There's one of surpassing lustre, but of a blackish dye,
That served for many centuries as an Indian idol's eye.

There's one that blazed on a German throne, and one of the purest sheen
That upon the lily finger shone of Mary, the Scottish queen;

Diamonds bright as the starry spheres, and diamonds dark as the jet,
And two that have dangled at the ears of Marie Antoinette.

In short, the rarest collection of ancient or modern time;

But to give the merest catalogue is beyond the province of rhyme.
You must see the Duke's own volume for their histories, lustre and rate,
Which he gives in quarto-pages, two hundred and sixty-eight.

Now surely the Duke is the happiest man that lives this side o' the grave!
Alas! he is chained by his diamonds; he is, body and soul, their slave.
In a Bastile house at Paris he lives, shut up from the sun and the breeze,
By a great dead wall surrounded, and a warlike chevaux de frise :
So that when a scaler touches a prong he touches a secret spring,
And raises the larum loud and long as the bells of the Bastile ring;
Deep sunk in these dark defences lies the bedroom of the Duke,
Into which the honest light of heaven is scarcely permitted to look;
A room with one chink for a window, and a door with wonderful guards,
Which opens to one alone who knows the secret of the wards;

And into the strong, thick wall of this room, in a double-ribb'd iron chest,
Like cats' eyes gleaming in the gloom, the precious diamonds rest:
Before them lies the happy Duke, with a dozen loaded pistols,
That he, without leaving his bed, may enjoy and defend his beloved crystals.
But grant that a burglar scales the wall, vaults over the chevaux de frise,
Breaks open the door and slays the Duke-What then? Is the treasure his?
Not yet; for the Duke had closed the safe ere the thief to his chamber got;
If he force the lock, four guns go off and batter him from the spot.

Now is not the Duke the happiest man that lives this side o' the grave?
Alas! he is chain'd by his diamonds; he is, body and soul, their slave.
He dares not leave his diamonds, he dares not go from home;

O'er the cloud-capt heights, through the lowly vales, he has no heart to roam.
Beside the diamond's costly light all other light is dim;

Winter and summer, day and night, can take no hold on him.

Methinks he would be a richer man were he as poor as I,

Who have no gems but yon twinkling stars, the diamonds of the sky.
Could he the dewy daisies love, those diamonds of the sod,
Methinks he were a happier man, and a little nearer God:
I also think, could he sell all and give it to the poor,

The famous Duke of Brunswick's name would famously endure.

ROBERT LEIGHTON.

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE

MOGHUL EMPIRE.

[J. Talboys Wheeler was born at Witham, near London, 1820. He was educated at Westminster School and Cambridge University. After leaving the university he went into the service of the East India Company, and when the British Government undertook to control

India he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Imperial Government under various administrations, and subsequently became secretary to the government of British Burma (1875).

His opportunities for inspecting the records of the libraries of India were made use of in compiling the best history of India that has been published, which appeared in three volumes, 1869. Since then he has

written A Short History of India and Afghanistan, bringing the history down to the present time. His style is easy and correct, and bears evidence of the most careful

research.

From the latter work we quote an important chapter:

the "Decline and Fall of the Moghul Empire."]

The last years of Aurangzeb were saddened by fears of the catastrophe which would accompany or follow his death. Indeed throughout the latter half of his reign he had been subject to constant alarms lest he should share the fate of his father, Shah Jehan; lest his sons should consign him to hopeless captivity, and begin to fight for the throne before death had carried him from the scene. He is said to have formed a plan for averting a fratricidal war by dismembering the empire and dividing it amongst his three sons. But if so the attempt at pacification must have proved a failure. Scarcely was it known that the old sovereign had expired, than all the armies of the empire were on the move, and his three sons were each, in turn, prepared to seize the throne by force of arms, or perish upon the fatal field.

From the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, to the year 1756, Calcutta was occasionally threatened by the Mahrattas or mulcted by the Nawab; but otherwise it enjoyed a profound peace, and was, to all appearance, as secure against foreign aggression as any seaport town in the United Kingdom. The English settlement was like an oasis of European civilization in a desert of Hinduism and Islam. The English factory, with its depots, workshops, offices, and out-lying garden-houses," covered about a hundred acres on the bank of the Hughli. The outward life of the English at Calcutta was altogether of a business type. They bought, sold, kept accounts, A war between brethren may excite the wrote letters, and regulated establishments passions of contemporaries, but cannot and expenditure. Large ships from Eu- enlist the sympathies of posterity. The rope brought woollen goods, cutlery, iron, struggle between the sons of Shah Jehan copper, and quicksilver. The same ships had been more or less associated with recarried away cotton piece-goods, fine mus-ligion, but the struggle between the sons lins, silks, indigo, saltpetre, spices, and Indian rarities. A rise or fall in the price of saltpetre in Europe was of more interest to the English merchants at Calcutta than the war between the Moghul and the Mahrattas; and a failure of the silk crop in the up-country stations in Bengal and Behar was of more moment to the Court of Directors in London than the death of a Padishah, or the bloody struggles between his sons for the succession to the Moghul throne.

The death of Aurangzeb awakened the Moghul empire from its torpor; it sent a thrill through the provinces which might be likened to galvanic life. For years all hopes and aspirations of princes and grandees had been in abeyance under the declining but monotonous rule of the aged Padishah. His sons were waiting for his last breath to begin that fratricidal struggle for the throne which had broken out at the death, or before the death, of every Moghul sovereign of Hindustan from Akbar downwards. The Moghul generals were apparently eager to throw off the religious strictness and bigotry, which had so long oppressed the empire; and were looking forward to the death of the old Padishah as a necessary preliminary to the beginning of a new régime.

of Aurangzeb was only a quarrel for an inheritance. The main struggle was between Shah Alam, the eldest son of Aurangzeb, and Azam Shah, the second son; and the war itself is said to have turned on the ill-timed insolence of Azam Shah, and the consequent disaffection or treachery of his affronted generals. A desperate battle was fought near the river Chambal. It closed in a horrible carnage, in which Azam and his two sous were slain. Shah Alam ascended the throne under the title of Bahadur Shah. There was a third son, the rebel Akbar, who had fled to Persia; but he was dead, or at any rate out of the fray. There was a fourth son named Kam Bakhsh, whose fortunes demand separate consideration.

Kam Bakhsh, whom the Greeks would have called Cambyses, had been nominated by Aurangzeb to rule as an independent Sultan over the newly-conquered kingdoms of Bijapur and Golkonda. Bahadur Shah was an old man, and would probably have consented to the arrangement; but his sons were ambitious to preserve the integrity of the empire. The mother of Kam Bakhsh was a Christian; her son was supposed to be a Christian likewise. The Mullahs were stirred up to protest against the rule of a Chris