was realizing what is the germ of fruitful travel-that one should go forth not to see, but to be shewn sights, not like a person to whose good vision all things will be clear, but in the spirit of one who waits for a revelation.

In the place of his present sojourn, it was natural that the traveller should have Homer open in his hands and his pages show, by many a quotation done into full-mouthed German that poetry lent her aid to add to the other charms of his journey. At this stage of his book, as easily as at any other, one may, by reference to his sources, seek proof of his industry in working up his matter. His notes show abundant research: to such masters of the ringing change of words as Aeschylus and Ovid and Virgil to Herodotus and Pliny are added Boileau and Pope, Gibbon and Gervinus, Hamilton and Schubert, and many another name of men whose words can guide or support opinion. The third volume of Altes und Neues concludes with an account of a most recompensing, if equally fatiguing, ride from Smyrna to a point on the Bosphorus opposite Constantinople. With briefest mention of this we leave the book which introduced our author into that realm of literary labour of which he had dreamed that no greater felicity lured the sons of men, than to dwell within its chequered shades.

Between 1858 and 1880, Prince Friedrich published no book, but some articles of which we are not able, in India, to verify the dates, probably belong to the interval. These were contributions to the Kiel Journal, to English periodicals and in addition, were several obituary notices, amongst which was one published in the Times in November 1876 and commemorating the life of Count von Prokesch-Osten. In 1880-81, he published the result of five years of work in the first volume of Kaiser Akbar. Before further notice of this book, it will be of interest to form some estimate of the qualifications which its author brought to the accomplishment of his self-selected task. These it is easy to underrate, in face of his self-depreciation in presence of scholars such as Blochmann and Goldstücker, as well as before his own ideal of the perfected product of systematic education. Of certain natural qualifications for literary work, Prince Friedrich had full measure: he was industrious and spared no pains; he was patient and had the humility which promotes caution and he had that capacity for enthusiasm which is the vital spark of all work. His general culture

was very considerable; he was free of French and English literature: he could read Latin and Greek with pleasure; he had studied Sanskrit under Goldstücker for several years -subject and teacher in themselves a constellation of educative forces--and he had in addition, the ductile mind of the travelled man.

It is undeniable that the first requisite for a scholarly handling of the material existing for a biography of Akbar is a knowledge of Persian sufficient to the collation of the Akbarnámáh, the Táríkh-i-Badáoni and the Tabaqát-i-Akbari. Such critical skill the Prince never attained and he tells us in his preface that he had to base his work upon translations. He, however, never proposed to himself to treat his subject in anything but such fashion as would make it acceptable to the ordinary reading world and for this, his available material was ample. He was not without knowledge of Persian, even at the commencement of his work and in 1876, he spent a winter in Paris for the purpose of increasing his acquaintance with it. He was, nevertheless, even to the last, put to inconvenience by want of facility in comparing discrepant statements in his English sources. Of these his main reliance was upon Sir Henry Elliot and Professor Dowson's "History of India as told by its own histo.. rians." Another translation of the utmost value, was that in manuscript, of the Akbárnámáh, by Lieutenant Chalmers and in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society. A mine of incalculable wealth to him was Blochmann's* Ain-i-Akbari, with its biographical notices and its extracts from the Táríkh-i- Badaoni. The field for European research was wide and the Prince spared neither time nor labour nor travel to reap from it. Of this, the mere consideration of the books to which he refers in the course of his volume, is evidence.

The first volume of the Emperor Akbar was finished with

*This book is one of those which all who have occasion to work from it, must respect and admire. It suggests a fertile field for such litterateurs as have Persian well at command. Blochmann's biographical outlines (taken for the most part from the Maasir-ul-Umara) could certainly, in some cases, be filled up from family records and Akbar's stage be peopled with figures as lifelike as those which move round Elizabeth.

To one who, without any knowledge of Persian, has followed the Prince over his ground for the purpose of rendering his book into English, his difficulties seem at times to have been great and sometimes to have arisen from causes which would be avoidable if the translations from the Persian had been subjected to the scrutiny of a revisional committee.

great difficulty and amid presentiments of death which find utterance in its preface. Here, too, speaks the affection for his subject which had grown up in the Count in years of "intimate communion" within "four narrow walls," and which must have sharpened regret at his inability to illustrate the remaining scenes of his hero's career. To his book on sending it forth, he says: "The wide world is rough with crags "and tempestuous with storms; if it should not fare with "thee as we desire, bear thy destiny with patience and "should any censure thee unmercifully, counsel them "rather to bend their powers to excel thee; so will thy "path although not thornless yet lead thee to thy goal.' Within a few weeks of the Count's death, in 1881, his manuscript had been entrusted to Dr. Gustav von Buchwald for revision and edition. The second and completing volume appeared in 1885. As was perhaps inevitable, it bears the marks of change in the directing mind. One distinct alteration of plan is made by the substitution of voluminous quotation for the author's more laborious practice of assimilating his material into an independent creation. Dr. von Buchwald's method has advantages in face of the great difficulties which accrue to the finisher of another man's work but it makes some break of continuity in the book. One set of his quotations is however of interest, namely, that from Chalmer's somewhat inaccessible manuscript.

Akbar's life as set forth by his German commentator, reiterates the fact that he was a foreigner in India and that his rule was a military occupation. No drop of blood of any race within the Khaibar flowed in his veins and the armies by which he held his dominions were for the most part the levies of men who had followed his father from beyond the frontier of Hindústán. Like himself, these settled in the country and in the earlier days of the occupation, brought in their families. After the adhesion of the house of Amber (Jaipúr) he had Rájpút troops in his service but his main reliance was always on men of ultra-Himálayan birth or descert.

It is so common to hear Akbar held up as a ruler of whom India may boast because he was her own, that an Englishwoman takes a peculiar pleasure in repeating the fact of his alien birth. Not indeed because it is agreeable to go out of the way to tell again the less grateful facts of history but because seeing this error, she has the hope that some hundreds

of years hence, some of the men of her own blood whom only the brief tenure of their office has, she believes, thwarted from making a reputation as great and as well-deserved as Akbar's, may be so blended into India's story, that they, too, shall be claimed as rulers of whom the whole land may boast, notwithstanding that they are as alien in blood as was the mighty Emperor whose sway they now inherit.

By perusal of Kaiser Akbar an old fact concerning Bengal and one which is not without eloquence to every laudator temporis acti, gains new prominence, that its people have had scant part in its history, that is the tale of its rulers and their wars and their glory. It was not from Bengalís that Akbar took Bengal, but from the Afghán rulers who had held it for their own profit for more than four hundred years. No name of any Bengalí comes for mention in the Count's book as that of a Hindú who rose to power. The Hindús of great name whose services reflected glory on Akbar, were all distinguished as soldiers, before they were known for any other

Todar Mall, a khetri of Láharpúr in Audh, was a general before he was a dìwán and the other renowned Hindús of the reign were almost without exception hard fighting Rájpúts. Bengal in those days had no voice; its people were there, peaceful yielders of revenue; so, too, was the treasure chest, and then as it had been for many a by-gone century, the history of the province was a record of the struggles for the key.

Of Akbar's talent as a controller of men and of his surpassing interest as a man of active and unusual type of mind, we learn much that is unfamiliar from the Count of Noer's book. His representation, moreover, presses it home that, spite of his intellectual proclivities and desire to deal justice, Akbar was not the ruler of a summer's day but a man of strenuous action and withal a strong and stout annexationist before whose sun the modest star of Lord Dalhousie pales. He believed, probably without any obtrusion of a doubt as to his course, that the extension and consolidation of territory was a thing worth fighting for; he believed in supremacy as in itself, a desirable object and, having men and money, he went to work and took tract after tract without scruple. His position, being as he was the builder of an empire, is comprehensible, and it is indisputable that his fame as a ruler is in no small degree due to the circumstance that, having men of diverse nationalities to manage, he compassed the task; a

success which could not have been his, if he had not been given to conquest. He was not like Victoria, born heir to this Briarean labour but he brought it on himself by being what he was or nothing-a thorough and self-seeking annexationist.

In him there was fully developed, moreover, another form of imperial annexation,-that which absorbs enormous sums of money for the sovereign's personal use. Perhaps in no way is the progress of ideas about the claims of the holder of a kingly office on his people more marked, than by a consideration of the respective consumption of revenue on personal objects, under the Emperor of Hindústán of the 16th century and the Empress of the 19th. Akbar annually took from the service of the people, vast sums of money for the maintenance of his own and his sons' establishments. These establishments were not like the modest households of our Viceroys or even of the Queen-Empress herself but contained regiments of servants and armies of elephants, horses, &c., &c. Akbar's seraglio alone numbered 3000 women, each of whom had a fixed salary and definite perquisites. One needs no figures to assure one that the commissariat obligations only, of these domestic hordes would now prove, what Abul Fazl says the ordering of a harem was, a "question vexatious for even a great statesman." On the other hand, it is one of the remarkable features of the present occupation of India, that its Empress takes no single rupi from it for the maintenance of her State.

In at least one particular, the reigns of India's most potent rulers are alike. Akbar, as does Victoria, administered his empire by means of foreign officials and like her, held it by a foreign army. Akbar's officials of cis-Himalayan birth who were distinguished for other than martial talent, were singularly few. Todar Mall Bír Bar, and though impari passu, Rái Patr Dás, completing their list. In one particular the administration of Akbar was distinctly inferior to that of Victoria; it was tainted by the corruption which makes an office lucrative beyond the range of its nominal salary. Akbar's lieutenants ruled like kings in state and luxury and for the greater part of his reign, as was natural when the strong arm yielded the one essential service he required from his chiefs, their doings were practically unchecked. Todar Mall at length attempted some restraint, but he does not come into prominence as even a soldier till the 18th