One serious piece of news has arrived in London this
week. Abdurrahnian Khan, the great and cruelAmeer of Afghanistan, died on the 3rd inst., it is supposed of Bright's disease front which he bad been suffering for years. He was probably born in 1840, but he described himself as four years younger; and in either case he was not old, even if we take the average "expectation of life" in an Asiatic to be ten years less than in a European. Abdurrahman was an awful person, as com- pletely without pity as without fear, a man who would issue sentence of death to point a joke, and slay a prisoner to whom his word was pledged; but he was supremely able, and his fiendish cruelty awed and quieted even his fierce countrymen. He reduced Afghanistan, the most turbulent country on earth, to reasonable order; and as he had made up his mind that England was a safer and more profitable ally than Russia, he was regarded at Simla as a valuable though difficult ally. He posed before his subjects as a fanatic Mussulman, but betrayed in his talks with his doctor, Miss Hamilton, a vein of scepticism not uncommon in Kings. There is great anxiety in India as- to what may happen; but he had indicated for years that he intended his eldest son Habibullah to be his successor, and that Prince has been quietly proclaimed.
