ABSTRACT
When the actors are themselves interesting, and move on a plane of conduct which has some nobility, history ceases to be a solely depressing record of crime and folly. The British leaders in India, during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century enforced on the military and political field doctrines which in the hands of the ordinary run of conquerors would have led to utter disregard of all but power. It is strange that Persian had so little influence on English literature until FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, for long before that Persian poetry was the familiar study of British soldiers and administrators, when such men as Alexander Burnes read it with pleasure and discrimination, and with a critical ability that showed how free was their judgment from European limitations. The gap between the common soldier and his leaders was the plummet's bound from Lucifer's Heaven to the Hell where he was hurled.
