The Sun. — 1857-01-21 (London, England)

ONLY—to the Post these same facts appear rosecoloured, and to the Herald they appear bloodcoloured.  As to the halcyon anticipation, however, expressed to-day by Lord PALMERSTON'S organ, to the effect that the next mail from Calcutta may be seriously expected to bring with it tidings of the sudden and all but miraculous close of the Persian War—a struggle at this moment, positively, hardly commenced—we cannot but regard that as nothing else than the indulgence of the most visionary and preposterous hallucination !  As to the sombre and almost despairing view taken by the organ of her MAJESTY'S Opposition of the ery same events and of the very same situation--we cannot, on the other hand, but regard that view as scarcely one jot less extravagant. The Oriental contest, upon which we have but just now adventured by way of Cabul, is one entangled in so many diplomatic complications, and it is one, at the same time, which has originated in events so infuriating to the belligerents, that it would be the very extreme of folly to anticipate any abrupt and bloodless close to our warlike operations in the very first hour, as it were, of their commencement.  England has embarked in this war only after  the most flagrant, the most prolonged, and the most reiterated provocations. It was only as recently as the Ist of November, 1856, that the gage of battle was flung down in her name at Calcutta. It was only on the 13th of the same month that the British leet steamed out of the Harbour of Bombay for service in the Persian Gulf and along the southern coasts of the empire of the SEAM, from their eastern extremity at Soork to their Western, near the mouths of the Tigris at Shatt-al-Arab. And even then, be it remembered, that the sword was drawn against Persia, simply because Persia bad openly and flagrantly violated the solemn engage, ments she entered into with England at the memorable Convention of January, 1853. Absolutely and notoriously violating that Convention by marching an army against Herat, by deliberately investing that city, and by ultimately starving its Affghan garrison into a surrender on the 21st of last October. Then, and then only, did England—conceiving the cup of her Persian grievances to be at length filled to overflowing—proclaim her resolution to extort by force of arms the reparation denied, for so many wanton wrongs and insults, to the peaceful demands of diplomacy. The incidents which had gradually lead the Court of Teheran to the perpetration of this last and most unjustifiable outrage the seizure of Herat are of too recent occurrence to have altogether escaped the popular recollection. Nevertheless, it may not be wholly unadvisable to recall to mind the chief among these curious and startling occurrences. It will be remembered by many, we doubt not, that about the turn of the years 1855-1856 Herat was disturbed by an insurrection. STUD MAIOMED was assassinated. Yczoor Kira:kr, a scion of the ell dynasty, being nephew of SEMI KAMRAN, was thereupon appointed his successor. It was a very Asiatic way of turning the tables—a Suddozye Prince being substituted, not by a stroke of the pen, but by a stroke of the dagger, for an Alekozye Sirdar ! Nothing in all this, calling, in any respect, for foreign interference ! A merely ordinary episode in the annals of Affghanistan—this acceptance by the Heratees, immediately upon the murder of &MD MAHOMED, of a new ruler in the person of one of SHAH MAHMOUD'S lineal descendants. An occurrence, however, which took place almost simultaneously a little further away from Teheran than the city of Herat, presented to the Shah of MIRKA what proved at first a very alluring opportunity, and at last a wholly irresistible temptation I Don MAHOMED advanced upon Candahar and took possession of it—lured so to do by the opportune demise of