CURRENT LITERATURE.
Independently of an article on "The Afghan Boundary Com- mission," by " Asiaticus," which, though by no means uninteresting, has a belated appearance, there are three papers of immediate interest in the October number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review,— "Indian Princes at Court," " Burma's, our Gate to China," and "General Prjevalsky on Central Asia." In the first of these, which, although anonymous, has an authoritative, or at least " official " look, its author saying, "I have some personal acquaintance with all the chiefs who have been in England this season," we are informed, among other things, "that their [the Princes'] feeling of gratitude for the kindness shown them is extreme, while they have thoroughly enjoyed their visit to England ;" that "I do not think that the manner in which the Court officials dealt with the question of the public treatment on historical occasions of the Indian Princes was politic or wise ;" that "the only affront which was seriously felt by all the Indian Princes" was "the grave blander which gave royal rank and precedence to a black lady from the Sandwich Islands ;" and that "there is reason to believe that Holkar's own bad temper was alone to blame for any failure to derive pleasure or profit from his tour." Mr. A. R. Colqnhonn rides an enthusiasm of his in his article on Burmah ; but he writes clearly and forcibly, and marshals facts and figures with great skill in favour of his main contention, that we have now an unrivalled opportunity of reaching the markets' of Southern and Western China, and "of commercially cementing oar relations with the other Peace-Power of Asia, by the extension of our railway system to Selma°, the Routh-west gate to China." The most striking article, however, in the new number of the Asiatic Quarterly ifj undoubtedly Colonel Francis Beaufort's translation of an essay by the eminent traveller, General Prjevaleky, on Central Asia. It points directly—we had almost said, incites—to a war between China and Russia for the possession of Chinese Turkestan, if not of other portions-of the Celestial Empire. General Prjevaleky, who no more beats about the bush than did Skobeleff himself, has no fear, and almost no respect, for the Chinese military "new model." Among the other papers worth reading in the Asiatic Quarterly for October isa historical one, entitled "Warren Hastings irt Benares, 1781," being a letter (with an introduotion by Sir E. Colebrooke) from a young Indian official who was Persian interpreter to Hastings, MA accom- panied him to Bemires.
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