exion, since the future of
Afghanistan became a practical question. His rash negotiations with Dost
Muhammad, the Amir of Kabul, and his brother at Kandahar, his return to
India, his second mission to Afghanistan in support of a policy which he
had deprecated, and his tragical death in the Kabul insurrection,--these
are events which belong to a later chapter of history. But, though
Burnes cannot be held responsible for the first Afghan war, there can be
no doubt that his travels in disguise through Central Asia, and
confidential reports on the border countries between the Russian and
British spheres of influence, were the immediate prelude to a campaign
the most ill-advised and the most disastrous ever organised by the
Indian government and sanctioned by that of Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[138] Despatch of July 13, 1804, _Selection from Wellesley's
Despatches_, ed. Owen, pp. 436-41. See Sir A. Lyall, _British Dominion
in India_, p. 260.

[139] Cornwallis to Lake, Sept. 19, 1805, _Cornwallis Correspondence_,
iii., 547-55.

[140] See p. 310 above.

CHAPTER XX.

LITERATURE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.

The period which elapsed between the resignation of Pitt and the battle
of Waterloo was hardly less eventful in the history of British
civilisation than in the history of British empire. To some, the
boundary line between the society of the eighteenth and that of the
nineteenth century appears to be marked by the outbreak of the French
revolution, and the far-reaching effects of that catastrophe upon ideas,
manners, and politics in Great Britain, as well as upon the continent,
are too evident to be denied. But it is equally certain that, before the
French revolution, an intellectual and industrial movement was in
progress which must have given a most powerful impulse to civilisation,
even if the French revolution had never taken place. In this country,
especially, the great writers, philanthropists, scientific leaders,
inventors, engineers, and reformers of various types, who adorned the
latter part of George III.'s reign, largely drew their inspiration from
an age, just preceding the French revolution, which is sometimes
regarded as barren in originality.

When the nineteenth century opened, the classical authors of that
pre-revolutionary age had mostly passed away. Hume died in 1776, Johnson
in 1784, Adam Smith in 1790, Gibbon in 1794, Burns in 1796, Burke in
17