diately felt himself struck with death. He, in vain, made trial of all the remedies prescribed for him by the Portuguese physicians, and died in the year 1605.

Jehan Guir, the successor of Akbar, was a very different character from his father. His chief celebrity arises from the joviality of his manners, and the humility with which he submitted to the dominion of the beautiful, but imperious NurJeham, the Light of the World. Stories are told of his conviviality which remind us of the Arabian Nights. Among other instances of boon companionship, the following anecdote is recorded in history.

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He entered, they say, one day, towards the evening, in disguise, into a tavern. Wine-houses, since the days of Akbar, had been tolerated in the capital. The Emperor took a seat near an artisan, who was drinking with great gaiety, and, inspired with the wine, was disposed to indulge his vocal talents. Jehan Guir was delighted to find himself in such pleasant society. A familiarity was soon established between them, and the artisan was particularly charmed with the liberality of the new guest, who paid the entire score, and made him drink deep. In their conversation, they treated of the affairs of government; the Emperor was blamed for his weakness, in submitting to be governed by a woman, and suffering one of his younger sons to assassinate the elder. They took leave of the tavern most excellent friends, promising to see each other often in the same place. The Emperor simply inquired of the artisan his trade, where he lodged, and his name. "I am called," he said, Secander; I am a weaver, and my home is in a quarter of the city" which he indicated. "Comrade," said the Emperor, “I will come to-morrow and dine with you; we will renew our acquaintance, and we will swear a lasting friendship." The two topers separated, highly satisfied with each other; and each, on his part, impatiently expected the ensuing morning. Some hours after sunrise, nearly about the same time the artisans are accustomed to dine, the Emperor left his palace, attended by the most magnificent escort with which he had ever made his appearance in Lahor. He was surrounded by his whole guard, and preceded by twenty war elephants, with their splendid harness of crimson velvet, ornamented with large gold plates. Jehan Guir was himself seated on a throne, burnished with precious stones, borne by an elephant of state; and, in this equipage, he gave orders to be conducted to the weaver's quarters. The cavalry and the elephants passed before the shop of Secander. But he, occupied in preparing the regale which he was about to give his friend, did not even give himself the trouble to take a peep at the royal cavalcade. Whilst all the people were at the doors of their houses, or dispersed in the

streets, a soldier of the King's suite inquired for the house of Secander. The weaver, who heard himself named, came into his shop, holding in his hand a pestle with which he had just been pounding some rice. "I am Secander," he said, "and you will hardly find better cloth at any other shop in all Lahor." "You are, also, a jovial toper," said the soldier;" the Emperor has, in consequence, come to dine with you, in performance of the engagement he contracted with you yesterday." Secander could not doubt but that it was the Emperor himself with whom he had been drinking the preceding evening; and, as he recollected the seditious language which he had held to Jehan Guir, while they were carousing, the poor man gave himself up for lost. In the meanwhile, the Emperor approached, and, as soon as Secander recognised him: "Might it please heaven," he cried, that all those who put their trust in drunkards had this pestle thrown at their heads." The King, who heard the poor weaver's exclamation, laughed most heartily. He tasted the good man's wine; and bestowed upon him employments at court sufficiently considerable to enable him to dispense with following any longer his profession.

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The latter days of Jehan Guir were embittered by the civil wars which his rebellious children excited in their contentions for the right of succession. Jehan Guir had himself rebelled against his father Akbar, and, as a judgment on his unnatural crime, he now saw the members of his family divided against each other, and his kingdom a prey to the miseries of war. Sultan Chorrom, afterwards called Shah Jehan, his third son, succeeded in seizing the empire; and the struggle between the rival parties was at length put an end to by one of the devices which we have remarked as so characteristic of the Moguls. He spread a report of his sudden death, and engaged his partizans to solicit, that his body might be buried in the sepulchre of his father.

Sultan Bolaqui, the grandson of the late Emperor, had seized the throne on the death of Jehan Guir. When he was informed that his uncle, the rival claimant, was no more, he gave his consent gladly, that all the honours of interment should be paid to a prince of his blood, from whom death, as he believed, had delivered him so opportunely. A convoy was, therefore, prepared, attended with all the magnificence due to a prince of the Mogul blood. The empty bier was conducted by more than a thousand men, chosen from among the principal officers of the deceased. Chorrom himself followed, in disguise, his own funeral. Squadrons of Rajepoots, seemingly to do it honour, had been disposed at different stations upon the line of march, which, continuing to swell the funeral pomp, accompanied it to Agra. The young Emperor was persuaded, that a just decorum

required he should proceed to meet the convoy of his uncle, and conduct to the place of interment the remains of a prince from whom he had now nothing to fear. The artifice succeeded. Bolaqui went forth from the gates of Agra, habited in deep mourning, accompanied by a weak escort, and in the equipage of a prince who is about to pay the last duties to a relative. He was astonished when he beheld so large an escort in the suite of a deceased person. He suspected the stratagem, and retracing his steps, he stole away from the cruelty of a rival, who would not have failed to take away his life if he had fallen into his power. The place of his retreat was a long time a secret, but it was at last known that he had taken refuge in Persia. In the meanwhile, the trumpets sounded, Sultan Chorrom was proclaimed Emperor, and the mourning chariot was changed into a car of triumph. Chorrom entered the citadel of Agra, amidst the acclamations of the people and of the army, who transferred, instantaneously, all their affection to the new monarch. It was then that this prince took the name of Shah Jehan, which signifies "Sovereign of the Universe."

Shah Jehan reigned to a very advanced period of his life, and before he died was thrust from the throne, and held in a kind of respectful imprisonment by one of his own sons, the celebrated Aurengzebe. Shah Jehan, in his earlier years, was celebrated for his love of justice, and in his latter ones for his avarice. He is said to have dug caves under his palace, in which he spent his days in the contemplation of heaps of gold and precious stones. At one time of his life, prodigality and a love of women were his dominant passions, and they ended, like those of many other spendthrifts, in concentrating themselves in the love of accumulation. Of the magnificent ornaments of a gallery, which he built for one of his favourites, many descriptions have been written.

The wall opposite the window was covered with jasper; and on this first coating a vine was seen to climb, entirely composed of precious stones, of shades analogous to this species of vegetation. The stem was formed of those reddish agate stones which expressed the colour of the wood. The leaves were emeralds, interlaced with so much art, that the points where they united could not be discerned. The grapes, which were pendent from the branches, and seemed to come out in relief, were composed partly of diamonds and partly of grenats. Materials could not be procured adequate to the completion of the whole design, and the work remained incomplete. The side of the gallery, in which were the windows, was ornamented with large mirrors, whose frames were thickly sown, at intervals, with the largest pearls to be found in the East. Thus, the vine, framed with rich jewels, being multiplied in the mirrors, shed a surprising lustre, which

dazzled by its splendour during the day, and at night had the effect of an illumination. Of Shah Jehan's pretensions to the fame of a Solomon, the following anecdote is recorded:

A soldier having stolen away the female slave of a writer belonging to the class that copy and distribute the news of the court through the provinces, the complaint was carried before the Emperor. The cause had become much involved, as the slave, tired of her first master, maintained that she belonged to the soldier; and the writer produced pretty clear evidence of the slave being his property. The Emperor, who at first affected to be embarrassed and undecided how to act in so perplexed a case, attended for a time to other complaints; when, on a sudden, calling for ink, he caused the pen, in the most unaffected manner, to be given to the slave, that she might assist him to it. The slave gave it back replenished, with so much dexterity, and with so good a grace, that the Emperor judged immediately that she must have been used to the duty, and said to the slave angrily: "You cannot belong to the soldier; you must certainly have been in the service of the writer, and in his power you shall remain." The wisdom of the monarch was the admiration of the whole empire.

Shah Jehan had appointed each of his four sons to extensive governments at a distance from the capital. Sultan Sujah was the Viceroy of Bengal; Aurengzebe had the government of the Deccan; Morad Bakche, of the province of Guzzerat. To Dara, the eldest, was assigned the kingdom of Cashmere, who, however, remained at court. On occasion of a report of the death of the aged Shah Jehan, three sons, each at the head of their armies, betook themselves to Agra to claim the crown. The remarkable contest which ensued has been related at length by two competent authorities. Signor Manouchi, who was fortyeight years physician in the service of the imperial family at the court of Delhi and Agra, has left a copious account of its striking events, and the various intrigues by which its progress was influenced'. About the termination of the struggle, M. Bernier, a French physician and traveller, entered the dominions of the Great Mogul, and meeting with the train of the fugitive Dara, or Darius, was compelled to join it in quality of his medical attendant. M. Bernier has not only comprised in his travels a lively account of this civil war, but has embraced many other topics of information, and the result of his inquiries, under very fortunate circumstances. His work has now become a classical book of travels, and his name is always mentioned at

1 Signor Manouchi's MSS. were made the foundation of Father Catrou's History of the Mogul Dynasty, published at the Hague in 1708. A translation of this work was lately published in London.

the head of those enlightened and enterprising men, who, by personal risk, and at the expense of great privation, have contributed to the spread of knowledge1.

The interest of Bernier's Travels does not arise from a detail of personal adventures, nor from its being, like modern travels, a record of individual observations on the character of the country or the people. He became attached to a favourite minister of Aurengzebe, and, thus admitted into the centre of his dazzling court, he had no eye except for the great events which led to the establishment of the power of Aurengzebe, and for a contemplation of the gorgeous magnificence, vastness, and splendour of all his movements: so that the pleasure derivable from a perusal of this author, partly consists in his descriptions of a novel and peculiar style of greatness, and partly in the melancholy interest which arises from the reflections of the vanity of human splendour which crowd upon the heart and mind of the reader. Of all those magnificent palaces, of all that innumerable train of ready slaves, of all that cavalcade of elephants, camels, and cavaliers; of all that dazzling train of sultanas, of eunuchs, of guards, and of their various and splendid accommodations; of all the hoards of precious stones, of gold and perfumes; of all those lofty tents, those gorgeous pavilions, and those more enduring mosques, mausoleums, and baths,scarcely a wreck remains behind the dynasty to gratify whose capricious tastes they were erected has disappeared from among the lists of the potentates of the earth; and that absolute power, wealth, and grandeur which distinguished the Mogul above all other royal races, is now wielded by a company of British merchants, which, in the time of Aurengzebe, had never been heard of at the court of Agra.

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M. Bernier's Travels, which are not cast in the usual form of books of this class, consist of, 1. A narration of the war between the sons of Shah Jehan, to which we have alluded. 2. A collection of events which happened after the termination of the war. 3. A letter to the minister Colbert, on the resources and strength of the government of India. 4. A description of Delhi and Agra, in a letter to M. Le Mothe Vayer. 5. Another letter is occupied with a description of the superstitions of the Hindoos. 6. A series of letters descriptive of the journey of Aurengzebe to the kingdom of Cashmere, with a military retinue of nearly fifty thousand men, and accompanied by the whole population of Delhi. The volume closes with the answers to

1 Of M. Bernier's Travels, a very good translation has lately been made and published in two neat volumes, 8vo. by Mr. Irving Brock. Although we could have wished that more copious notes had brought the work to a level with the Oriental knowledge of the present day, as far as an accessible translation is concerned, nothing more can be desired.