from the 
 
 25 camp (of which the first steps only would be hazardous) 
 without risking the notice of the Khan. 
 
 35. The district in which they were now encamped 
 abounded through many hundred miles with wild horses 
 of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of the four fugi- 
 
 30 tives had caught from seven to ten of these spirited creat- 
 ures in the course of the last few days: this raised no 
 suspicion, for the rest of the Kalmucks had been mak- 
 ing the same sort of provision against the coming toils 
 of their remaining route to China. These horses were 
 
 35 secured bv halters, and hidden about dusk in the thick- 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 49 
 
 ets which lined the margin of the river. To tliese 
 thickets, about ten at night, the four fugitives repaired; 
 they took a circuitous path, which drew them as little 
 as possible within danger of challenge from any of the 
 outposts or of the patrols which had been established on 5 
 the quarters where the Bashkirs lay; and in three-quar- 
 ters of an honr they reached the rendezvous. The moon 
 had now risen, the horses were unfastened, and they 
 Avere in the act of mounting, when suddenly the deejD 
 silence of the woods was disturbed by a violent uproar 10 
 and the clashing of arms. Weseloff fancied that he 
 heard the voice of the Khan shouting for assistance. 
 He remembered the communication made by that prince 
 in the morning; and requesting his companions to sup- 
 port him, he rode off in the direction of the sound. A 15 
 very short distance brought him to an open glade within 
 the wood, where he beheld four men contending with a 
 party of at least nine or ten. Two of the four were dis- 
 mounted at the very instant of Weseloff's arrival; one of 
 these he recognised almost certainly as the Khan, who 20 
 was fighting hand to hand, but at great disadvantage, 
 with two of the adverse horsemen. Seeing that no time 
 was to be lost, Weseloff fired and brought down one of 
 the two. His companions discharged their carbines at 
 the same moment, and then all rushed simultaneously 25 
 into the little open area. The thundering sound of about 
 thirty horses all rushing at once into a narrow space 
 gave the impression that a whole troop of cavalry was 
 coming down upon the assailants, who accordingly 
 Avheeled about and fled with one impulse. Weseloff 30 
 advanced to the dismounted cavalier, who, as he ex- 
 pected, proved be the Khan. The man whom Weseloff 
 had shot was lying dead ; and both were shocked, though 
 Weseloff at least was not surprised, on stooping down 
 and scrutinising his features, to recognise a well-known 35 
 
 A 
 
50 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 confidential servant of Zebek-Dorclii. Nothing was said 
 by either party; the Khan rode off escorted by Weseloff 
 and his companions, and for some time a dead silence pre- 
 vailed. The situation of Weseloff was delicate and criti- 
 5 cal; to leave the Khan at this point was probably to 
 cancel their recent services; for he might be again 
 crossed on his path, and again attacked by the very party 
 from whom he had just been delivered. Yet, on the 
 other hand, to return to the camp was to endanger the 
 
 10 chances of accomplishing the escape. The Khan also 
 was apparently revolving all this in his mind, for at 
 length he broke silence, and said, ^' I comprehend your 
 situation; and under other circumstances I might feel it 
 my duty to detain your companions. But it would ill 
 
 15 become me to do so after the important service you have 
 just rendered me. Let us turn a little to the left. 
 There, where you see the watch-fire, is an outpost. 
 Attend me so far. I am then safe. You may turn and 
 pursue your enterprise; for the circumstances under 
 
 20 which you will appear, as my escort, are sufficient to 
 shield you from all suspicion for the present. I regret 
 having no better means at my disposal for testifying my 
 gratitude. But tell me before we part — Was it accident 
 only which led you to my rescue ? Or had you acquired 
 
 25 any knowledge of the plot by which I was decoyed into 
 this snare ? ' ' Weseloff answered very candidly that 
 mere accident had brought him to the spot at which he 
 heard the uproar, but that having heard it, and con- 
 necting it with the Khan's communication of the morn- 
 
 30 ing, he had then designedly gone after the sound in a 
 way wliich he certainly should not have done at so criti- 
 cal a moment, unless in the expectation of finding the 
 Khan assaulted by assassins. A few minutes after they 
 reached the outpost at wliich it became safe to leave the 
 
 35 Tartar chieftain; and immediately the four fugitives 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 51 
 
 commenced a fliglit which is perhaps without a parallel 
 ill the aiiuals of travelling. Each of them led six or 
 seven horses besides the one he rode; and, by shifting 
 from one to the other (like the ancient Desultors of the 
 Roman circus), so as never to burden the same horse for 5 
 more than half an hour at a time, they continued to 
 advance at the rate of 200 miles in the 24 hours for three 
 days consecutively. After that time, conceiving them- 
 selves beyond pursuit, they proceeded less rapidly; 
 though still with a velocity which staggered the belief 10 
 of Weseloff's friends in after years. He was, however, 
 a man of high principle, and always adhered firmly to 
 the details of his printed report. One of the circum- 
 stances there stated is that they continued to pursue 
 the route by which the Kalmucks had fled, never for 15 
 an instant finding any difficulty in tracing it by the 
 skeletons and other memorials of their calamities. In 
 particular, he mentions vast heaps of money as part of 
 tlie valuable property which it had been found necessary 
 to sacrifice. These heaps were found lying still untouched 20 
 in the deserts. From these AVeseloff and his com- 
 panions took as much as they could conveniently carry; 
 and this it was, with the j^nce of their beautiful horses, 
 Avhicli they afterwards sold at one of the Russian military 
 settlements for about £15 apiece, which eventually ena- 25 
 bled tliem to pursue their journey in Russia. This jour- 
 ney, as regarded Weselolf in particular, was closed by 
 a tragical catastrophe. He was at that time young, and 
 the only child of a doating mother. Her affliction under 
 the violent abduction of her son had been excessive, and 30 
 probably had undermined her constitution. Still she 
 had supported it. Weselolf, giving way to the natural 
 impulses of his filial affection, had imprudently posted 
 through Russia to his mother's house without warning of 
 his approach. He rushed precipitately into her presence; 35 
 
52 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 and she, who had stood tlie shocks of sorrow, was found 
 unequal to the shock of joy too sudden and too acute. 
 She died upon the spot. 
 
 5 36. I now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck 
 flight. These it would be useless to pursue circumstan- 
 tially through the Avhole two thousand miles of suffering 
 which remained; for the character of that suffering was 
 even more monotonous than on the former half of the 
 
 10 flight, and also more severe. Its main elements were 
 excessive heat, with the accompaniments of famine and 
 thirst, but aggravated at every step by the murderous 
 attacks of their cruel enemies the Bashkirs and the 
 Kirghises. 
 
 15 37. These people, "more fell than anguish, hunger, 
 or the sea," stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a 
 swarm of enraged hornets. And very often, whilst they 
 were attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties 
 and flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the 
 
 20 people of the country which they were traversing; and 
 with good reason, since the law of self-preservation had 
 now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions, 
 and to forage wherever they passed. In tliis respect 
 their condition was a constant oscillation of wretched- 
 
 35 ness; for sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they 
 took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to 
 strike into a land rich in the comforts of life; but in 
 such a land they were sure to find a crowded population, 
 of which every arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, 
 
 30 with all the advantages of local knowledge, and with 
 constant pre-occupation of all the defensible positions, 
 mountain passes, or bridges. Sometimes, again, wearied 
 out with this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of 
 perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land 
 
 85 with few or no inhabitants. But in such a land they 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 53 
 
 were sure to meet absolute starvation. Then, again, 
 whether with or without this plague of starvation, 
 whether with or without this ^^lague of hostility in front, 
 whatever might be the " fierce varieties " of their misery 
 in tliis respect, no rest ever came to their unhappy rear; 5 
 post eqiiitem sedet atra cura ; it was a torment like the 
 undying worm of conscience. And, upon the whole, it 
 presented a spectacle altogether unprecedented in the his- 
 tory of mankind. Private and personal malignity is not 
 unfrequently immortal ; but rare indeed is it to find the 10 
 same pertinacity of malice in a nation. And what em- 
 bittered the interest was that the malice was reciprocal. 
 Thus far the parties met upon equal terms; but that 
 equality only sharpened the sense of their dire inequal- 
 ity as to other circumstances. The Bashkirs were ready 15 
 to fight " from morn to dewy eve." The Kalmucks, 
 on the contrary, were always obliged to run. Was it 
 from their enemies as creatures whom they feared ? 
 Xo; but towards their friends — towards that final haven 
 of China — as what was hourly implored by the prayers 20 
 of their wives, and the tears of their children. But, 
 though they fled unwillingl}^ too often they fled in vain 
 — being unwillingly recalled. There lay the torment. 
 Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them; every day the 
 same unprofitable battle was renewed ; as a matter of 25 
 course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their advanced 
 guard to fight them; every day the battle raged for 
 hours, and uniformly with the same result. For no 
 sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily 
 pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been retarded 30 
 by some hours, than they retired into the boundless 
 deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless. But, if the 
 Kalmucks resolved to press forward, regardless of their 
 enemies, in that case their attacks became so fierce and 
 overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely to 35 
 
54 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 be brought into question ; nor could any effectual rem- 
 edy be applied to the case, even for each separate day, 
 except by a most embarrassing halt, and by counter- 
 marches that, to men in their circumstances, were 
 5 almost worse than death. It will not be surprising that 
 the irritation of such a systematic persecution, super- 
 added to a previous and hereditary hatred, and accom- 
 panied by the stinging consciousness of utter impotence 
 as regarded all effectual vengeance, should gradually 
 
 10 have inflamed the Kalmuck animosity into the wildest 
 expression of downright madness and frenzy. Indeed, 
 long before the frontiers of China were approached, the 
 hostility of both sides had assumed the appearance much 
 more of a warfare amongst wild beasts than amongst 
 
 15 creatures acknowledging the restraints of reason or the 
 claims of a common nature. The spectacle became too 
 atrocious; it was that of a host of lunatics pursued by 
 a host of fiends. 
 
 20 
 
 38. On a fine morning in the early autumn of the 
 year 1771, Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pur- 
 suing his amusements in a wild frontier district lying 
 on the outside of the Great Wall. For many hundred 
 
 25 square leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, 
 but rich in woods of ancient growth, and overrun with 
 game of every description. In a central spot of this 
 solitary region the Emperor had built a gorgeous hunt- 
 ing lodge, to which he resorted annually for recreation 
 
 30 and relief from the cares of government. Led onwards 
 in pursuit of game, he had rambled to a distance of 200 
 miles or more from this lodge, followed at a little 
 distance by a sufficient military escort, and every night 
 pitching his tent in a different situation, until at 
 
 35 length he had arrived on the very margin of the vast 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 55 
 
 central deserts of Asia.^ Here he was standing by acci- 
 dent at an opening of his pavilion, enjoying the morn- 
 ing sunshine, wlien suddenly to the Avestwards there 
 arose a vast cloudy vapour, which by degrees expanded, 
 mounted, and seemed to be slowly diffusing itself over 5 
 the whole face of the heavens. By and by this vast 
 sheet of mist began to thicken towards the horizon, and 
 to roll forward in billowy volumes. The Emperor's suite 
 assembled from all quarters. The silver trumpets were 
 sounded in the rear, and from all the glades aud forest 10 
 avenues began to trot forward towards the pavilion the 
 yagers — half-cavalry, half-huntsmen — who composed the 
 imperial escort. Conjecture was on the stretch to divine 
 the cause of this phenomenon, and the interest continu- 
 ally increased, in proportion as simple curiosity gradu- 15 
 ally deepened into the anxiety of uncertain danger. At 
 first it had been imagined that some vast troops of deer, 
 or other wild animals of the chase, had been disturbed 
 in their forest haunts by the Emperor's movements, or 
 possibly by wild beasts prowling for prey, and might be 20 
 fetching a compass by way of re-entering the forest 
 grounds at some remoter points secure from molestation. 
 But this conjecture was dissipated by the slow increase 
 of the cloud, and the steadiness of its motion. In the 
 course of two hours the vast phenomenon had advanced 25 
 to a point which was judged to be within five miles of 
 the spectators, though all calculations of distance were 
 difficult, and often fallacious, when applied to the end- 
 less expanses of the Tartar deserts. Through the next 
 
 ' All the circumstances are learned from a long state paper upon 
 the subject of this Kalmuck migration, drawn up in the Chinese 
 language by the Emperor himself. Parts of this paper have been 
 translated by the Jesuit missionaries. The Emperor states the 
 whole motives of his conduct and the cliief incidents at great 
 length. 
 
56 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 hour, during wliicli the gentle morning breeze had a 
 little freshened, the dusty vapour had developed itself 
 far and wide into the appearance of huge aerial dra- 
 peries, hanging in mighty volumes from the sky to the 
 
 5 earth; and at particular points, Avhere the eddies of the 
 breeze acted upon the pendulous skirts of these aerial 
 curtains, rents were perceived, sometimes taking the 
 form of regular arches, portals, and windows, through 
 which began dimly to gleam the heads of camels " in- 
 
 10 dorsed " ^ with human beings — and at intervals the 
 moving of men and horses in tumultuous array — and 
 then through other openings or vistas at far distant 
 points the flashing of j^olished arms. But sometimes, as 
 the wind slackened or died away, all those openings, of 
 
 15 whatever form, in the cloudy pall would slowly close, 
 and for a time the whole pageant was shut up from view; 
 although the growing din, the clamours, shrieks, and 
 groans, ascending from infuriated myriads, reported, in 
 a language not to be misunderstood, what was going on 
 
 30 behind the cloudy screen. 
 
 39. It was in fact the Kalmuck host, now in the last 
 extremities of their exhaustion, and very fast approach- 
 ing to that final stage of privation and killing misery 
 beyond which few or none could have lived, but also, 
 
 25 happily for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal 
 sense) that final stage of their long pilgrimage at Avliich 
 they would meet hospitality on a scale of royal magnifi- 
 cence, and full protection from their enemies. These 
 enemies, however, as yet, were still hanging on their rear 
 
 30 as fiercely as ever, though this day was destined to be 
 the last of their hideous persecution. The Khan had, 
 in fact, sent forward couriers with all the requisite state- 
 ments and petitions, addressed to the Emperor of China. 
 
 ' Camels " indorsed " ; — ''And elephants indorsed with towers." — 
 Milton in '• Paradise Regained." 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 07 
 
 These had been duly received, and preparations made in 
 consequence to welcome the Kalmucks with the most 
 paternal benevolence. But, as these couriers had been 
 despatched from the Torgau at the moment of arrival 
 thither, and before the advance of Traubenberg had o 
 made it necessary for the Khan to order a hasty renewal 
 of the flight, the Em23eror had not looked for their 
 arrival on his frontiers until full three months after the 
 present time. The Khan had indeed expressly notified 
 his intention to pass the summer heats on the banl:s of 10 
 the Torgau, and to recommence his retreat about the 
 beginning of September. The subsequent change of 
 plan, being unknown to Kien Long, left him for some 
 time in doubt as to the true interpretation to be put 
 upon this mighty apparition in the desert; but at length 15 
 the savage clamours of hostile fury, and the clangour of 
 weapons, unveiled to the Emperor the true nature of 
 those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely 
 precipitated the Kalmuck measures. 
 
 40. Apprehending the real state of affairs, the Empe- 20 
 ror instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly 
 care for these erring children (as he esteemed them), now 
 returning to their ancient obedience, must be — to deliver 
 them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult 
 than might have been supposed. Not many miles in the 25 
 rear was a body of well-appointed cavalry, with a strong 
 detachment of artillery, who always attended tlie Em- 
 peror's motions. These were hastily summoned. Mean- 
 time it occurred to the train of courtiers that some 
 danger might arise to the Emperor's person from the 30 
 proximity of a lawless enemy; and accordingly he was 
 induced to retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, 
 however, to those who watched the vapoury shroud in 
 the desert, that its motion was not such as would argue 
 the direction of the march to be exactly upon the pavil- 35 
 
58 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 ion, but rather in a diagonal line, making an angle of 
 full 45 degrees with that line in which the imperial 
 cortege had been standing, and therefore with a distance 
 continually increasing. Those who knew the country 
 5 judged that the Kalmucks were making for a large 
 fresh-water lake about seven or eight miles distant. 
 They were right; and to that point the imperial cavahy 
 was ordered up; and it was precisely in that spot,' and 
 about three hours after, and at noonday on the 8th cf 
 
 10 September, that the great Exodus of the Kalmuck Tar- 
 tars was brought to a final close, and witli a scene of 
 such memorable and hellish fury, as formed an appropri- 
 ate winding up to an expedition in all its parts and 
 details so awfully disastrous. The Emperor was not per- 
 
 15 sonally present, or at least he saw whatever he did see 
 from too great a distance to discriminate its individual 
 features; but he records in his written memorial the 
 report made to him of this scene by some of his own 
 officers. 
 
 20 41. The lake of Tengis, near the dreadful desert of 
 
 ' Kobi, lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height, 
 ranging generally from two to three thousand feet high. 
 About eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the Chinese cav- 
 alry reached the summit of a road which led through a 
 
 35 cradle-like dip in the mountains right down upon the 
 margin of the lake. From this pass, elevated about two 
 thousand feet above the level of the water, they contin- 
 ued to descend, by a very winding and difficult road, for 
 an hour and a half; and during the whole of this descent 
 
 30 they were compelled to be inactive spectators of the fiend- 
 ish spectacle below. The Kalmucks, reduced by this time 
 from about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred 
 and sixty thousand, and after enduring for so long a time 
 the miseries I have previously described — outrageous 
 
 35 heat, famine, and the destroying scimitar of the Kir- 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 59 
 
 ghises and the Bashkirs — had for the last ten days been 
 traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen of 
 vegetation, and no drop of water could be found. Cam- 
 els and men were already so overladen, that it was a mere 
 impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufR- 5 
 ciency for the passage of this frightful wilderness. On 
 the eighth day, the wretched daily allowance, which had 
 been continually diminishing, failed entirely; and thus, 
 for two days of insupportable fatigue, the horrors of 
 thirst had been carried to the fiercest extremity. Upon 10 
 this last morning, at the sight of the hills and the forest 
 scenery, which announced to those who acted as guides 
 the neighbourhood of the lake of Tengis, all the people 
 rushed along with maddening eagerness to the antici- 
 pated solace. The day grew hotter and hotter, the peo- 15 
 pie more and more exhausted, and gradually, in the 
 general rush forwards to the lake, all discipline and com- 
 mand were lost — all attempts to preserve a rearguard were 
 neglected — the wild Bashkirs rode in amongst the encum- 
 bered people, and slaughtered them by wholesale, and 20 
 almost without resistance. Screams and tumultuous 
 shouts proclaimed the progress of the massacre; but 
 none heeded — none halted; all alike, pauper or noble, 
 continued to rush on with maniacal haste to the waters — 
 all with faces blackened by the heat preying upon the 25 
 liver, and with tongue drooping from the mouth. The 
 cruel Bashkir was affected by the same misery, and man- 
 ifested the same symptoms of his misery as the wretched 
 Kalmuck; the murderer was oftentimes in the same 
 frantic misery as his murdered victim — many indeed (an 30 
 ordinary effect of thirst) in both nations had become 
 lunatic, and in this state, whilst mere multitude and 
 condensation of bodies alone opposed any check to the 
 destroying scimitar and the trampling hoof, the lake 
 was reached; and into that the whole vast body of ene- 35 
 
60 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 mies rushed, and together continued to rush, forgetful 
 of all things at that moment but of one almighty 
 instinct. This absorption of the thoughts in one mad- 
 dening appetite lasted for a single half -hour; but in the 
 5 next arose the final scene of parting vengeance. Far 
 and wide the waters of the solitary lake were instantly 
 dyed red with blood and gore : here rede a party of savage 
 Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the swathes fall 
 before the mower's scythe; there stood unarmed Kal- 
 
 10 mucks in a death-grapple with their detested foes, both 
 up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking 
 together below the surface, from weakness or from 
 struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did the 
 Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the sake 
 
 15 of giving impetus to the assault ? Thither were the 
 camels driven in fiercely by those who rode them, gener- 
 ally women or boys; and even these quiet creatures were 
 forced into a share of this carnival of murder, by tramp- 
 ling down as many as they could strike prostrate with 
 
 20 the lash of their fore-legs. Every moment the water grew 
 more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads 
 came up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist 
 their frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of 
 water visibly contaminated Avith the blood of their 
 
 25 slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was 
 shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above 
 the water, there, for scores of acres, w^ere to be seen all 
 forms of ghastly fear, of agonising struggle, of spasm, 
 of death, and the fear of death — revenge, and the lunacy 
 
 30 of revenge — until the neutral spectators, of whom there 
 were not a few, now descending the eastern side of the 
 lake, at length averted their eyes in horror. This hor- 
 ror, which seemed incapable of further addition, was, 
 however, increased by an unexpected incident. The 
 
 35 Bashkirs, beginning to perceive here and there the 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 61 
 
 approach of the Chinese cavalry, felt it prudent — where- 
 soever they were sufficiently at leisure from the passions 
 of the murderous scene — to gather into bodies. This 
 was noticed by the governor of a small Chinese fort, 
 built upon an eminence above the lake; and immediately 5 
 he threw in a broadside, which spread havoc amongst the 
 Bashkir tribe. As often as the Bashkirs collected into 
 '^globes " and " turms,^^ as their only means of meeting 
 the long lines of descending Chinese cavalry — so often 
 did the Chinese governor of the fort pour in his exter- 10 
 minating broadside; until at length the lake, at its lower 
 end, became one vast seething caldron of human blood- 
 shed and carnage. The Chinese cavalry had reached 
 the foot of the hills: the Bashkirs, attentive to their 
 movements, had formed; skirmishes had been fought: 15 
 and, with a quick sense that the contest was hencefor- 
 wards rapidly becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs and 
 Kirghises began to retire. The pursuit was not as vig- 
 orous as the Kalmuck hatred would have desired. But, 
 at the same time, the very gloomiest hatred could not 20 
 but find, in their own dreadful experience of the Asiatic 
 deserts, and in the certainty that these wretched Bashkirs 
 had to repeat that same experience a second time, for 
 thousands of miles, as the price exacted by a retributory 
 Providence for their vindictive cruelty — not the very 25 
 gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, but 
 found in all this a retaliatory chastisement more com- 
 plete and absolute than any which their swords and 
 lances could have obtained, or human vengeance have 
 devised, f 30 
 
 42. Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in 
 the Desert; for any subsequent marches which awaited 
 them were neither long nor painful. Every possible 
 alleviation and refreshment for their exhausted bodies 35 
 
62 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 had been already provided by Kien Long with the most 
 princely munificence; and lands of great fertility were 
 immediately assigned to them in ample extent along 
 the river Ily, not very far from the point at which they 
 5 had first emerged from the wilderness of Kobi. Bat 
 the beneficent attention of the Chinese Emperor may be 
 best stated in his own words as translated into French 
 by one of the Jesuit missionaries: — " La nation des Tor- 
 gotes (savoir le-s Kalmuques) arriva k Ily, toute delabree, 
 
 10 n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vetir. Je I'avais 
 prevn; et j 'avals ordonne de faire en tout genre les pro- 
 visions necessaires pour ponvoir les secourir prompte- 
 ment: c'est ce qui a ete execute. On a fait la division 
 des terres; et on a assigne a chaque famille une portion 
 
 15 sufhsante pour ponvoir servir a son entretien, soit en la 
 cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a donne 
 a chaque particulier des etoffes pour I'habiller, des grains 
 pour se nourrir i:)endant I'espace d'une annee, des usten- 
 siles pour le menage, et d'autres choses necessaires: et 
 
 20 outre cela plusienrs onces d 'argent, pour se pourvoir de 
 ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a designe des lieux par- 
 ticuliers, fertiles en paturages; et on leur a donne des 
 boeufs, montons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent dans la suite 
 travailler par euxmemes a leur entretien et a leur bien 
 
 25 etre." 
 
 43. These are the words of the Emperor himself speak- 
 ing in his own person of his own parental cares; but 
 another Chinese, treating tlie same subject, records 
 the munificence of this prince in terms which proclaim 
 
 30 still more forcibly the disinterested generosity which 
 prompted, and the delicate considerateness which con- 
 ducted, this extensive bounty. He has been speaking of 
 the Kalmucks, and he goes on thus : — " Lorsqu'ils arrive- 
 rent sur nos frontieres (au nombre de plusieurs centaines 
 
 35 de mille, quoique la fatigue extreme, la faim, la soif, et 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 63 
 
 toiites les autres incommoclites inseparables d'une tres 
 longue et tres peniblo route en eussent fait perir presque 
 autant), ils etaient reduits ^ la derniere misere; ils man- 
 quaient de tout. II" [viz., PEmpereur, Kien Long] 
 " leur fit preparer des logemens conformes a leur maniere 5 
 de vivre; il leur fit distribuer des alimens et des habits; 
 il leur fit donner des boeufs, des moutons, et des usten- 
 siles, pour les mettre en etat de former des troupeaux et 
 de cultiver la terre, et tout cela a ses propres frais, qui 
 se sont montes a des sommes immenses, sans compter 10 
 I'argent qu'il a donne a chaque chef-de-famille, pour 
 pourvoir a la subsistance de sa femme et de ses enfans. " 
 44. Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the 
 Kalmucks were replaced in territorial possessions, and 
 in comfort equal perhaps, or even superior, to that which 15 
 they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior political 
 advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition 
 was no longer the same; if not in degree, their social 
 prosperity had altered in quality; for, iustead of being 
 a purely pastoral and vagrant people, they were now in 20 
 circumstances which obliged them to become essentially 
 dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in social 
 rank, that, by the natural course of their habits and 
 the necessities of life, they were effectually reclaimed 
 from roving and from the savage customs connected 25 
 with a half nomadic life. They gained also in politi- 
 cal privileges, chiefly through the immunity from mili- 
 tary service which their new relations enabled them to 
 obtain. These were circumstances of advantage and 
 gain. But one great disadvantage there was, amply to 30 
 overbalance all other possible gain; the chances were 
 lost or were removed to an incalculable distance for 
 their conversion to Christianity, without which, in these 
 times, there is no absolute advance possible on the path 
 of true civilisation. 35 
 
64 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 45. One word remains to be said npon the iier^onal 
 interests concerned in this great drama. The catas- 
 trophe in this respect was remarkable and complete. 
 Oubacha, with all his goodness and incapacity of sus- 
 
 5 pecting, had, since the mysterious affair on the banks of 
 the Torgan, felt his mind alienated from his cousin; he 
 revolted from the man that would have murdered him; 
 and he had displayed his caution so visibly as to provoke a 
 reaction in the bearing of Zebek-Dorchi, and a displeas- 
 
 10 ure which all his dissimulation could not hide. This 
 had produced a feud, which, by keeping them aloof, had 
 probably saved the life of Oubacha; for the friendship 
 of Zebek-Dorchi was more fatal than his open enmity. 
 After the settlement on the Ily this fead continued to 
 
 15 advance, until it came under the notice of the Emperor, 
 on occasion of a visit which all the Tartar chieftains 
 made to his Majesty at his hunting lodge in 1772. The 
 Emperor informed himself accurately of all the particu- 
 lars connected witli the transaction — of all the rights 
 
 20 and claims put forward — and of the way in which they 
 would severally affect the interests of the Kalmuck 
 people. The consequence was tliat he adopted the cause 
 of Oubacha, and repressed the pretensions of Zebek- 
 Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this dis- 
 
 25 countenance to his ambitious projects, that, in conjunc- 
 tion with other chiefs, he had the presumption even to 
 weave nets of treason against the Emperor himself. Plots 
 were laid, were detected, were baffled; counter-plots were 
 constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of 
 
 30 the opportunities thus offered. Finally, Zebek-Dorchi 
 was invited to the imperial lodge, together with all his 
 accomplices; and, under the skilful management of the 
 Chinese nobles in the Emperor's establishment, the mur- 
 derous artifices of these Tartar chieftains Avere made to 
 
 35 recoil upon themselves; and the whole of them perished 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 65 
 
 by assassination at a great imperial banquet. For the 
 Chinese morality is exactly of that kind which approves 
 ill everything the lex talionis : — 
 
 "Lex nee justior ulla est (as they think) 
 Quam necis artifices arte perire sua." 5 
 
 46. So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and origin- 
 ator of the great Tartar Exodus. Oubacha, meantime, 
 and his people, were gradually recovering from the 
 effects of their misery, and repairing their losses. Peace 
 and prosperity, under the gentle rule of a fatherly lord 10 
 paramount, re-dawned upon the tribes: their household 
 lares, after so harsh a translation to distant climes, 
 found again a happy re-instatement in what had in fact 
 been their primitive abodes: they found themselves 
 settled in quiet sylvan scenes, rich in all the luxuries of 15 
 life, and endowed with the perfect loveliness of Arca- 
 dian beauty. Bat from the hills of this favoured land, 
 and even from the level grounds as they approached its 
 western border, they still look out upon that fearful wil- 
 derness which once beheld a nation in agony — the utter 20 
 extirpation of nearly half a million from amongst its 
 numbers, and, for the remainder, a storm of misery so 
 fierce that in the end (as happened also at Athens during 
 the Peloponnesian War from a different form of mis- 
 ery) very many lost their memory; all records of their 25 
 past life were wiped out as with a sponge — utterly erased 
 and cancelled: and many others lost their reason; some 
 in a gentle form of pensive melancholy, some in a more 
 restless form of feverish delirium and nervous agitation, 
 and others in the fixed forms of tempestuous mania, 30 
 raving frenzy, or moping idiocy. Two great commem- 
 orative monuments arose in after years to mark the 
 depth and permanence of the awe — the sacred and rev- 
 erential grief with which all persons looked back upon 
 
66 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 the dread calamities attached to the year of the tiger — 
 all who had either personally shared in those calamities, 
 and had themselves drunk from that cup of sorrow, 
 or who had effectually been made witnesses to their 
 5 results, and associated with their relief: two great monu- 
 ments; one embodied in the religious solemnity, enjoined 
 by the Dalai Lama, called in the Tartar language a 
 Romcmang — that is, a national commemoration, with 
 music the most rich and solemn, of all the souls who 
 
 10 departed to the rest of Paradise from the afflictions of 
 the Desert (this took place about six years after the 
 arrival in China); secondly, another, more durable and 
 more commensurate to the scale of the calamity and to 
 the grandeur of this national Exodus, in the mighty 
 
 15 columns of granite and brass erected by the Emperor 
 Kien Long near the banks of the Ily. These columns 
 stand upon the very margin of the steppes ; and they 
 bear a short but emphatic inscription ^ to the following 
 effect: — 
 
 20 By the Will of God, 
 
 Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts, 
 
 Wliich from this Point begin and stretch away 
 
 Pathless, treeless, waterless. 
 
 For thousands of miles — and along the margins of many mighty 
 
 25 Nations, 
 
 * This inseription has been slightly altered in one or two phrases, 
 and particularly in adapting to the Christian era the Emperor's 
 expressions for the year of the original Exodus from China and 
 the retrogressive Exodus from Russia. With respect to the des- 
 ignation adopted for the Russian Emperor, either it is built upon 
 some confusion between him and the Byzantine Caesars, as though 
 the former, being of the same religion with the latter (and occupy- 
 ing in part the same longitudes, though in different latitudes), 
 liiight be considered as his modern successor; or else it refers 
 simply to the Greek form of Christianity professed by the Russian 
 Emperor and Church. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 67 
 
 ■Rested from their hibours and from great afflictions, 
 
 Under the sliadow of the Chinese Wall, 
 
 And by the favour of Kien Long, God's Lieutenant upon 
 
 Earth, The ancient Children of the Wilderness— the Torgote 
 
 Tartars — 5 
 
 Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar, 
 Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial 
 
 Empire in the year 1616, 
 But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow, 
 
 Into the fold of their forgiving Sheplierd. 10 
 
 Hallow^ed be the spot for ever, 
 
 and 
 
 Hallowed be the day— September 8, 1771 ] 
 
 Amen. 
 
NOTES 
 
 [Remark. — The following notes are (1) explanatory, where infor- 
 mation is not easily to be had ; (2) directive, where information lies 
 ready to hand in ordinary books of reference, and where the student 
 may be led into criticism of his own. Such notes as obviate refer- 
 ence on the part of the student, or discourage his criticism by com- 
 pletely forestalling it, are deprecated by the editor as a hindrance 
 in education. 
 
 By " ordinary books of reference '" are meant the following : 
 
 (A) A good dictionary. Every school may be presumed to have at 
 least a Webster, a Worcester, or a Stormonth. Many schools pro- 
 vide also one of the larger dictionaries, the Century, the Standard, 
 or the Imperial. Therefore many words are inserted in the notes 
 with a mere query, the object of the editor being to induce some 
 appreciation of the nicety of De Quincey's diction by the only 
 adequate means — personal investigation. Consideration of etymol- 
 ogy is suggested only where it appeals to the student's knowledge of 
 common classical roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Some teachers may 
 find it worth while to push this farther. The study of the diction 
 will receive additional profit from the use of a good book of syno- 
 nyms, for instance Smith's Sxjnonyms Discriminated. 
 
 (B) A good manual of universal history. The following one-vol- 
 ume manuals are in common use: 
 
 (a) Fisher, George P. : Outlines of Universal History (New York 
 and Chicago, The American Book Co.). This is a continuous sum- 
 mary narrative, with dates, maps, charts, etc. 
 
 (b) Ploetz, Carl : Epitome of Ancient, Jlediceval, and Modern His- 
 tory, translated, with extensive additions, by William H. Tilling- 
 hast (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). This is a classified date- 
 book, with brief, clear summaries. 
 
 (c) Andrews, E. Benjamin : Brief Institutes of General History 
 (Boston, Silver, Burdette & Co.). This is narrative, by periods, each 
 period prefaced by a brief bibliography. 
 
 {d) Labberton, Robert H. : New Historical Atlas and General 
 History (New York, Townsend MacCoun). The chief value of this 
 
NOTES 69 
 
 book is in its maps. The summaries of periods are briefer than in 
 the other books. There are brief bibliographies of each period. 
 
 {a) and {h), Fisher and Ploetz, are referred to by page in the fol- 
 lowing notes. Such a manual may be supplemented, or its place 
 may often be taken ; either by one of the briefer cyclopaedias — John- 
 son's, Chambers's, Appleton's, or the International; or by the ordi- 
 nary manuals of Greek, Roman, and English history respectively. 
 References are also made, sparingly, to the classic histories of Gib- 
 bon, Grote, Josephus, etc., to stimulate such students as have access 
 to a good library. 
 
 (C) A good atlas. Some of the places mentioned in the narrative 
 are obscure, but most will be found even in the larger school geog- 
 raphies. All doubtful points receive comment in the notes. A 
 rough clue to the route of the Kalmucks, which was, of course, wide, 
 and far from straight, may be gained by drawing a line from Astra- 
 khan at the mouth of the Volga to the northern end of the Caspian 
 Sea, thence to the northern end of the Aral Sea, and finally to the 
 borders of China at Lake Balkash. The stages of the flight are 
 marked, as De Quincey says, by "the central rivers of Asia" — the 
 Ural (or Juik), the Emba (or Jemba), and the Irgitch.] 
 
 ^ 1. The first sentence expresses the subject both of this paragraph 
 and of the whole piece. 
 
 [Words to examine: romantic (3 11), Jar^ar/c (compare harharous) 
 (3 14), leemiiig (3 19).] 
 
 3 5. Tartar, more properly Tatar. See p. xxvi., and consult a 
 cyclopaedia. The term is no longer very specific. As ordinarily 
 used, it refers to the Mongols. Doubtless the proverb about catching 
 a Tartar, i. e., getting a captive too strong to manage, is one of the 
 many echoes of the terror inspired by the great Mongol invasions. 
 See page xxv., and the note on 30 11. 
 
 3 5. Steppes. The Russian steppes correspond roughly to the 
 North American prairies and the South American pampas, in that 
 they are treeless and often grassy ; but in degree of vegetation they 
 are more like the Scotch heaths. 
 
 3 6. Terminus a quo. Is anything gained by the Latin phrases ? 
 Find exact English equivalents for both, and compare 61 8. 
 
 3 8. Christian, Pagan. Compare 11 13 and the note thereon. 
 
 3 23. Miltonic images. Does this mean simply Milton's images, 
 or is there a kind of image that may be called Miltonic and, if so, 
 what kind ? 
 
70 NOTES 
 
 4 1. The solitary hand. See Paradise Lost, book vi., lines 139, 
 834; and compare book x., 431. 
 
 ^ 2. The revolt may challenge comparison with other great na- 
 tional catastrophes as to its dramatic capabilities. 
 
 [Words to examine : catastrophes (4 6 ; etymology ? equivalent to 
 calamities 9 Compare 32 34, 64 2), collation (4 10), sanctions 
 (4 14), anabasis (4 24, etymology?), katahasis (4 30), oracle (4 31).] 
 
 4 18. " Veiiice Preserved,'' by Thomas Otway, appeared in 1682. 
 
 4 19. The " Fiesco " of Schiller was written in 1782. The scene 
 is laid at Venice in the sixteenth century. 
 
 4 24-27. These references may be explained with the aid of the 
 common histories of Greece and of Rome. Their place and bearing 
 will be better understood by reference to Fisher or to Ploetz, as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 4 24. Camhyses, Fisher, p. 67; Ploetz, p. 27. 
 
 4 25. Cyrus, Fisher, p. 109; Ploetz, p. 29. 
 
 4 27. Crassus, Fisher, p. 103; Ploetz, pp. 30, 140. 
 
 4 27. Julia7i, Fisher, p. 194; Ploetz, pp. 160, 188. De Quincey 
 evidently refers to Julian's expedition against the Persians, re- 
 counted in chapter xxiv. of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 4 30. Napoleon. Consult a cyclopaedia, a history of modern Eu- 
 rope, or Fisher, p. 530; Ploetz, p. 474. 
 
 4 33. Great Scriptural Exodus. Cite the chapters in which this 
 is recorded. 
 
 II 3. The story has even great scenical possibilities. 
 [Words to examine : invests {b 4, etymology?), scenical {o 8), tragi- 
 cal (5 23, terrible?), authentic (5 28).] 
 
 5 14. Wolga, pronounced and usually written in English Volga 
 (De Quincey follows Bergmann's German spelling) ; the largest river 
 of Russia. Consult a map. The Kalmucks were near the southern 
 course of the Volga, not far from its mouths. 
 
 H 4. The situation as to the two main persons involved is as 
 follows. 
 
 [Words to examine: quality (6 2), humanised (6 8), exasperated 
 (6 12, etymology?), surveillance (6 16), dilemma (Q2'S), kindness, affa- 
 bility (7 20), pretensions (7 25). Compare (10 24), dissimulation 
 ■ — hypocrisy — perfidy (8 5).] 
 
 5 34, Kalmucks. See page xxv. Assumed the sceptre. Does this 
 expression seem a trifle too grand ? Have you noticed any parallels 
 in this piece ? 
 
NOTES 71 
 
 6 2. Klian is a Tartar word for sovereign prince, as in Genghis 
 Khan, Kubla Khan. In earlier English it often appears as Cham. 
 "The great Cham of Tartary " is a common expression. 
 
 G 13. Nationality — nnparalleled. De Quincey probably refers to 
 the strong racial peculiarities of the Mongols (see p. xxvi.), per- 
 haps also to their great military achievements. 
 
 6 17. Lord j^aramount (compare 65 10), a feudal term. In the 
 feudal system all the land of a country theoretically belonged to the 
 king or emperor, who was lord paramount ; i.e., lord over all other 
 lords. De Quincey very likely caught the word from Hooker, who 
 says of the Pope, in A Discourse of Justification : "Let him no 
 longer count himselfe lord j^n^'aniount over the princes of the 
 world." (Quoted in Skeat's Etymological Dictionary.) 
 
 6 17. Czar, or Tsar, i.e., emperor. By some authorities the 
 word is derived ultimately, like the German Kaiser, from the Latin 
 Caesar, the cognomen of the great Caius Julius. The feminine is 
 Czarina, empress, used at 12 24 and elsewhere throughout the piece. 
 
 18. Natural unamiableness does not seem warranted. 
 
 1[ 5. The first step in the plot of Zebek Dorchi was to have the 
 government of the Kalmucks so reorganized as to give him control. 
 
 [Words to examine : sagacious (8 12) ; hoodwinlced (8 22, etymol- 
 ogy ? original application ?) ; soliciting (8 31) ; covertly (8 35, ety- 
 mology ?) ; balance of power (9 6, explain this common figure) ; sub- 
 ordinate — co-ordinate (9 10, etymology ?) ; passion (10 6)]. 
 
 8 5. 3fachiavelian. Consult the Century Dictionary, or a cyclo- 
 paedia under the heading 3Iach iavelli. 
 
 8 15. Elizabeth Petrowna. See 18 23. 
 
 8 28. Tcherhask, one of the most important towns in the country 
 of the Don Cossacks, is on the River Don, near its mouth, and so not 
 far from the Sea of Azov. 
 
 8 29. Sixty-five tents ; i.e., sixty-five families. Among the Mon- 
 gol nomads this is a common method of counting. 
 
 9 1. Point of that ivedge. The proverb is usually heard, "the 
 thin end of the wedge," or "the entering wedge." What is the 
 allusion ? 
 
 9 5. Re-organized. See Appendix C, p. 91. 
 
 9 24. 300 roubles. The rouble, or ruble, is a Russian coin worth, 
 at standard value, seventy-seven cents. The word is cognate with 
 rupee, the standard coin (two shillings) of British India. 
 
 ^ G. Having accomplished this re-organization, he dared to con- 
 cert the revolt of the whole Kalmuck people from Russia. 
 
72 NOTES 
 
 [Words to examine: exchequer (10 15); consanguinity (10 25, ety- 
 mology ?) ; colossal (11 6); potentate (11 11); autocrat (12 4, etymo- 
 logy ?); translatio7i (12 8).] 
 
 119. Behemoth. See t/oZ/ xl. 15. Whether the animal meant is 
 some species of the elephant or of the. hippopotamus is not certain. 
 Bergmann's figure (vol. i., p. 154) is of a giant and a dwarf. Why 
 is De Quincey's more effective? 
 
 11 11. Three hundred languages. It is easy to think of Russia as 
 only a European power. Examine on the map the extent of the Rus- 
 sian territory, observe that it is quite as much Asiatic as Euro- 
 pean, and the basis of De Quincey's statement will appear. No 
 other nation in all history has combined so many races or in such 
 numbers. 
 
 11 13. " Lion ramp " is quoted from Milton's Samson Agonistes, 
 line 139. 
 
 11 13. "Baptized and infidel.^'' The allusion is to Para(i/se iyos^, 
 book i., line 582; but Milton says "baptized or infidel." Examine 
 the other quotations in this piece as to their accuracy. Does the 
 result seem to indicate anything more than that De Quincey habitu- 
 ally quoted from memory without verification ? 
 
 Infidel, from the time of the Crusades came to be applied especially 
 to the Mohammedans ; and the antithesis baptized and infidel re- 
 minds one forcibly how religious differences emphasized the hetero- 
 geneity of the immense Russian empire. 
 
 11 15. " Barbaric East " is probably an inaccurate recollection of 
 Paradise Lost, book ii., lines 3 and 4. 
 
 1121. The unity of a well-laid tragic fable ; i.e., the unity of a 
 well-planned tragic plot. For a definition of literary unity in gen- 
 eral see page xxxiii. The allusion here is to the so-called three 
 dramatic unities: the unity of action, according to which a drama 
 should unfold one main action, or plot, to which all other lines of 
 action should be subordinate; the unity of time, according to which 
 the action should be accomplished in one day; and the unity of place, 
 according to which the scene should not be changed. These are also 
 called the Aristotelian unities; but Aristotle (in his Poe^tcsHnsists 
 only on the first. The other two, though occasionally kept with 
 striking effect in all ages of the drama, have had continued prevalence 
 only on the Greek stage, and the French stage of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. Compare 4 16. 
 
 12 26. Kien Long, "Emperor of China from 1735 to 1796, was 
 the fourth Chinese Emperor of the Mantchoo-Tartar dynasty, and a 
 
NOTES '^'3 
 
 man of the highest reputation for ability and accomplishment." 
 Masson (see Fisher, p. 449 ; Ploetz, p. 444). His portrait appears as 
 the frontispiece to the report of the Earl of Macartney's embassy/ a 
 book that De Quincey seems to have read with some attention. The 
 Emperor was a patron of letters, and himself a poet. 
 
 12 27. Respect for the head of their religion. Tliis consideration 
 is mentioned by Father Amiot (see Appendix B, p. 89). China con- 
 tained at this time a large proportion of Lamaists, who enjoyed the 
 more favour as the reigning dynasty was Tartar. 
 
 12 28. China. Western nations incline to think contemptuously of 
 China, and it is now declining, perhaps falling. But it still contains 
 an amazing proportion of the population and wealth of the world, 
 and the farther back one goes in history, the more important appears 
 the Celestial Empire. Even to-day nothing is more striking than the 
 perpetuation of its traditions from the remotest antiquity, and the 
 impenetrable pride of the nation that still thinks itself the greatest 
 in the world. De Quincey's interest in China is one instance of the 
 breadth of his sympathies. In 1857 he published a pamphlet on the 
 relations of the empire to England. 
 
 12 30. The great Chinese Wall (consult a cyclopaedia), said to have 
 been finished in the third century, has become a proverb of exclu- 
 siveness. The account of the embassy of the Earl of Macartney 
 shows plans, sections, and elevations of this wall (plates 23 and 24), 
 and a detailed account of its appearance and construction (vol. ii., 
 pp. 178-199.) See Ploetz, p. 32. 
 
 *f 7. The accomplices and the time were duly arranged. 
 
 [Words to examine: substantial (13 25) ; pontiff {1^ 29) ; facility, 
 profound (13 34., put the phrase into simpler words) ; of course 
 (14 19); hostages (14 30); cogent (14 31, etymology ?); ^«if (15 23).] 
 
 13 17. Great Lama. A lama is a Mongol priest. The reverence 
 in which the great Lamas are held among the Kalmucks is due to 
 the Buddhist doctrine of re-incarnation, according to which these 
 higher priests are living Buddhas, successive appearances of the god 
 in the flesh. 
 
 14 9. Only, properly placed ? 
 
 14 10. The Dalai-Lama might be called the Lamaist Pope. 
 Theoretically co-ordinate with the Bandchan (or Bantschin) Lama, 
 he is practically superior, has temporal as well as spiritual control, 
 and, in short, occupies much the same position as the great Popes 
 of the middle ages. The great temporal power of the Dalai-Lama 
 1 See Appendix A, Staunton. 
 
74 NOTES 
 
 dates from 1643, the year of the revolution overthrowing the party 
 of the " red lamas " and exalting that of the " yellow lamas." ^ 
 
 14 11. Tibet, or Thibet (consult a map). The seat of the Dalai- 
 Lama is at Lassa (Lhassa). Father Hue thus describes the palace : 
 
 "The palace of the Tale Lama well deserves the celebrity it 
 enjoys. Toveards the northern part of the town, at a small dis- 
 tance from it, there rises a rocky mountain of no great elevation, 
 and conical in form ; bearing the name of Buddha-La, that is, the 
 Divine Mountain, and on this grand site the adorers of the Tale 
 Buddha have reared a palace to their living and incarnate divinity. 
 This palace consists of a cluster of temples, varying in size and 
 beauty ; the central temple has an elevation of four stories ; the 
 dome is entirely covered with plates of gold, and is surrounded by a 
 peristyle of which the columns are likewise gilded. Here the Tale 
 Lama has fixed his residence, and from the height of his sanctuary 
 can contemplate, on days of high solemnities, his countless worship- 
 pers, thronging the plain and prostrating themselves at the base of 
 the Sacred Mountain. The secondary palaces grouped around 
 accommodate a crowd of Lamas whose continued occupation is to 
 serve and wait on the living Buddha. Two fine avenues, bordered 
 with magnificent trees, lead from Lha-Ssa to this temple, and there 
 may be seen a multitude of pilgrims unrolling between their fingers 
 the long Buddhist rosaries, and the Lamas of the Court splendidly 
 dressed, and mounted on horses richly caparisoned. There is con- 
 tinual motion in the vicinity of the Buddha-La, but the multitude 
 is generally silent and serious." — (vol. ii., p. 148.) 
 
 Lassa is now closed to foreigners. 
 
 •JT 8. To preclude suspicion, Oubacha was persuaded to contribute 
 even more than his usual contingent for the war with Turkey. 
 
 [Words to examine : vassalage (15 30); coiitingent (15 31); pre- 
 sentiment — misgiving (16 2)]. 
 
 15 28. War raged. "The war was begun in 1768, when Mus- 
 tapha III. was Sultan of Turkey ; and it was continued till 1774." 
 — Masson. See Ploetz, p. 412. 
 
 15 29. The Sultan. The title applies to any Mohammedan sov- 
 ereign, but especially, as here, to the Emperor of Turkey. In earlier 
 English the word appears as Soldan or Sowdan. 
 
 10 2. But that, an error for simple but. Compare 36 26. 
 
 *f[ 9. With this array Oubacha gained a memorable victory. 
 
 * Howorth, vol. i., pp. 515-517. The names of the parties refer, of course, to their 
 costumes. 
 
NOTES 75 
 
 16 34. Victory. See Appendix C, p. 93. 
 
 ^ 10. But unfortunately the victory remained unhonoured by the 
 Empress. 
 
 [Words to examine : marshal (17 8); accommodation (17 2{i); pre- 
 occupied (17 32); voucJiers (19 1)\ presumption (19 9)]. 
 
 17 9. Paladin, "a term originally derived from tlie counts Pala- 
 tine, or of the palace, who were the highest dignitaries in the 
 Byzantine court, and thence used generally for a lord or chieftain, 
 and by the Italian romantic poets for a knight-errant." — Internctr- 
 tioncd Cyclopcedia. Consult one of the larger dictionaries. 
 
 17 24. Ukase, "an edict or order, legislative or administrative, 
 emanating from the Russian government." — Century Dictionary. 
 
 18 3. Ugly, stupid, and filthy harbaricms. " If these nomads were 
 despised as barbarians by their cultivated neighbours, they had too 
 great an opinion of their own descent and religion to feel affronted." 
 — Bergmann, vol, i., p. 147. 
 
 18 7. Barbarous religion. See p. xxviii. 
 
 18 8. Kalmuck priesthood. See notes on 13 17 and 14 10. 
 
 18 15. Bashkirs. Consult a cyclopaedia. The Bashkirs are partly 
 Mongol — i.e., of the same race as the Kalmucks, partly Finnish — 
 i.e., of the ancient race of the northern provinces of Russia. They 
 are Mohammedans, and inferior in intellect. 
 
 18 22. Elizabeth Petrowna (i7il-17G2); Catherine II. (1762-1796). 
 See Ploetz, p. 411, and, for Catherine, a cyclopa}dia. 
 
 1[ 11. Even had the victory been honoured, Zebek-Dorchi had taken 
 secure measures to prevent any weakening on the part of Oubacha. 
 
 [Words to examine: ghostly (20 9); effectually (20 17); derived 
 (20 29); collateral (20 29, etymology "i)-, facility (21 4).] 
 
 19 18. Weseloff. See l^'si 35. 
 
 19 29. Dark and mysterious rites, etc. See Appendix C, p. 92. 
 
 Tl 12, The plan of revolt was finally divulged to the Kalmucks 
 through the feint of an expedition against the Kirghises. 
 
 [Words to examine: rhetoric (22 23); circumscribe (22 34); en 
 masse (23 14).] 
 
 21 31. 0?ie vast co)iflagration. Compare 27 29 and Appendix C, 
 p. 92. 
 
 21 33. Huts. Rather tents (compare 8 29), They are made of 
 felt and are called yurts. 
 
 22 15. Kirghises, Kirghiz or Kirghis. Consult a cyclopcTdia. 
 These people are partly Mongol— resemliling the Kalmucks strongly 
 in looks— partly Tartar, speaking a Turkish dialect. They are, 
 
76 NOTES 
 
 perhaps, the least civilized of the nomad tribes of the steppes, and 
 have hardly even now been cured of their predatory habits. For 
 centuries they have divided themselves into the Great Horde, the 
 Middle Horde, and the Little Horde, and they have given their name 
 to the steppes as far as China. 
 
 22 17. Immemorial custom. This is perhaps based on a remark 
 of Bergmann (ii., 191): " On a summons to war every tent is 
 bound to furnish one man." See Appendix C on this whole para- 
 graph. 
 
 23 1. Sarepta. The point of the reference to this particular town 
 is that it was a colony of industrious Germans, having been founded 
 in 1764 oi- 17G5 by the Moravian Brethren. It is situated on the 
 Sarpa, near where that stream empties into the Volga. The nearest 
 large town is Tsaritsin, fifteen miles to the north. 
 
 The reference is not in Bergmann. It makes specific, and there- 
 fore more striking, an allusion of Bergmann's (i., 182) to " German 
 immigrants." 
 
 ^ 13. The representations of Zebek-Dorchi to the Kalmuck chiefs 
 were too plausible to be withstood. 
 
 [Words to examine : audience (23 35 and 24 13); seduction (24 5); 
 conscious (24 10).] 
 
 24 7. Teniha, an error for Jemba (or Emba), a river rising on the 
 west side of the Muchajar (Mougaldchares, 39 14) Mountains (about 
 48° N., 58° E.), and flowing S.W. into the Caspian Sea (at about 
 47° N., 53" E.) 
 
 •f[ 14. The result was immediate and universal preparation for 
 revolt. 
 
 ^ 15. The Imperial Commissioner Kichinskoi played into the 
 hands of the Kalmucks by his stupid and arrogant vanity. 
 
 [Words to examine : arrogant (25 1, etymology ?) ; infatuation 
 (25 23).] 
 
 24 25. Kichinskoi. In all the earlier historians, except Berg- 
 mann, the tyranny of Kichinskoi is alleged as the moving cause of 
 the revolt. 
 
 U 16. The warning despatches of the Governor of Astrakhan to 
 the court soon proved too true. 
 
 [Words to examine : crisis (25 35), bigotry (26 8).] 
 
 26 1. Governor of Astrachan. Astrachan (Astrakhan) is a large 
 town on the Volga, about thirty miles from its mouth. Its com- 
 merce is mainly in the products of the immense sturgeon fisheries of 
 the Caspian. 
 
NOTES 77 
 
 IT 17. The revolt be^an with the destruction of the Kalmuck vil- 
 lages. (See Appendix C.) 
 
 27 3. 5th of January. Compare Appendix B, p. 89. De Quin- 
 cey follows Bergmann. 
 
 27 7. Troops and squadrons. Examine the military terms 
 throughout this paragraph, 
 
 If 18. The failure of the Western Kalmucks to join saved the 
 neighbouring Russians from a terrible vengeance. 
 
 [Words to examine : valedictory (28 6) ; aggravate (28 25) ; prac- 
 tised (29 11).] 
 
 28 11. And such treatment, etc. What does this mean? 
 ^ 19. (Subject in the first sentence.) 
 
 Tl 20. The horror of this great migration is hardly paralleled in 
 history. * 
 
 30 10. Sudden inroads. "Since the centuries of the tribal 
 migrations, none of those overwhelming hordes had turned back to 
 its old fatherland until the Kalmucks made an exception." — Berg- 
 mann, i., 141. This remark of Bergmann's puts the Kalmuck revolt 
 in a wrong light, but may have suggested the train of reflection in 
 this paragraph. 
 
 30 11. Huns. See Fisher, pp. 196, 204, 209; Ploetz, pp. 170, 
 173; and a cyclopaedia under the headings Huns and Attila. 
 
 30 11. Avars: Fisher, pp. 221, 223; Ploetz, pp. 175, 185. Mongol 
 Tartars : Fisher, pp. 283, 351 ; Ploetz, p. 240 ; cyclopaedia, under 
 the headings Mongols, Tartars, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane; and 
 pp. XXV., xxvi. of the introduction to this book. By some authori- 
 ties the Huns are classed as Mongols. It seems more probable, how- 
 ever, that the Huns and Avars were both Turanian peoples, the 
 ancient Scythians. Gibbon (chapter xxvi. and note) makes the com- 
 parison with the Huns, and his note may have led, not only to this 
 comparison, but to the whole piece. 
 
 30 17. French retreat. See 4 30, and the note thereon. 
 
 30 22. Vicds of ivrafh. The allusion is to the Book of Revela- 
 tion, especially chapters xv. and xvi, De Quincey uses the same 
 figure in The English JIail Coach, "like the opening of apocalyptic 
 vials." 
 
 31 7. Utterly unequal. See note on 65 21. 
 
 31 19. Pestilence — Athens. Fisher, p. 103. The famous descrip- 
 tion of this is in chapters xlvii. to liv. of the second book of Thucy- 
 
 1 From this point on, the paragraph summaries and the noting of words for exami- 
 nation are left, except for occasional references, to the teacher and the student. 
 
78 NOTES 
 
 dides. A full and interesting account is given in Grote's History of 
 Greece, chapter xlix. 
 
 81 21. London— Charles II. This is the Great Plague (1665). 
 See Fisher, p. 459, and Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year in this 
 series. 
 
 31 28. Siege of Jerusalem. Fisher, p. 180 ; Ploetz, p. 152. The 
 famous account of this is in books v. and vi. of The Jewish War of 
 Joseph us. 
 
 ■JT 21 gives the clue to De Quincey's conception and treatment. 
 Compare pp. xxxi., xxxii. 
 
 32 6. The River Jaik is now called the Ural. 
 
 32 85. Climax, etymology ? 
 
 33 16. Acharnement 9 What is gained by the French word ? 
 mH 23-27. See Appendix C. 
 
 33 34. Cossacks (Kazaks, Kasaks). Consult a cyclopaedia. Their 
 race is disputed, but seems to be mainly Russian. They were an 
 independent, democratic people, but for centuries have served as 
 Russian cavalry, especially on the frontiers. Mazeppa was a Cossack 
 chief. Note in Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, " Cossack 
 and Russian reeled at the sabre-stroke." 
 
 34 5. Fisheries upon the Caspian. Many thousands are still en- 
 gaged in these fisheries. The line formed by the Caspian Sea and 
 the Ural Mountains is regarded as the boundary between Europe and 
 Asia. See a cyclopaedia under the heading Caspian, 
 
 34 8. Koulagina. It is difficult, and not important, to locate 
 this certainly. It was one of a line of stockade-forts along the Ural. 
 Andree's Atlas (plate 71) marks, about fifty miles from the mouth of 
 the river, a town which appears, in the Russian form, as Kulas- 
 chinskaja. 
 
 34 8. Invested, simimofied 9 
 
 34 10. Feio light pieces of artillery. See Appendix C, p. 93. 
 
 84 29. Ouloss (ulus). Bergmann (i., 194, note) describes it as a 
 large tribal company, under the command of a khan, a prince, or 
 even a simple noble (saissang). 
 
 34 30. Feka-Zechorr, apparently an error for Bergmann's Jeka- 
 ^echor;'. Cf. Temba for Jemba (24 7). 
 
 35 2. Evasion ? 
 
 3,0 8. Torgai. See note on 40 15. 
 
 36 30. Unexampled triumph is difficult to understand. It is, per- 
 haps, mere exaggeration of phrase. 
 
 37 5. " Trashed.''' Does it seem worth while to use a word that 
 
NOTES 79 
 
 requires a foot note ? Cf. 5G 10. The passage from Bondvca is in 
 act i., scene 1, line 49 : — 
 
 '■'■ Nennius. And what did you then, Carataeh ? 
 Caratach. 1 fled too ; 
 
 But not so fast, — your jewel had been lost then, 
 Young Hengo there ; he trasli'd me, Xennius : 
 For, when your fears out-run him, then slept I, 
 And in the head of all the Roman fury 
 Took him, and with my tough belt to my back 
 I buckled him ; behind him my sure shield ; 
 And then I followed." 
 Dyce, in a note on this passage, says the noun trash is a hunting 
 term for a clog tied round the neck of a too-forward dog. 
 
 37 24. Drawing the tent-ropes, drawing the tent-pegs ? AVeseloff, 
 or at any rate Bergmann. has not recorded this. In fact, the infer- 
 ence from Bergmann is that WeselofI did not "record" at all, but 
 recounted his story by word of moutli. 
 
 38 30. Seventy thousand. For the numbers involved in the revolt, 
 see the note on 65 21. 
 
 38 33. In reversion ? 
 
 39 1. Large masses, j^oiver-fid division. Compare Appendix C, 
 p. 93. 
 
 39 13, Ouchim. This defile is not easily located. It is not in the 
 gazetteei-s, nor on such maps as were accessible to the editor. 
 
 39 14, The hills of 3Iougaldchares (Mugodschar or Muchajar 
 Mountains) are a lower continuation of the Ural range, and extend 
 from the latter sout Invest toward the Aral Sea. 
 
 40 4. Polish dragoons. The adjective refers not to the nationality, 
 but to the equipment of the cavalry. Thus there was at one time 
 in the French army a corps called Chasseurs d'Afrique, and in both 
 the French army and that of the iSTorthern troops in our own Civil 
 War a corps of Zouaves. Similarly, at 55 12, De Quincey speaks of 
 yagers among the Chinese troops. Perhaps both Polish dragoon and 
 yager were well-known military terms in 1837. At any rate there is 
 no gain in scrutinizing them too closely, since the context in both 
 cases seems to be pure invention. 
 
 ^ 28. 40 14. Irgitch (Irghiz, Irgheez, Irgiz). The name is common 
 to several rivers. The one meant is apparently the Irgiz-Koom, 
 which rises on the eastern side of the Muchajar Mountains (39 14) 
 and flows southeast into Lake Chalkar (Tschalkar Tengis), a large 
 bodv of water northeast of the Aral Sea. 
 
80 NOTES 
 
 40 15. Torgau and Torgai are the spellings used by De Quincey, 
 commonly the former. Turgai is the accepted form. The name 
 applies: (1) to a district; (2) to the chief town of that district (as 
 apparently at o 20); (3) to a river, the Kara-Turgai (as here and at 
 3G 8), which flows, with many windings (N.W., W., S.W.), in a 
 general westerly direction, and eventually makes connection, through 
 a chain of lakes, with the Irgiz-Koom. The town Turgai, which 
 gives the best clue, and stands about midway of the river's course, is 
 about 49° N., 63° E., and almost due north of Lake Chalkar. 
 
 40 18. Large Russian army. Cf. 39 1 and Appendix C, p. 93. 
 ^[ 29. 41 15. Concurrently, force of the etymology ? 
 
 41 19. Artillery. It does not appear that the artillery existed, 
 except in De Quincey's imagination. 
 
 41 27. Sad solitudes of the steppes. The repetition of the initial 
 consonant is called alliteration. 
 
 41 31. Aggravations, etymology ? 
 
 42 13. A circle, etc. This striking picture is one of the amplifica- 
 tions of De Quincey 's fancy. 
 
 U 30. 43 2. See note on 65 21. 
 
 43 5. Only the camels. The statement is Bergmann's ; the fine 
 image that follows, De Quincey's. Adust, etymology ? 
 
 43 15. The tears of Xerxes. For the great event referred to con- 
 sult a history of Greece, or Fisher, p. 95; Ploetz, p. 58. The strik- 
 ing incident of the tears is recorded in the seventh book of Herod- 
 otus, section 45. The fullest account in English of the expedition 
 of Xerxes is in Grote's History of Greece, chapter xxxviii. 
 
 43 21. Formally delated, like minutes of council {\^ \b), sounds 
 somewhat too formal as applied to the Kalmucks. 
 
 43 25. Scape-goat, etymology ? See the sixteenth chapter of 
 Leviticus. 
 
 44 14. Presumption ? 
 
 44 20. Return to their old allegiance — 1616. This is the date set 
 by Bergmann (i., 144) for the swearing of allegiance to Russia. The 
 revolt from China he puts "at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century." Howorth (vol. i., p. 561) supports De Quincey's date, and 
 thus removes the objection of Professor Masson (appendix to volume 
 vii. of his collective edition). 
 
 44 24. Land of Promise — house of hondage. What is the allusion 
 in these scriptural phrases ? Compare Deuteronomy viii. 14 and ix. 
 28; Exodus ^^. 2. 
 
 ^ 31. 44 34. Orsk is on the River Or (from which it takes its 
 
NOTES 81 
 
 name), near where it joins the Ural, and at the southern end of the 
 Ural chain proper. 
 
 45 1. Oriembourg (Orenburg), not the large town of that name 
 (52° N., 55° E.), which is west of Orsk, but a fort (50° N., 64° E.) on 
 the Turgai. 
 
 45 15. Sinister, etymology ? 
 
 IT 33. See Appendix C. 
 
 45 20. Upon this fact transpiring. Is this grammatically cor- 
 rect ? 
 
 IT 84. 48 5. Hetman (or ataman), a Cossack name for a leader or 
 chief. 
 
 IT 35. 51 5. Desultors. See desultor in a Latin dictionary, and 
 also in a dictionary of classical antiquities. 
 
 51 29. Boating, now commonly spelled doting. 
 
 IF 37. 52 15. ''More felt;' etc. Othello, act v., scene 2 (near the 
 end of the play). 
 
 52 28. A croivded population, possible, perhaps, but certainly not 
 probable. Consult a map. 
 
 53 4. ""Fierce varieties,'" a reminiscence perhaps of Paradise 
 Lost, book ii., line 599, perhaps of vii., 272. 
 
 53 6. Post equitem, etc., a famous line from Horace, in the first 
 ode of book iii., line 40. 
 
 53 7. The undying ivorm, an allusion to Isaiah Ixvi. 24. Com- 
 pare also S. Mark ix. 48. 
 
 53 16. ''From rnorn to dewy eve.'' This familiar quotation is 
 from Paradise Lost, book i., line 742. 
 
 II" 38. 54 28. A gorgeous hunting lodge. Since the whole scene is 
 imaginary, it is, perhaps, hardly worth while to inquire into the 
 location of this lodge. But from the reference at 64 17 it is to be 
 inferred that De Quincey meant the summer palace at Ge Ho (or Zhe 
 Hoi), which is specified by Father Amiot as the place of the audience 
 to the Kalmuck chiefs. This seems the more probable from the fact 
 that Ge Ho is described (vol. ii., p. 206), in the account of the Earl 
 of Macartney's embassy (see Appendix A, Staunton), Mith plates 
 (8 and 9) showing the location beyond the Great Wall and the route 
 thither from Pekin. But Ge Ho, instead of being a lodge in the 
 forest, is a town with a palace and a large temple. 
 
 54 35. He had arrived. The Emperor s presence is an unwar- 
 ranted and improbable assumption. 
 
 55 12. Yagers, from the German /a^/er, a huntsman ; apparently 
 a military term of De Quincey's time for troops of a certain equip- 
 
82 NOTES 
 
 ment. Compare the French chasseur in a similar sense, and the 
 note on 40 4. 
 
 56 10. '' Indorsed, ^^ Paradise liegained, book iii., line 329. 
 Etymology ? 
 
 56 16. Pageant 9 
 
 ^39. 56 32. ^atZ sew^/onmrfZ corners, probably only an expan- 
 sion of " Je I'avais prevu" (62 10). 
 
 56 32. All the requisite statements and petitions is absurdly legal. 
 Compare documents — minutes of council (19 14), and note through- 
 out the absence of all attempt to realize the character and habits of 
 the Kalmuck nomads. 
 
 57 16. Clangour of iveapons. The noun clangor is used by the 
 Latin poets, especially Vergil, of the sound of wind instruments or 
 the cry of birds. De Quincey probably had in mind the more com- 
 mon words clang and clank. Consult one of the larger dic- 
 tionaries. 
 
 •[[ 40. 58 6. A large fresh-ivater lake. See the note on 58 20. 
 Unfortunately this lake is salt ! Does De Qunicey seem to have any 
 appreciation of its size ? From this point on test the indications of 
 geography, especially of the relative positions of the actors, to see if 
 these indications are consistent with one another and with the actual 
 geography. 
 
 58 7. The imperial cavalry. The interposition of the Chinese 
 troops, both in the idea and in all the details {e.g., the fort), is 
 apparently pure invention. 
 
 ^ 41. 58 20. The lake of Tengis (Tenghiz, Tengheez, Dengis). 
 Several lakes in the Kirghiz steppes have Tengis {i.e., " sea") affixed 
 to their specific names {e.g., Tschalkar Tengis). It is clear from the 
 mention of the river Ily, and from Bergmann's specific indication 
 (see Appendix C), that the lake meant is Balkash (45°-47° N., 73°- 
 80° E.). It receives the Ily and several smaller streams, and, like 
 other lakes of the Kirghiz steppes, is salt and has no outlet. Its 
 length (N.E.-S.W.) is 345 miles, its greatest breadth 55 miles. To 
 the west and north lie deserts. After the Caspian and the Aral, it is 
 the largest body of water in the steppes. 
 
 58 20. The desert of KoU (Cobi, Gobi, or Shamo) is a wide region 
 to the west of Lake Balkash (40°-50° N., 90°-120° E.), comprising a 
 large part of what are now known as Mongolia and Chinese Turkes- 
 tan. Its length (E.-W.) is about 1,200 miles, its breadth (N.-S.) 
 500-700 miles. Its central portion is shifting sand. In the north- 
 ern and the southern parts are broad rocky tracts, with some oases. 
 
NOTES 83 
 
 111 the atlases of Aiidree and Stieler the eastern portion is marked 
 significantly " Hunger-Steppe." 
 
 58 32. 600,000-260,000. See the note on 65 21. 
 
 60 26. To allow of men raising their heads is ungrammatical. 
 
 60 31. The eastern side. See the note on 58 6. 
 
 618. '' Globes'' and " turms." These barbarisms are meant to 
 recall the Latin military terms globi and turmm. De Quincey may 
 be thinking of Milton, who uses turms in Paradise Regained, book 
 iv., line 66 ; and globe in Paradise Lost, ii., 512, though without 
 so far forcing the meaning of the latter. 
 
 ^ 42. 62 4. The River lly (Hi or Eelee) rises in the mountains of 
 Thian-Shan (about 42° N., 81° E.), and flows N.E., then N.N.W., 
 into Lake Balkash. Hs course is about 300 miles. 
 
 62 6. The betieficent attention of the Chinese Emperor seems indeed 
 surprising. Why should he have assumed these " parental cares" ? 
 In spite of the " smooth and specious language " in which, as Gibbon 
 says, his inscription is couched, there is more than one hint that he 
 could not help it. The coming of the Torgut Kalmucks was practi- 
 cally an invasion of his borders. Father Amiot remarks in a note: 
 " Here the Emperor dare not speak out. I will speak for him. He 
 feared with reason that the Torgotes would take by main force the 
 region which they regarded as their ancient fatherland. With the 
 few troops then at or near the lly, how could the unexpected irrup- 
 tion have been prevented ? Large armies would have been needed 
 to drive the Torgotes back. By receiving their homage and estab- 
 lishing them himself the Emperor avoided the whole difficulty. 
 War, if it had been resorted to, must have been most bloody, be- 
 cause it could have been brought to a close only by the total extinc- 
 tion of that branch of the Eleutes. Did he not follow the wiser 
 policy in taking glory for an event which the Chinese historians 
 would not otherwise have failed to set down among the most 
 ominous of his reign ? " ' 
 
 Farther on he adds: " It must be admitted that the Emperor con- 
 ducted himself on this occasion with all the wisdom and generosity 
 of the greatest prince of the universe. It must also be admitted that 
 no one but the Emperor of China is rich enough to spend out of his 
 own purse, without exacting anything from his subjects, sums which 
 could not but be regarded as exaggerated if they were set down here 
 in detail."'^ 
 
 62 8. " ia nation/'^ etc. For the translation see the italicized 
 
 1 Memoires, etc., p. 415. 2 iffia,^ etc., p. 417. 3 Ibid., p. 416. 
 
84 NOTES 
 
 passage in Appendix B, p. 90. The quotation, though substantially 
 correct, is inexact and, in places, doubtful in syntax. See Appendix 
 C, p. 90 and foot note. 
 
 ^y 43. 62 33. " Lorsqiiils arriverent," etc. The quotation is from 
 a letter of Father Amiot appended to his translation of the Emperor's 
 inscription. He is quoting from Yu-min-tchoung, "a grandee of 
 the Empire." In English the passage runs: "When they reached 
 our frontier, several hundred thousand in number (extreme fatigue, 
 hunger, thirst, and all the other difficulties of a very long and toil- 
 some route had killed almost as many again), they were reduced to 
 the extremity of misery. They were in need of everything. He 
 (i.e., the Emperor, Kien Long) had such places prepared for them 
 to settle in as were suited to their way of life. He had food and 
 clothing distributed. He presented them with oxen, sheep, tools, to 
 put them in the way of grazing and agriculture — and all this at his 
 own expense, which amounted to immense sums, without counting 
 the money given to the head of each family, to provide for the sus- 
 tenance of his wife and children." * The quotation, like the previous 
 one, is inexact. 
 
 TI 44. 63 20. Pastorcd, vagrant, nomadic, distinction ? etymology ? 
 
 If 45. 65 4. ""Lex nee jastior" etc., "No law is more Just than 
 that the devisers of murder should perish by their own device." 
 Ovid, Ars Amatoria, i., 655, 656. But the quotation should be: 
 ''Justus uterqae fiiit; neque enim lex cequior ulla est Quain,''' etc. 
 
 65 12. Lares. Consult a dictionary of classical antiquities. 
 
 66 16. Arcadian beauty. Arcadian simplicity is the common prov- 
 erb. Both expressions arise from the fact that Arcadia, pre- 
 eminently among the Greek states, was a pastoral country. Com- 
 pare the oft-quoted Arcades ambo in the seventh Eclogue of Vergil, 
 line 4. 
 
 65 21. Agony —half a million. " Although the sufferings of the 
 Torguts on their march must have been excessive, there is clearly 
 great exaggeration in the account of Bergmann. We must remem- 
 ber that they were nomads by origin, and that long marches were 
 familiar to them, as were also the various incidents that accompany 
 a caravan journey over such a country as the Kirghiz steppes; and 
 although they arrived poor, and denuded of almost everything, it is 
 not probable that they lost a very large portion of their numbers on 
 the way, as Bergmann would have us believe. There is considerable 
 discrepancy between the Russian numbers and those supplied by the 
 
 ' MetHOiifs. etc., p. 422. 
 
NOTES 85 
 
 Chinese. The former make out that only 40,000 families left Rus- 
 sia, while the latter claim that 50,000 families, numbering 800,000 
 mouths, arrived in China. This kind of discrepancy shows that the 
 loss of life on the journey could not have been so great as Bergmann 
 supposes."' Bergmann records (i., 219, 220) an enumeration at the 
 Jaik which reported over 70,000 tents, and he thinks the number that 
 left Russia must have been 70,000-75,000 tents. As to the number 
 that arrived in China, he does not venture on so close an estimate, 
 but thinks 50,000 families an exaggeration. 
 
 6.» 23. At Athens. See 31 20 and note. 
 
 66 14. Mighty columns of granite and brass, a fancy of De Quin- 
 cey's. The letter of Father Amiot, from which quotation was made 
 in the note on 62 33, contains the following passage, also from 
 Yu-min-tchoung : " The year of the arrival of the Torgotes happened 
 to be precisely that in which the Emperor was celebrating the 
 eightieth birthday of his mother the Empress-dowager. In memory 
 of this happy occasion His INIajesty had caused to be built upon The- 
 mountain-that-shades-from-the-heat a vast and magnificent Miao 
 (temple) to the honour of all the attributes of Fo united in one worship. 
 It had just been completed when Oubacha and the other princes of his 
 nation arrived at Gehol (Ge Ho). In memory of an event which con- 
 tributed to make this forever a red-letter year, His Majesty wished to 
 erect in the same Miao a monument which should fix the epoch of 
 the event and witness to its authenticity. He himself composed the 
 words and wrote them out with his own hand.'"^ Yu-min-tchoung 
 goes on to say that he was permitted to make a copy. This copy it 
 is which Father Amiot translated (see Appendix B). De Quincey's 
 inscription (66 20-67 14) is therefore an invention of his own — a 
 venial offence, but for the deliberate imposture of the foot-note. 
 
 66. Note. Byzantine Ccesars. See Fisher, part ii., chapter 3 
 (p. 217); Ploetz, p. 210. 
 
 » Howorth, vol. i., p. 579. * Memoires, etc., pp. 425, 426. 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 BOOKS BEARIi^^G UPON THE KALMUCKS AKD THEIR 
 REVOLT.' 
 
 Amiot, le Pere : Monument de la Transmigration ties Tourgonths 
 ties Bords de la Mer Caspienne dans I'Empire de la Chine (Memoires 
 concernant I'Histoire, etc., des Chinois, par les Missionaires de 
 Pekin, Paris, 1776, vol. i., pp. 400-427.) 
 
 Bergma7in, Benjamin B.: Nomadische Streifereien unter den 
 Kalmtiken in den Jahren 1802 und 1803; Riga, 1804 (vol. i., pp. 139- 
 246, Versuch zur Geschichte der Kalmiikenflucht von der Wolga). 
 See also Moris. 
 
 Castera, Jean Henri : Life of Catherine II., translated by the Rev. 
 W. W. Dakins, London, 1799 (v^ol. ii., p. 160). 
 
 CJwpin, Jean Marie: Russie (in a series entitled ITnivers); Paris, 
 1838 (vol. i., vol. vii. of the series, p. 338). 
 
 L'Evesque, Pierre Charles: fiistoire de Russie, nouvelle (4me) 
 edition; Hambourg et Brunswick, 1800 (vol. vii., pp. 1-177; viii., p. 
 276). 
 
 De Hell, M. et Mme. Xavier Hommaire : Les Steppes de la Mer 
 Caspienne, etc. ; translated as " Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian 
 Sea," etc., London, 1847 (pp. 221-263). 
 
 Hoivorfh, Henry P., F. S. A.: History of the Mongols from the 
 9th to the 19th Century ; London, 1876 (part i., the Mongols Proper 
 and the Kalmucks ; pp. 534-589, the Keraits and Torguts). 
 
 Hue, le Pere, Pretre Missionaire de la Congregation de Saint- 
 Lazare : Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartaric, le Thibet, et la 
 Chine, pendant les annees 1844, 1845, and 1846 ; translated by Mrs. 
 Percy Sinnett, London ; translation reprinted, New York, 1852. 
 
 Macartney, the Earl of ; see Staunton. 
 
 De Mailla, le Pere Joseph- Anne- Marie de Moyriac. Jesuite Fran- 
 cois, 3Iissionaire a Pekin : Histoire Gen^rale de la Chine, etc. ; Paris, 
 1780 (vol. xi., pp. 582-587). 
 
 * A complete bibliography from the Chinese side will be found in the Bibliotheca 
 Siiiica of Cordier (Paris, 1880-1895). 
 
APPENDIX B 87 
 
 ^lemoii'es concernant les Chinois, etc. ; see Amiot. 
 
 miner, the Rev. Thomas, 31. A., F. R. Q. S.: Russia ; its Rise 
 and Progress, Tragedies and Revolutions ; London, 1856 (pp. 355- 
 376). 
 
 Moris, 31.: Essai sur la fuite des Kalmuks des bords du Volga, 
 traduit de I'Allemand (Bergiuann); Chatillon-sur- Seine, 1825. 
 
 Pallas, Petr. Simon : Sammlungen Historischer Nachrichten uber 
 die Mongol ischeji Volkerschaften, 2 vols. ; St. Petersburg, 1776 (vol. 
 1., pp. 60-93). Less important is Pallas's Travels through the 
 Southern Provinces of the Russian Empire in 1793-94 ; translated 
 from the German, 2d ed., London, 1812. 
 
 Rambaud, Alfred : Histoire de la Russie ; Paris, 1878 ; translated 
 by Leonora B. Lang as "The History of Russia from the Earliest 
 Times to 1877 ; " London, 1879 (vol. i., p. 31 ; ii., pp. 133, 134). 
 
 Staunton, Sir George, Bart.: An Authentic Account of an Em- 
 bassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, etc., 
 taken chiefly from the papers of His Excellency the Earl of Macart- 
 ney, etc. ; London, 1798, 2 vols., maps and plates in a 3d vol. (Vol. 
 ii., p. 265, contains a very inaccurate reference to the migration 
 of the Kalmucks. The general map at the beginning of vol. i. 
 shows "Lake Tengis," with the river Hy and the settlement of the 
 " Torgote Tartars," all rather inaccurate. This map and the plates, 
 to which reference is made in the notes, were not improbably con- 
 sulted by De Quincey. He certainly knew the book.) 
 
 Tooke, William, F.R.S.: The Life of Catherine II., 4th ed., 
 London, 1800 ; vol. ii., pp. 158-168 ; also View of the Russiam Em- 
 pire during the Reign of Catherine the Second, and to the Close of 
 the 18th Century; 2d ed., London, 1800 (vol. i., pp. 432-434). 
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 SELECTIONS 1 FROM THE I^TSCRIPTIOK OF THE EMPEROR 
 KIEN" LONG, TRANSLATED INTO FRENCH BY FATHER 
 AMIOT. ^ 
 
 [The earlier narratives cited in Appendix A are all based on 
 Amiot, except Pallas, who adds little, and Bergmann, who recon- 
 
 J Taken from the English Version of de Hell's narrative, pages 327-235. 
 2 See Appendix A for the full title. 
 
88 APPENDIX B 
 
 structs the whole story, mainly from the Russian side and from oral 
 testimony.] 
 
 " in the thirty-sixth year of Kien Long, that is to say, in the year of 
 Jesus Christ, 1771, all the Tartars composing the nation of the Tor- 
 gouths ^ arrived, after encountering a thousand perils, in the plains 
 watered by the Ily, entreating the favour to be admitted among the 
 vassals of the great Chinese empire. By their own account, they have 
 abandoned for ever, and without regret, the sterile banks of the Volga 
 and the Jaik, along which the Russians had formerly allowed them to 
 settle, near where the two rivers empty themselves into the Caspian. 
 They have abandoned them, they say, to come and admire more closely 
 the brilliant lustre of the heavens, and at last to enjoy, like so many 
 others, the happiness of having henceforth for master the greatest 
 prince in the world. Notwithstanding the many battles in which 
 they have been obliged to engage, defensively or offensively, with 
 those through whose country they had to pass, and at whose expense 
 they were necessarily compelled to live; notwithstanding the depre- 
 dations committed on them by the vagrant Tartars, who repeatedly 
 attacked and plundered them on their march ; notwithstanding the 
 enormous fatigues endured by them in traversing more than 10,000 
 leagues,'^ through one of the most difficult countries; notwithstand- 
 ing hunger, thirst, misery, and an almost general scarcity of common 
 necessaries, to which they were exposed during their eight months 
 journey, their numbers still amounted to 50,000 families when they 
 arrived ; and these 50,000 families, to use the language of the coun- 
 try, counted 300,000 mouths, without sensible error. . . . 
 
 " ' AlP those who now compose the nation of the Torgouths, 
 undismayed by the dangers of a long and toilsome journey, filled 
 with the sole desire of procuring for the future a better manner of 
 life and a happier lot, have abandoned the places where tliey dwelt 
 far beyond our frontier, have traversed with unshakable courage a 
 space of more than ten thousand leagues, and have ranged them- 
 selves, of their own accord, among the number of my subjects. 
 Their submission to me is not a submission inspired by fear, but a 
 voluntary and free submission, if ever such there was. . . . 
 
 1 De Mailla {HMoire Gmerale de la Chine, vol. xi., p. 586, foot-note) quotes 
 from Abulgasi-Bayadur-Chan a classification of the Kalmucks into KallmacM-Dson- 
 gari (Soongares), KallmacM-Coschoti (Khoshotes), and Kallmacki-Torgauti (Tor- 
 gotes or Torgouths). This classification, though often modified, has never been 
 superseded. 
 
 2 " Dix mille lys." So elsewhere. 
 
 3 Here begins the translation proper. What precedes is Father Amiot's preface. 
 
APPENDIX B 89 
 
 " ' Oubacha, who is now khan of the Torgouths, is great grandson 
 of Aiouki. The Russians, never ceasing to require soldiers of him to 
 be incorporated in their troops, having at last taken his own son from 
 him as a hostage, and being besides of a different religion from him- 
 self, and making no account of that of the Lamas which the Tor- 
 gouths profess, Oubacha and his people finally determined to shake 
 oil a yoke which was daily becoming more and more insupportable. 
 
 "'After having secretly deliberated among themselves, they re- 
 solved to quit an abode where they had to suffer so much, and 
 come and dwell in the countries subject to China, where the religion 
 of Fo is professed. 
 
 " ' In the beginning of the eleventh moon of last year they began 
 their march with their women and children and all their baggage, 
 traversed the country of the Hasacks, passed along the shores of 
 Lake Palkache Nor and through the adjoining deserts, and towards 
 the close of the sixth moon of this year, after having completed more 
 than 10,000 leagues in the eight months of their wayfaring, they at 
 last arrived on the frontiers of Chara Pen, not far from the banks of 
 the Ily. I was already aware that the Torgouths were on their 
 march to submit themselves to me, the news having been brought 
 me shortly after their departure from Etchil. I then reflected that 
 Ileton, general of the troops at Ily, having already been charged with 
 other very important affairs, it was to be feared that he could not 
 regulate those of the new comers with all the requisite attention. 
 
 '" Chouhede, one of the general's councillors, was at Ouche, 
 employed in maintaining order among the Mahometans. As he 
 was at hand to attend to the Torgouths, I ordered him to repair to 
 Ily, that he might use his best efforts to establish them solidly. . . . 
 
 " 'Nevertheless, I neglected none of the precautions that seemed 
 to me necessary. I ordered Chouhede to erect forts and redoubts 
 in the most important places, and have all the passes strictly 
 guarded. I enjoined him to exert himself personally in procuring 
 necessary provisions of all kinds within the frontiers, whilst fit per- 
 sons, carefully chosen by him, should make every arrangement for 
 securing quiet without. 
 
 " ' The Torgouths arrived, and at once found lodging, food, and all 
 the conveniences they could have enjoyed each in his own dwelling. 
 Nor was this all ; the principal men among them, who were to come 
 in person and pay homage to me, were conducted with honor and 
 free of expense by the imperial post-roads to the place where I then 
 was. I saw them, spoke to them, and was pleased that they sliould 
 
90 APPENDIX C 
 
 enjoy the pleasures of the chase with me; and after the days allotted 
 to that recreation were ended, they repaired in my suite to Ge Ho. 
 There I gave them the banquet of ceremony, and made them the 
 ordinary presents with the same pomp and state as I am accustomed 
 to employ when I give solemn audience to Tchering and the chiefs of 
 the Tourbeths, of whom he is the leader. . . . 
 
 " ' The nation of the Torgouths arrived at Ily in total destitution, 
 without victuals or clothing. I had foreseen this, and given orders to 
 Chouhede and others to lay up the necessary provisions of all kinds 
 that they rnight he promptly succoured. This was do7ie. The lands 
 ivere divided, and to each family was assigned a sufficient portion 
 for its support hy tillage or cattle rearing. Each individual received 
 cloth for garments, a yearns supply of corn, household utensils, and 
 other necessaries, and besides all this, several ounces of silver to pro- 
 vide himself with whatever might have been forgotten. Specific 
 tracts, fertile in pasturage, were appointed for them, and they ivere 
 given oxen, sheep, etc., that they might afterwards labour for their 
 oivn sustenance and welfare.'" 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 RELATIONS OF DE QUINCEY's N"ARRATIVE TO BERG- 
 
 MA N"NS. 
 
 Bergmann is the only authority De Quincey can be affirmed to 
 have read. Father Amiot he quotes, but only what appears in 
 Bergmann's foot-notes.^ If De Quincey had understood that Father 
 Amiot's account does not mention a monument and an inscription, 
 but is the translation of that inscription, he would hardly have dared 
 to invent the "mighty columns of granite and brass," and the 
 rhetorical inscription with its appended note (p. 66). This informa- 
 
 1 For the full title see Appendix A. 
 
 2 Bergmann quotes Amiot in German translation, but Professor Masson (vol, 
 vii., p. 9, of his collective edition) asserts that De Quincey used a French transla- 
 tion of Bergmann, which would, of course, quote directly from Amiot. This 
 extremely indirect research may account for some trifling inaccuracies in De 
 Quincey's quotations. The French translation of Bergmann, which I have been 
 unable to procure, appears in the British Museum Catalogue (1048, c. 27), as io\- 
 ]ows •.—Bergmann, B. F. B: Voyage chez les Kalmuks, Traduit de rAllemaiid 
 par M. Moris (Essai sur la fitite des Kalmuks des bords du, Volga) ; Chatillou-sur- 
 Seine, 1825, 8°. 
 
APPENDIX C 91 
 
 tion he would have found in the very title. Moreover, he does not 
 mention Father Amiot, referring simply, as Bergmann does, to 
 "Jesuit missionaries." ^ 
 
 But even Bergmann De Quincey can be said to follow only in the 
 use of certain details not given by other historians, in a few slight 
 correspondences of phrase, and in the interpretation of the revolt 
 as a colossal scheme of Zebek Dorchi's. His variations from Berg- 
 mann are twofold : first, the essence of his treatment is an imag- 
 inative expansion and realization of the scenes of the flight, leading 
 up to a climax of horror and misery ; secondly, he indulges, per- 
 liaps unconsciously, in a cavalier handling of Bergmann's facts. 
 The following analysis proceeds by paragraphs, with references to 
 page and line, 
 
 1[ ^ 1-3 are, of course, entirely De Quincey. 
 
 ^ 4. The characterization of Oubacha and of Zebek Dorchi fol- 
 lows Bergmann (i., 146) closely. Most of the other authorities make 
 Oubacha an old man, and do not mention Zebek Dorchi. 
 
 ^ 5 follows Bergmann (i., 151) essentially, but varies widely in 
 details. Bergmann's account of the reorganization of the Sarga is 
 as follows (i., 153) : 
 
 " Prince and Sargatchi were to be thenceforth subject to the con- 
 trol of an imperial council. The prince could merely lodge com- 
 plaint in case any Sargatchi broke his oath of allegiance. Com- 
 plaint and defense would then be duly investigated and decided as 
 in the ordinary course of law. If found guilty, the Sargatchi would 
 be removed from office ; if found innocent, he would be publicly 
 acquitted. Moreover, by a salary of one hundred rubles, the Sar- 
 gatchi, it was believed, would be still further attached to the Rus- 
 sian interest. If this reorganization did not meet all expectations, 
 the Russian court thought at least to secure itself against any ambi- 
 tious designs of Oubacha by appointing Zebek Dorchi his first Sar- 
 gatchi. Instead of drawing the sting of the serpent, they gave it 
 still greater opportunity and means to distill a more effectual venom 
 for the future. 
 
 " Although Zebek Dorchi found himself deceived in his expecta- 
 tions, yet his new position gave him a sphere of influence wliich 
 opened other prospects for him in the future." 
 
 ^ 6. Welcomed as a benefactor (10 13), Bergmann, i.. 156. 
 
 For those very acts of interference (10 30), Bergmann i., 160. 
 
 ' Bergmann happens to cite always the whole series in which Father Amiot's 
 report appears, instead of the report itself. 
 
93 APPENDIX C 
 
 Wonn-hehemoth (11 9). Bergmaiin's figure (i., 154) is giant and 
 dwarf. 
 
 ^ 7. The characterizations of Erenipel and of the lama follow 
 Berginaim (i,, 156-159) ; so also the oracle (i., 1G4) and the years of 
 the tiger and the hare (i., 165). 
 
 ^1^1 8-9. Bergmann (i., 167). De Quincey omits the episode of 
 Oubacha's allowing forty-three of the hostile chiefs to escape, but 
 otherwise follows closely. 
 
 "![ 10 has no basis in Bergmann, except a few words (i., 168) sug- 
 gesting that the Empress may have been suspicious. 
 
 1i 11 is practically all De Quincey ; but 19 21- 20 10 has for basis 
 Bergmann's remark (i., 170) tliat Zebek Dorchi had the prince sworn 
 with a solemn oath. 
 
 1[^ 12-14. Bergmann (i., 181-183) says the chiefs were assembled 
 in tiie Nryn steppe on pretense of an attack of Kirghises, and that 
 Zebek Dorchi made a speech. " If this unexpected speech made its 
 impression upon the Kalmuck nobles— much greater must have 
 been the impression when, by way of confirmation, there was passed 
 around among those present a docuuient gotten up for this purpose in 
 which Zebek Dorchi was specified as the conductor of those 300 sons 
 of Saissangs " (whom the Russians, according to Zebek, were about to 
 take as hostages). Some of the reasons alleged in 1[ 12 appear in 
 Bergmann (i., 161) as used to convince Oubacha. 
 
 ^*j 15-16. The agency of Kichinskoi and Beketoff is the same as 
 in Bergmann (i., 168-170, 179). But Bergmann mentions no feud 
 between the two. He says that Beketoff had private information 
 from one of the Sargatchi, and that Kichinskoi was blind enough to 
 give the Khan a detachment of twenty Cossacks, with two field- 
 pieces, for the pretended war with the Kirghises. 
 
 1[ 17 is entirely De Quincey, and contains (27 23- 28 4) an absurd 
 misunderstanding. The Kalmucks had no occasion to burn their 
 villages. They simply discarded such of their tents and tent-fittings 
 as were not absolutely necessary, and packed the rest on their camels. 
 Especially absurd is the timbers of his own palace (27 31), of which 
 the basis is the following sentence in Bergmann (i., 192): 
 
 "The prince himself set the people an example by having his 
 largest tents (Wohnhiitten) destroyed, and the long tent-poles (Dach- 
 holzer) made into lances." 
 
 •[t 18, 19. Bergmann (i., 184-189) says that the Western Kal- 
 mucks were kept back by the open river; that this circumstance saved 
 the Russian towns and villages, except that some Armenian and 
 
APPENDIX C 93 
 
 Tartar merchants were pluiidored; and that the twenty Cossacks de- 
 tailed by Kichinskoi for the supposed war with the Kirghises were 
 maltreated and carried off. 
 
 ^^ 20-22 are entirely De Quincey. 
 
 ^ 23 shows considerable variation. As to the " fortress" Koula- 
 gina (34 1-17) Bergmann says (i., 193) : 
 
 " The Jaik Cossacks had not counted on a visit from the Kalmucks; 
 for the greater part of them were at the Caspian fisheries, their only 
 occupation since they renounced piracy. The few hundreds who had 
 been left in the forts owed their salvation quite as much to Kalmuck 
 inexperience in the art of siege and their inefficient equipment as to 
 the haste with which they had to cross the Jaik in order to escape 
 the Russian troops. Oubacha himself summoned the fort Kulagina, 
 and, on the refusal of the commandant, planted the two field-pieces 
 that he had gotten from Kichinskoi. This fort, like the others along 
 the Jaik, was only a stockade ; but the fire of the garrison cost the 
 Kalmucks several men, while they themselves plied their cannon 
 without effect." 
 
 All the rest of the paragraph, where it is not invention, is mis- 
 understanding. Compare this account, and De Quincey's note to 
 page 40, with the following (Bergmann, i., 194): 
 
 "Just beyond the Jaik the Cossacks of the neighbourhood drew 
 together under Mitraessow, and, about 2,000 strong, rode after the 
 fugitives. Among the mountains they intercepted a small horde 
 {Kleinen Haufen), which, on account of its desperate resistance, they 
 cut down almost to a man. The oulosses Jikae Zechorr and Aerkae- 
 tunn, which together numbered several thousand tents, surrendered 
 without a blow. The chieftains of the former, Assarcho and Masclii, 
 had given to the governor of Astrakhan repeated assurances of their 
 inclination to remain in Russia. Xo sooner did they see the Cossacks 
 approaching than they went over to them with their hordes." Berg- 
 mann goes on to say that these oulosses were reinstated in their 
 former abodes, but their twenty chiefs {Saissangs) were knouted for 
 killing thirty captured Russians. The only trace of De Quincey's 
 bloody battle is in the second sentence, which does not refer to these 
 oulosses at all. 
 
 ^^ 24-27 have no basis in Bergmann for the essential facts, and 
 hardly any for the details of the suffering. 
 
 1"^ 28-31 agree substantially with Bergmann's facts, but neither 
 with his order nor with his details. According to Bergmann, Trau- 
 benberg was sent from the town of Orenburg with 5,000 regulars. 
 
94 APPENDIX C 
 
 mainly Cossacks {large Russian army, etc., 40 18). Re was rein- 
 forced by strong bands of Bashkirs and Kirghises (i. , 196). The Kal- 
 muck discontent and desire for return (i., 198) broke out at the 
 Irgitch into loud demands (i., 202). They crossed the river on 
 bundles of rushes (1., 203). Traubenberg was guilty of neglect in not 
 pushing the pursuit (i., 205). Nurali Khan broke away to pursue the 
 Kalmucks (i., 217). 
 
 11^ 32, 36-42. The persecutions of the Bashkirs and Kirghises, in 
 almost daily attacks, and the final carnage at Lake Balkash grew 
 from two or three pages of Bergmann. He says (i., 217) that Nurali 
 Khan and Ablai Khan fell upon the Kalmucks in the midst of a 
 desert (the Kalmucks had already gone on from the Turgai) and tried 
 to cut them off from the next oases. Despair gave strength to the 
 Kalmucks; greed of plunder to their enemies. As victory was inclin- 
 ing to the former, Zebek Dorchi and Bambar were cut off and would 
 surely have been carried prisoners but for Ohereng. The fight lasted 
 two days, and the field was covered with corpses. The narrative 
 then goes on (i., 218): 
 
 " The Kirghises, whom the success of this battle (the first recorded 
 by Bergmann) encouraged to further attacks, ceased not to disturb 
 the fleeing Kalmucks up to the borders of China. After many days 
 of forced marching through almost waterless regions the fugitives 
 reached Lake Tengis (Balgaschnur, as the Mongols call it). Toward 
 this lake they rushed en masse, fighting for place with their own 
 cattle, and pressed in, without throwing off their clothes, as far as 
 the depth allowed, at last to slake their torturing thirst. Many fell 
 victims to their incontinence, more to the sword of the Kirghises in 
 a bloody battle. Since there was no chance for defence, only the 
 swiftest Kalmucks were able to reach the farther bank of the Ily and 
 escape. The Kirghises returned to their homes laden with booty 
 and accompanied by numerous prisoners. The Kalmucks had still 
 to cut their way through the plundering Bur^etes before they attained 
 the dearly-bought goal of their seven months' migration." 
 
 The Chinese Emperor's view of the approaching combatants, and 
 the interposition of his troops, is without foundation and highly 
 improbable, if not impossible. 
 
 •^ly 34, 35. Weseloff is one of Bergmann's most important authori- 
 ties. On his oral evidence rest many incidents peculiar to Berg- 
 mann's narrative. As if in recognition of this, Bergmann appends 
 tlie story of Weseloff 's captivity and escape (pp. 232-246). In 
 summary it is as follows : 
 
APPENDIX C 95 
 
 Throughout the earlier part of tlie flight Weseloff's hardships 
 amounted often to torture. But at the Jemba his chains were 
 removed, and Oubacha would have given him his liberty but for the 
 demur of the chiefs. Plearing that a Kalmuck had come to camp 
 with a letter from the Russian General Traubenberg, Weseloff set 
 out to find him. On the way he was hailed by another Kalmuck 
 named Lanssan, who proposed to flee with him. Lanssan's family 
 sped the two with presents of copper money and a flint-lock musket. 
 The fugitives stole six horses (De Quincey makes them catch wild 
 horses) to relieve their own, and by means of the eight reached the 
 Turgai (200 versts) the next day. Swimming their horses over, they 
 then returned for their clothes, but were so exhausted with fatigue 
 and exposure that they sank down on the eastern bank and slept 
 till next midday. On the eleventh day they reached Orsk. They 
 had been obliged to kill one of their horses for food. With the 
 money from the sale of the other seven Weseloff pushed on, stopping 
 at Orenburg, and again, with a relative, at the foot of the Ural 
 Mountains. Meantime he had sent word ahead to his mother, but 
 her Joy at the meeting was so great that she died within three 
 months. 
 
 There is no hint, it will be observed, of the saving of Oubacha's 
 life, nor any mention of skeletons; but "vast heaps of money" 
 (51 18), or rather large heaps of copper coin, are mentioned by both 
 Bergmann and Pallas. De Quincey's statement — " He was, however, 
 a man of principle, and always adhered firmly to the details of his 
 printed report " (51 12), is a typical instance of his accurate inac- 
 curacy. Bergmann, in his preface (i., 24), says : 
 
 "For almost six months I have been with him \_i.e., Weselotf] al- 
 most daily, at almost every meeting have learned something new 
 about the flight of the Kalmucks, and have made him relate much of 
 it two or three times, in order to assure myself of the truth of his 
 representations. I found his expressions so consistent that I cannot 
 doubt their truth." 
 
 But in a note to p. 141, Bergmann cites "the only printed 
 records, so far as I know," and Weseloff's is not among them. In 
 fact, Bergmann makes a point of the valuable oral evidence on which 
 his account is based, and especially of Weseloff's. 
 
 ^[^ 43-46 contain nothing from Bergmann except the hint for the 
 "assassination " (65 1) of the ambitious chiefs (i., 224). 
 
 These variations in fact may be explained by three hypotheses: 
 (1) De Quincey mistranslated; (2) he had other sources, as yet undis- 
 
96 APPENDIX C 
 
 covered; (3) he invented. Of these three, the first is insufficient and 
 improbable; the second, at least improbable; the third, toward 
 which Professor Masson inclines (collective edition, vol. vii., p. 426), 
 has some support in the fact that De Quincey often wrote without 
 means of verifying references. That this was the case here we have 
 his own statement in the preface to the fourth volume of Hogg's col- 
 lective edition, in which the piece was reprinted : 
 
 "The series of papers, published in this and the preceding volume, 
 were originally written under one set of disadvantages, and are now 
 revised under another. They were written generally under great 
 pressure as to time, in order to catch the critical periods of monthly 
 journals ; written oftentimes at a distance from the press (so as to 
 have no opportunity for correction) ; and always written at a distance 
 from libraries — so that very many statements, references, and cita- 
 tions were made on the authority of my unassisted memory. Under 
 such circumstances were most of the papers composed ; and they are 
 now reissued in a corrected form, sometimes even partially recast, * 
 under the distraction of a nervous misery which embarrasses ray 
 efforts in a mode and in a degree inexpressible by words." 
 
 The A'ariations in form are all of the general character noted at 
 p. xxxii. as typical of De Quincey's method. 
 
 * The changes iu this particular piece are merely verbal.— Ed. 
 
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 and with its execution." — Prof. C. B. Bradley, University of California; 
 Member of English Conference of the National Committee of Ten. 
 
 " Let me thank you for four more volumes of your excellent series 
 of English Classics. . . . As specimens of book-making they are 
 among the most attractive books I have ever seen for school use; and the 
 careful editing supplies just enough information to stimulate a young 
 reader. I hope that the series may soon be completed and be widely 
 used." — Prof. W. E. Mead, Wesleyan University. 
 
 "The series is admirably planned, the ' Suggestions to Teachers* 
 being a peculiarly valuable feature. I welcome all books looking toward 
 better English teaching in the secondary schools." 
 
 — Prof. Katherine Lee Bates, Wellesley College. 
 
 " They are thoroughly edited and attractively presented, and cannot 
 fail to be welcome when used for the college entrance requirements in 
 English." — Prof. Charles F. Richardson, Dartmouth College. 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Irving's • Tales of a Traveller.' 
 
 •' I feel bound to say that, if the series of English Classics is 
 carried out after the plan of this initial volume, it will contribute much 
 toward making the study of literature a pure delight." 
 
 —Prof. A. G. Newcomer, Leland Stanford Jr. University. 
 
 " I have looked through the first volume of your English Classics, 
 Irving's ' Tales of a Traveller,' and do not see how literature could be 
 made more attractive to the secondary schools." — Prof. Edward A. 
 Allen, University of Missouri ; Member of the English Conference of 
 the National Committee of Ten. 
 
 " I have received your Irving's ' Tales of a Traveller' and examined 
 it with much pleasure. The helpful suggestions to teachers, the 
 judicious notes, the careful editing, and the substantial binding make it 
 the most desirable volume for class use on the subject, that has come to 
 my -notice." — Edwin Cornell, Principal of Central Valley Union 
 School. N. Y. 
 
 George Eliot's ' Silas Marner.' 
 
 "This book is really attractive and inviting. The introduction, 
 particularly the suggestions to pupils and teachers, is a piece of real 
 helpfulness and wisdom." 
 
 — D. E. Bowman, Principal of High School, Waterville, Me. 
 
 "The edition of 'Silas Marner' recently sent out by you leaves 
 nothing undone. I find the book handsome, the notes sensible and 
 clear. I'm glad to see a book so well adapted to High School needs, 
 and I shall recommend it, without reserve, as a safe and clean book to 
 put before our pupils." 
 
 — James W. McLane, Central High School, Cleveland, O. 
 
 Scott's ' Woodstock.' 
 
 " Scott's ' Woodstock,' edited by Professor Bliss Perry, deepens the 
 impression made by the earlier numbers that this series, Longmans* 
 English Classics, is one of unusual excellence in the editing, and will 
 prove a valuable auxiliary in the reform of English teaching now 
 generally in progress. . . . We have, in addition to the unabridged 
 text of the novel, a careful editorial introduction ; the author's intro- 
 duction, preface and notes ; a reprint of ' The Just Devil of Woodstock'; 
 and such foot-notes as the student will need as he turns from page to 
 page. Besides all this apparatus, many of the chapters have appended 
 a few suggestive hints for character-study, collateral reading and dis- 
 cussions of the art of fiction. All this matter is so skillfully distributed 
 that it does not weigh upon the conscience, and is not likely to make the 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 student forget that he is, after all, reading a novel chiefly for the 
 pleasure it affords. The entire aim of this volume and its companions 
 is literary rather than historical or linguistic, and in this fact their chief 
 value is to be found." — The Dial, 
 
 "I heartily approve of the manner in which the editor's work has 
 been done. This book, if properly used by the teacher and supple- 
 mented by the work so clearly suggested in the notes, may be made of 
 great value to students, not only as literature but as affording oppor- 
 tunity for historical research and exercise in composition." 
 
 — Lillian G. Kimball, State Normal School, Oshkosh, Wis. 
 
 Defoe's 'History of the Plague in London.' 
 
 "He gives an interesting biography of Defoe, an account of his 
 works, a discussion of their ethical influence (including that of this 
 'somewhat sensational' novel), some suggestions to teachers and students, 
 and a list of references for future study. This is all valuable and sugges- 
 tive. The reader wishes that there were more of it. Indeed, the criticism 
 I was about to offer on this series is perhaps their chief excellence. 
 One wishes that the introductions were longer and more exhaustive. 
 For, contrary to custom, as expressed in Gr^tiano's query, ' Who riseth 
 from a feast with that keen appetite that he sits down ? ' the young 
 student will doubtless finish these introductions hungering for more. 
 And this, perhaps, was the editor's object in view, viz., that the intro- 
 ductory and explanatory matter should be suggestive and stimulating 
 rather than complete and exhaustive ! " — Educational Review. 
 
 " I have taken great pleasure in examining your edition of Defoe's 
 Plague in London,' The introduction and notes are beyond reproach, 
 and the binding and typography are ideal. The American school-boy 
 is to be congratulated that he at length may study his English from 
 books in so attractive a dress."— George N. McKnight, Instructor in 
 English, Cornell University. 
 
 " I am greatly obliged to you for the copy of the 'Journal of the 
 Plague.' I am particularly pleased with Professor Carpenter's intro- 
 duction and his handling of the difficult points in Defoe's life." — Ham- 
 mond Lamont, A.B., Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric 
 in Brown University. 
 
 Macaulay's ' Essay on Milton.' 
 
 " I have examined the Milton and am much pleased with it ; it fully 
 sustains the high standard of the other works of this series ; the intro- 
 duction, the suggestions to teachers, and the notes are admirable." 
 
 — William Nichols, The Nichols School, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 "I beg" to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of Macauiay's 
 ' Essay on Mihon' and Webster's ' First Bunker Hill Oration' in your 
 series of English Classics. These works for preparatory study are 
 nowhere better edited or presented in more artistic form. 1 am glad you 
 find it possible to publish so good a book for so little money." 
 
 — Prof. W. H. Crawshaw, Colgate University. 
 
 " I am especially pleased with Mr. Croswell's introduction to, and 
 notes at the bottom of the page of, his edition of Macauiay's ' Essay on 
 Milton.' I have never seen notes on a text that were more admirable 
 than these. They contain just the information proper to impart, and 
 are unusually well expressed." 
 
 — Charles C, Ramsay, Principal of Fall River High School. 
 
 Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' 
 
 "After an introduction which is well calculated to awaken interest 
 both in Coleridge himself and in poetry as a form of literature, the 
 poem is set before us with Coleridge's own glosses in the margin. Notes 
 are added at the bottom of each page. These notes are well worth 
 examination for the pedagogic skill they display. They provide, not so 
 much information about the text, though all necessary explanation does 
 appear, but suggestion and incitement to the discovery by the pupil for 
 himself of the elements in the poem which the hasty reader only feels, if 
 he does not lose them altogether. . . . Any good teacher will find 
 this edition a veritable help to the appreciation of poetry by his pupils." 
 — Principal Ray Greene Huling, English High School, Cambridge, 
 Mass. 
 
 " Mr. Bates is an interesting and charming writer of verse as well as 
 prose, and makes a helpful and appreciative teacher to follow through 
 tlie intricacies of the poem in question. In addition to extensive notes 
 and comments, the book has a well-planned, brightly written introduc- 
 tion, comprising a Coleridge biography, bibliography, and chronological 
 table, a definition of poetry in general, and a thoughtful study of the 
 origin, form, and criticisms of this particular poem, ' The Ancient 
 Mariner.' Teachers and students of English are to be congratulated on. 
 and Mr. Bates and his publishers thanked for, this acquisition to the 
 field of literary study." — Literary IFor/c/, Boston. 
 
 Milton's • L'Allegro, II Penseroso, etc' 
 
 " Professor Trent's sympathetic treatment on the literary side of 
 the subject matter, makes the introductions and notes of more than usual 
 interest and profit ; and I think that it is just such editing as this that 
 our younger students need in approaching the works of the great poets." 
 — J. Russell Hayes, Assistant Professor of English, Swarthmore 
 College, Pa. 
 
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 It has been the aim of the publishers to secure editors 
 of high reputation for scholarship, experience, and skill, 
 and to provide a series thoroughly adapted, by uniformity 
 of plan and thoroughness of execution, to present educa- 
 tional needs. The chief distinguishing features of the 
 series are the following : 
 
 I. Each volume contains full '^ Suggestions for Teach- 
 ers and Students," with bibliographies, and, in many 
 cases, lists of topics recommended for further reading or 
 study, subjects for themes and compositions, specimen 
 examination papers, etc. It is therefore hoped that the 
 series will contribute largely to the v/orking out of sound 
 methods in teaching English, 
 
 2. The works prescribed for I'eading are treated, in every 
 case, as literature, not as texts for narrow linguistic study, 
 and edited with a view to interesting the student in the 
 book in question both in itself and as representative of a 
 literary type or of a period of literature, and of leading 
 him on to read other standard works of the same age or 
 kind understandingly and appreciatively. 
 
 3. These editions are not issued anonymously, nor are 
 they hackwork, — the result of mere compilation. They 
 are the original work of scholars and men of letters who 
 are conversant with the topics of which they treat. 
 
 4. Colleges and preparatory schools are both repre- 
 sented in the list of editors (the preparatory schools more 
 prominently in the lists for 1897 and 1898), and it is in- 
 tended that the series shall exemplify the ripest methods 
 of American scholars for the teaching of English — the 
 result in some cases of years of actual experience in 
 secondary school work, and, in others, the formulation of 
 the experience acquired by professors who observe care- 
 fully the needs of students who present themselves for 
 admission to college. 
 
 5. The volumes are uniform in size and style, are well 
 printed and bound, and constitute a well-edited set of 
 standard works, fit for permanent use and possession — a 
 nucleus for a Hbrary of English literature.