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As they have neither towns nor villages, they must be hunted like wild beasts, and can be fitly compared only to griffins, which beneficent Nature has banished to uninhabited regions." As a Persian distich, quoted by Vambery, has it "They came, conquered, burned, pillaged, murdered, and went."
The subsequent career of this leader, the character and aims of Kossuth, and the insurrection they did so much to incite are powerfully described by Vambery, who writes not only as an author fully versed in his country's annals, but also as a patriot jealous of her liberties, proud of her heroic sons, and loyal to her fame.
Sidney Low, "The Most Christian Powers," Fortnightly Review, March, 1912. XI., chap. xv.; Vol. XII., chap. xiv. See A. Vambéry, Der Islam im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, chap. vi. "X," "La Situation politique de la Perse," Revue du Monde musulman, June, 1914. As already stated, the editor vouches for this anonymous writer as a distinguished Mohammedan official "un homme d'étât musulman."
Vambéry stresses the inward as well as outward evolution of the Turkish educated classes, for he says: "Not only in his outward aspect, but also in his home-life, the present-day Turk shows a strong inclination to the manners and habits of the West, in such varied matters as furniture, table-manners, sex-relations, and so forth. This is of the very greatest significance.
The richness of the available material made this especially difficult, comprising as it did the record of recent campaigns in Afghanistan, as well as the opinions of those who, like Vambery, Veniukoff, Rawlinson, Napier, and Cust, are authorities upon Asiatic topics. Seldom when two gladiators, armed and stripped, enter the arena does a doubt exist as to their purpose.
The traveller Vambery, who visited Herat in 1863, says: "The Afghan's national costume consists of a long shirt, drawers, and dirty linen clothes; or, if he is a soldier, he affects a British red coat. He throws it over his shirt, while he gets on his head the picturesque Indo-Afghan turban. Others again and these are the beau-monde are wont to assume a half-Persian costume.
A. Vambéry, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists," Nineteenth Century and After, April, 1912. The Orient's chief handicap has been its vicious political tradition.
The writings of Vambéry and his colleagues spread far and wide through Turan and were there devoured by receptive minds already stirring to the obscure promptings of a new time. The normality of the Turanian movement is shown by its simultaneous appearance at such widely sundered points as Turkish Constantinople and the Tartar centres along the Russian Volga.
Vambéry well summarizes this matter when he writes: "It is not Islam and its doctrines which have devastated the western portion of Asia and brought about the present sad state of things; but it is the tyranny of the Moslem princes, who have wilfully perverted the doctrines of the Prophet, and sought and found maxims in the Koran as a basis for their despotic rule.
Strasburg was to be the scene of his first attempt, and at Baden-Baden he had an interview with Colonel Vambéry, who commanded the Fourth Regiment of Artillery, part of the Strasburg garrison. Louis Blanc, the republican and socialist historian, writing in 1843, speaks thus of Louis Napoleon:
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