proof. The chief religious authority in Persia, too, the high priest of Ispahan, seems to have retained some slight remnant of prudence, after that quality was no longer discernible in the conduct and language of his professional brethren. He sent a confidential messenger to the king, to inquire whether or not it were the royal wish that the people should be excited to war, and following closely after his agent to Tehran, he there had an interview with the Shah. But the religious excitement had now attained to such a pitch, that it was useless to try to arrest its development, and Fetteh Ali had to allow himself to be carried along by the current. He started for his summer camp at Sultaneea.
At this time news reached Persia of the death of the Czar Alexander and the accession to empire of his brother Nicholas; this intelligence was quickly followed by the announcement that Prince Menchikoff was on his way to the court of Tehran. The Russian envoy was received with distinction, the Shah entertaining the hope that through his means the points in dispute between Persia and Russia, as to their frontier, might be satisfactorily arranged. But scarcely had the negotiations opened, when a long train of priests from the capital, headed by the Imam-i-Juma of Ispahan, arrived at the royal camp. Prince Menchikoff had no power to consent to the evacuation of the district of Gokcheh, and the Shah was therefore forced to break up the conferences and to give the prince his passports. He was, however, up the last, treated with the utmost distinction, and the king strove by the richness of the presents which he bestowed on this occasion, to lessen the
chagrin which the Russian envoy might be expected to
