CHAPTER III.-OVERTHROW AND DEATH OF THE PRE- ... CHAPTER IV. THE DEATH OF MUHAMMAD HAKIM. HAKIM IN KABUL CHAPTER VIII.-AKBAR'S FIRST VISIT TO KASHMIR ... 209-220 I.-THE KINGDOMS OF THE DAK'HIN AND PREPARATIONS FOR THEIR CONQUEST 289-313 CHAPTER II. THE DOWNFALL OF DAK'HIN INDEPEN- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FRIEDRICH AUGUST, PRINCE OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN-SONDERBURG-AUGUSTENBURG. (GRAF VON NOER).* 1. Altes und Neues aus den Ländern des Ostens. (Things New and Old from Eastern Lands.) Hamburg. W. Mauke Söhne. Second Edition, 1870. 2. Kaiser Akbar, ein Versuch über die Geschichte Indiens im sechzehnten Jahrhundert. (The Emperor Akbar, an Essay towards the history of India in the 16th Century.) Leiden. E. J. Brill, 1880. 3. Briefe und Auzeichnungen aus seinem Nachlass, herausgegeben von Carmen, Gräfin von Noer. (Letters and Extracts from papers left by the Count von Noer. Edited by Carmen, Countess of Noer. Nördlingen. Verlag der C. H. Beck'schen Buchhandlung. 1886. is pleasant to be reminded that there yet shines a star over India which has power to witch men from distant homes, to tread her shores and the misty mazes of her story. One man so fascinated was he who is the subject of this notice and to him India was the dream of boyhood and the goal of his dominant enthusiasm. Born to a high place in the world's ranks, a prince and potential sovereign, he gently shook off the fetters which politics and pleasure might have rivetted on him, even in exile, and yielded his obedience to the more puissant attractions of a personal ideal—the East. vague word and so too for many years was the direction of the cult, but the devotee's worship eventually took form and set into definite acts. The first of these was the book entitled "Altes und Neues aus den Ländern des Ostens," and the second was a life of the Emperor Akbar. A Friedrich Christian Charles August, Prince of SchleswigHolstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg-to give him the full title which distinguishes his from other houses of the Duchies-was born on November 16th, 1830, at Schleswig of which fort his father, Prince Friedrich Emile August was Reprinted by the courteous permission of the Proprietor, from the Calcutta Review, July 1887. commandant. The first eighteen years of his life were passed between the town of his birth and Noer, his paternal estate. Prince Emile was a soldier through and through and regarded his profession as the only one possible to a man of rank. He was not readily accessible to novel ideas and never, even remotely, anticipated the possibility of his son's taking a new path and deserting his natural calling of arms. Prince Friedrich was, however, heir of other elements than those which constituted his father's rugged and martial character; he had part in his mother's gentler and more chastened spirit. This lady, Countess Henriette von Daneskiold-Samsoe, was one of those women without fame who are amongst the potent factors of human history by reason of their power to guide. She was the object of her children's reverential affection and it may be said of her with truth, that her effluence was tenderness. Years after she has gone to her rest, a stranger finds the perfume of her character clinging round the home of her early married life, in traditions of her gracious presence and benign thoughtfulness. It was she who fostered, by sharing, her son's bias to books and she supported him too in his at times, self-willed divergence from his father's plans. She was an invalid during most of her life and there is ample suggestion in the volume from which most of the material for this sketch of her son's life is gathered (Letters and Extracts) that the young prince, together with her happy gifts of mind and temper, inherited from her also that delicacy of constitution which alloyed his life. It was partly in consequence of this delicacy and partly a result of his father's predilection for a manly military training that the boy's education was desultory and insufficient. It was not, he says, till 1848 that he had a tutor who gave him any conception of what to learn meant. With this teacher, a gentleman named Knuth, he was in that year in his usual summer home of Noer and reading Greek and Latin with seeming profit when his studies were rudely interrupted by the outbreak of the rebellion in the Duchies. Noer is a long stretch of wood, arable and pasture land which lies some fourteen miles west of Kiel, along Eckernfjörde, an inlet of the Baltic. In itself, it is better fitted to be the brooding place of fancy than the school of arms, for tranquillity rests upon it, at least in stormless summer, with folded wings. Whether one looks across its fiord to the gently rising hills, or strolls in its cloistered woods, or watches the meditations of its mighty herds, one breathes only air of prevailing peace. Its beeches climb down to meet the sea; their mossy fringe of turf touches the weedy hem of the translucent waters; inland, pines open gloomy depths to show fit scenes for fairy folk and at twilight one chances on browzing deer or thrills to their swift scud across the glades. The young heir of all these delights appreciated them and seems to have passed the greater part of eighteen years contentedly amongst them. In 1848, a year momentous in history and full of special and evil conse quence to his family, the beloved home at Noer was broken up never to be restored. Prince Emile thought himself called by duty to head the revolted army of the Duchies and his son was enrolled under him. A soldier's life was not to the boy's taste, but he did his best by energetic drill to qualify himself to play a worthy part in the contest. Besides his aversion for war, another sentiment contributed to make the present struggle distasteful,-distress at the rupture of the ties which bound his family to his Danish kinsfolk. Of this feeling, the following passage from his autobiography is proof: "I tried to do my duty as a German but it was not "always easy. My mother was born a Daneskiold and how "many dear friends and kinsmen had we not in Denmark. "Besides I was seventeen, and up to that time a stranger to "politics." It is not our place to follow the course of the war further than as it affected our young soldier. His letters to his mother who, fearing to be taken as a hostage, had gone to Rendsburg and later, for greater security, to Hamburg, are graphic and lively, making the best of considerable discomforts and detailing his adventures. He always had pleasant comrades, a significant fact which casts a becoming light back on himself. One night he is in a "musty den," which reminds him of scenes in our dear Walter Scott," and on another occasion he begs for books, "Kühner's Greek Grammar and anything nice and profitable," to supplement his available mental pabulum, the Bible and a Life of Alexander. The war dragged on, chiefly in inaction for the younger prince and this inaction, combined with irritation at the delay of Prussian reinforcements, so fretted him that he at length wrote to his father (who had already quitted the field) saying that the sooner he also took leave the better if the national rising was to be a mere demonstration, and that the affair disgusted him even more than it 66 |