The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 24, 1864.

"I wish you et safe arrival at Ispahan."
" Whyi inquired the new diplomate, " talk of
Ispahan. Surely my journey of three thousand
miles is enough, without sending me four hundred
and fifty further to Ispahan. Know that Tehran
is the capital of Persia since 1786—is it not so in
the copy-books ? " Other acquaintances evince
similar ignorance, and the intending traveller's
perplexities are thus amusingly described :
As I walked away I met another acquaintance, who, on
hearing I was going to Persia, asked if the Parsis were not
worshippers of the sun, A. third friend consigned me to
Baghdad, and a fourth envied my coming propinquity to
Cashmeer, and supposed I should otten run up in sum-
mer.

Those remarks of my friends, intelligent parties enough,
struck me as a very good index of the indifference and igno-
rance about Persia which are so observable in England,
and which, it is said, were the cause of an incurable indi-
gestion to the last Persian ambassador, who went back and
died from it—though, to be sure, he was old enough to hove
died any way. The same thing returned to my recollection
as I found myself in the train on my wad to Tehran. I
felt positive disquietude in going to a place that no one
seemed to know or care about.

"Really, it is curio,-
... thought I; "of ancient empires,
not one was so
eienlid as the Persian I Greece, Rome,
and Palestiexcepttd, no ancient country fills so many
Pages :n history as Fersia--yet who knows and who cares
P.:aght about Persia es it really is ? A region thrice as large
as la belle France, wth ten millions of the wittiest, hand-
somest, most agreeable people in the world for its inhabi-
tants, ought to be nore in the market than this. Such
were my rumination; as the Dover express hurried me along
on my way to take u? my duties as Secretary of Legation
at Tehran. " Secreary of Legation, that's very well, but
at Tehran, ah I that spoils it. Hand me the scales of
judgment that I may weigh the question—Persia or Eng-
land ? I ',Jegin to th.nk I have been wrong in changing.
Let Ile see, pleasure of visiting new countries, leisure for
:earning new languafes, possible promotion, wider sphere
of usefulness. Drop that into one scale; now for the
other. Comfort anc cleanliness, general immunity from
filth, fleas, flies, ant, fivers, civilised society, England,
home and no mosquito curtains wanted I Hi I stop the
train—l will return. Well, it is too late now to talk of re-
turning ; let as see, asthe Persians say, what the veil of
the future will disclose.'

From this extract it may be seen that any one
anxious to gain an easy and agreeable acquaintance
with Persia and the Persians, may do well to accept
Mr Eastwick as their cicerone.

The Invasion of Denmark, 1864. By A. Galenga,
Special Corresponient of The Times at the Head-
quarters of the Danish Army. Two Vols. Richard
Bentley.

A melancholy interest is attached to these two
volumes, which were written during the crisis of
events in Denmark by one well qualified for the
task. The rise and progress of the war, and every
event and incident of importance are fully de-
tailed, and the wh)le picture is complete, until
that dreadful climax of hopes and fears
doubts, difficulties, and disppointments the
Conference. So dilatory (as we all know) was that
Conference, that the author could not wait for its
termination ! " I have hesitated,' he writes
in his concluding chapter, dated Jane 15, " for
several days about making my few remain
ing pages ready for the pressf because I hoped the
London Conference would come to the end of its labours ere
the time stipulated for the accomplishment of my own task.
The historian has, hovever, in this instance, outstripped
diplomatist, and I must close my narrative of the invasion
of Denmark, without knowing whether the tale has an end
as well as a beginning, or whether my last chapter only
drops the curtain on the Irst act of a drama, of which time
and events are to work out the denim:may at a distant
period. Up to this moanent the London Conference has
achieved nothing, and al that remains for me to do is to
throw out some conjectures as to the probable results of its
final proceedings."

Those results (or no•resalts) being now only too well
known, we need not dwell upon them. The Danee
were many of them well-prepared for disappoint-
ment, according to this account from an eye-
witness ;

If you ask me whether I think any person in this country
expects any results whatever frown the proceedings of the
Louden Conference, I shell not hesitate to give you a
frank negative answer. The Danes think they have
gained little, as yet, from their deference to foreign
Powers, and bitterly regret their compliance with well-
meant but improvident advice. " Had it i.ot been espe-
cially for England's officiousness," they say, " they would
not have yielded their ground inch by inch at the outbreak
of the war, nor would they have consented to the rasing
of the blockade at the armis ice. It was not her sympathy
for the weaker side, nor regard for the justice of their cause,
that England listened to." They say, " She merely con •
suited her own c mmercial interests, and satisfied Denmark
to her anxiety for the general peace and the uninterrupted
freedom of the seas. Those objects are henceforth more
easily to be attained by dropping than by sustaining the
rights of the Danish nation, and when, after the loss of a
month or two, the London negotiation breaks up, as sensi•
ble men foresaw it would from the outset, leaving matters
exactly as they were, England will consider she has done
her duty by Denmark, and the latter will be left at the
mercy of her overbearing foes." It is not for me to inquire
how much justice there may be in this complaint, which is
everywhere audible here. Unquestionably, by their dila-
toriness and by their lack of energy in carrying out their
own resolutions, it would appear as if the statesmen now
assembled in London were not greatly in earnest. The
skein is tangled beyond the unravelling powers of all human
ingenuity, and there is hardly a man who would not shrink
from proposing to cut the knot by that terrible sword of a
European war, to avoid which so many other questions of
vital importance have been for many years left in obey,.
ante.

The writer of these volumes has endeavoured to
express no personal opinion, but to maintain (ac-
cording to examples in high quarters), a strict neu-
trality. As a background picture of the war, he
has given a very pleasing view of the home
life and customs of Denmark mad the Danes. Here
is a charming glimpse of what the author de-
scribes as