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the abstract merit of Bacon's theories, it would appear that the only kind of teaching which the sublime art of discovery admits of, is teaching by example, and not by precept; and that there are in any and every age but a few persons who possess that happy constitution of mind which enables them to profit by such teaching. Rules are of use in the humbler and more mechanical grade of subjects, but utterly unavailing in the highest. Nature herself creates discoverers: they can not bequeath that sacred possession. Had it been otherwise, the half-century which succeeded Newton's appearance in the world of science ought to have been the most prolific of any age. But it was in most respects the reverse. The intellect of Newton seems to have absorbed for a season, the genius of humanity. The trophies of his successors were gained in following his footsteps; not slavishly indeed, but in a liberal and discerning spirit. And when after another period of years science began to revive and to assume new and original forms, the cycle of discovery was renewed much upon the same principles as those on which Galileo had acted two

centuries before.

Many persons are probably impressed with the idea that the discoveries of our own day exceed, both in importance and in number, those of any former period of the world's history. But this is not altogether correct. Indeed, if we confine our attention to the most recent times, it is certainly erroneous. The facts of science —often, no doubt, very beautiful and important facts are brought to light in greater profusion than formerly. At all events, they are set more conspicuously before the public eye. The laborers are more numerous, and are animated by a keener thirst than in older times for immediate reward in reputation, in station, or in wealth. The scramble for a share in the applause which arises out of some real though perhaps not very important observation or improvement, is often amusing to bystanders. But the crowd of eager competitors in such contests is so large that few are left to fill the position of spectators or of judges in the giddy race for distinction. Even the facilities which exist for making and publishing literary efforts are not without drawbacks. Societies and academies, which in the early times of scientific progress gave needed support to the young spirit of inquiry,

are now more numerous but of less cer tain utility. There is a danger lest they become exhibition-theaters for persons of an inferior stamp, or be resorted to for mere purposes of display. We are overwhelmed by publications in the form of "Transactions," in which the same desire for notoriety induces authors to diffuse over the greatest possible number of pages the few topics of real importance on which they may have been so fortunate as to touch; while they swell the bulk of their performances by details of experiments which had no issue. The corroding tooth of time deals hardly by these monuments of egotism and vanity. They are soon hopelessly buried under their own accumulations. It is not enough that science has been subdivided until men struggle in vain to follow the progress of any but one or two of its ramifications. The turgid bulk of some contributions and the affected abstruseness of others impose an ever increasing barrier in the way of acquiring information. The admitted negligence of men of science to inform themselves of what has been done by others even in departments akin to their own, is not so much an individual as a generic fault. It arises from the intense concentration of every one on his own little field of labor, from which he hopes to reap an extravagant harvest of profit and fame. Forgetting how little attention or interest he bestows on the productions of those by whom he is surrounded, he is profoundly occupied by the persuasion that all eyes and thoughts are turned upon himself. It is an isolation injurious to the character, and short-sighted with reference to its own ends.

To estimate the history of science correctly, and to enable us to compare the results of one period with those of another, we must never forget that in this as in every other great work and profession, powers and endowments of very various degrees of rarity and value are ever taking a share more or less subordinate in the production of important and enduring results. A deficiency of laboring hands or of superintending and controlling heads, would equally render the undertaking abortive.

To take the first comparison which of fers itself, the task of constructing a science resembles that of building a house. We have first quarrymen, then laborers and excavators, then bricklayers and stone

masons, then adroit workmen who alone can execute the more delicate and important parts of the fabric. Above all, we have the master-mason and the architect, whose view and plan must embrace the fitness of the whole structure. So in science there is work for all hands more or less skilled; and he is usually the most fit to occupy the higher posts who has risen from the ranks, and who has experimentally acquainted himself with the nature of the work to be done in each and every, even the humblest department. Those are not our greatest men who have striven to sit ever apart in the abstract exercise of contemplation. Not a few of those whom we call great have toiled for a considerable part of their active lives at the drudgery of numerical computation, and the monotonous labor of algebraic developments such as are required in the theories of physical astronomy. Such labors are not to be regarded as degrading, but as a part of man's appointed course on earth, tending in its degree to noble ends, and even acting as an antidote to the consuming effect of profound thought, and of the highest exercises of the inventive faculty.

In no calling is the chance of promotion fairer than in the cultivation of science. A man is estimated by the amount and goodness of the work he does, not by the possession of adventitious advantages. And as the posts which it offers are too few and ill-requited to be coveted by mercenary persons, so every one has an even chance of attaining the position as a discoverer to which his talents and perseverance entitle him. By far the larger number of those who thus engage in the prosecution of science must, by the ordinary laws of humanity, be contented with a moderate degree of success. Brilliant or important facts rarely fall to the lot of any one by mere chance or good fortune; great theories, never. Up to to a certain order of consequence, facts come pouring in upon us in this generation: but we are not inundated by important discoveries. Great theories are as rare now as in the first ages of modern progress. When we

are tempted to compare our own with bygone ages to the disparagement of the latter, let us balance truly the relative value of discoveries. Mere industry goes far in the humbler task of collecting facts, less far in combining them into laws of observation, and still a shorter way in educing great and comprehensive laws which bind together different parts of the same or different subjects. As to great theories, one or two in a century is an ample allowance. If we include only the greatest generalizations, we can hardly assign more than one such to the Galilean age-namely, the discovery of the laws of motion, with their application to establish the Copernican theory of the world; and one also, that of gravitation, as the trophy of the Newtonian period. Since that time the undulatory doctrine of light is perhaps the only theory worthy of a place beside those just mentioned, and of it the foundations were already laid in the eighteenth century. It is perhaps in the nature of things that extensive generalizations should become rarer as science advances; at all events they bear no proportion whatever to the measure of activity in the mechanical departments or to the quantity of accumulated facts. All that we know of heat, of electricity, or of chemistry, does not amount to a comprehensive theory of any one of those subjects capable of explaining their intricate and remarkable phenomena. But in detecting these phenomena and their primary relations to one another, our age has performed its part well. It appears to be an essential part of the law of progress in knowledge, that increasing toil is necessary at each remove of the partition which separates the known from the unknown

that more hands must be employed at each successive stage of discovery-and that as the pride of man is flattered by the enlargement of the realm which he calls his own, less and less is achieved by individual prowess, and the more is he indebted for success to the preparatory labors of those who went before, and to the assistance of his contemporaries.

J. D. FORBES.

From the United Service Magazine.

THE MONARCHS

THE annals of the World, with its countless revolutions, have perhaps, afforded no more strange and marvelous history than is unfolded to us in the changing dynasties of Hindostan, that vast Asiatic empire, which, for the last hundred years, succumbing province by province to the gradual advance of British sway, has in the barbarous brutality of the late outbreak- comparable to nothing but the death-struggle of some wild and ferocious animal-demonstrated the inevitable necessity of strengthening and securing the rule which it has now so savagely and yet so vainly striven to shake off. By this rule, liberally and judiciously administered, it can alone be freed from that religious and moral darkness the natural offspring of intolerant heathenism and monstrous idolatry - indifference to which, has been so marked a feature in the narrow and mercantile spirit which has actuated the Company's policy from the very date of its foundation.

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luxuries of the Mogul emperors, was the repeated mark for attack and plunder. On the occasion of its capture and pillage by the Persian adventurer and king, Nadir Schah, in 1720, one hundred thousand souls perished; and Mohammed, the then emperor, was glad to purchase peace by bestowing the hand of his daughter, together with the rich Indian provinces lying on the borders of Persia, on the man whom he had rashly designated "the Persian shepherd and freebooter." It was into the hands also of Nadir Schah, that the famous diamond, the priceless Koh-inoor, passed on the occasion of the sack of Delhi; but so inviolably was the secret of the concealment of this jewel kept by the emperor, that the conqueror only acquired it through stratagem. He ascertained that Mohammed carried it hidden in the folds of his head-dress, and on the occasion of a banquet proposed to the Emperor to exchange turbans; etiquette prevented the unlucky monarch from refusing, and thus the possession of the "mountain of light," passed forever from the ownership of the Moguls.

There is an association of splendor especially connected with the sway of the imperial Moguls; traditions of their Tartar ancestor, the mighty Tamerlane of It seems scarcely credible that a race of their founder Baber- of his descendant, monarchs should thus have deteriorated the powerful, unscrupulous Aurungzebe--that the lineal descendant of Baber, of -traditions of their enormous wealth, of the man whose genius devised and estabthe cruelties, jealousies, slaughter, and vio- lished so vast a sovereignty, should belation of all natural ties, in the fierce come the miserable and despised criminal struggle for Indian rule, are familiar to-to use no milder term-whose wretched most of us. We regard with horror and fragment of existence is only spared in ⚫ detestation, the atrocious barbarities un- compliance with, perhaps, an ordinarily der which our countrymen in India have correct, but, in this case, unwise and missuffered, but they find but too many par- directed clemency. Shah Akbar, the man allels in the chronicles of the empire. The who has lately borne, by virtue of his auaccession of each new monarch, was thority, so prominent a part in the atromarked by the holocaust of thousands of cious proceedings of the mutineers at Delvictims, whether in the ranks of the con hi, can lay no claim to the pity which tending armies who supported the pre- might, with justice, be accorded to his tensions of conflicting sons and brothers, unhappy predecessor and father, Shah or in the indiscriminate butchery of those Aulum, since, from the time of his acceswho might be supposed hostile to the new sion in 1806 to what was then less than sovereign. the shadow of a nominal sovereignty, his conduct has been marked by the weakest folly and, as regards his protectors, the British, by the grossest ingratitude and

The imperial city of Delhi especially, with its great treasures, its palaces and jeweled thrones, and all the sumptuous

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treachery. The power of the Mogul em- | Mahrattas, at the head of whom he pire had so utterly fallen into abeyance, marched against that city. In this conand the members of the Imperial family junction of affairs, Meer Jaffier, the pusilwere so little regarded or considered lanimous Rajah of Bengal, (raised to that since the period of Anglo-Indian govern- dignity by Lord Clive,) would willingly ment, that we have but little record of have purchased peace with the new empetheir individuality; the struggles of Aulum ror, a suggestion negatived decisively by II., first as Shah Zada, or hereditary his patron, who answered the Governor of prince, and afterwards as Emperor of the Patna's application for assistance in these Moguls, against the rebellious vassals of words: "Come to no terms, defend your the diadem of Delhi, and, at one time, city to the last; rest assured that the Engagainst the British owners of the vast ter- lish are staunch friends, and that they never ritories of Hindostan, certainly bring him desert a cause in which they have once conspicuously forward on the stage of In- taken a part." dian action; but it is a prominence accorded rather to his traditionary position than to any actual influence exercised by his proceedings on the politics of his native land. It may, perhaps, serve to account for the meager details which we are enabled to gather concerning the life of the present King of Delhi, if we give a brief sketch of the career of his father, and shortly trace, during what can hardly be termed the administration of Shah Aulum, the vicissitudes in which he was made the miserable sport of ill-fortune.

Alee Gohur, the oldest son of Alum Gheer II., succeeded to the ill-omened Mogul sovereignty in 1760, by the title of Aulum II. on the assassination of his father. His reign opened upon a foregone history of revolt and slaughter, in which no less than three of Aurungzebe's descendants were simultaneously put forward and supported by native princes, all professing fealty to the Imperial house. The disastrous battle of Panniput conspicuous for its carnage even amongst Indian conflicts - was what decided in a great measure the fate of India. In it the turbulent and warlike Mahrattas, who at that time had overrun nearly the entire territory of Hindostan, were completely defeated, scarcely a remnant being left of an army numbering 140,000 cavalry, whilst the prisoners alone amounted to 22,000. Ahmed Shah, the powerful Dooranee, to whom Aulum II. owed his victory and throne, having established him at Delhi, returned to Kabul, leaving him to contend alone with his distracted empire. The first attempt of the Emperor to repair his fallen fortunes, was directed against Patna; his army, allured by the prestige even now attaching to the imperial state, numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 men, including men of all races and religions, Afghans, Ghauts, Rohillas and

Owing to the impetuosity of the Mogul's troops, and the temerity of Ramnaraim, Governor of Bahar, an engagement took place outside the walls of the city, in which the Sepoys were routed, and most of the few English who supported them cut to pieces. There can be little doubt that had Shah Aulum followed up his advantage, Patna must have fallen into his hands; he delayed, however, until it was too late; for, on the arrival of Col. Calliand, with some English, and Meeran, at the head of 15,000 natives, his troops were routed, and he himself compelled to fly to Bahar. The ardor with which the pursuit was conducted, left Patna again in a defenseless state, and Aulum having returned to his besieging position, the fate of the city became most critical, when Captain Knox arrived with a small detachment of 200 Europeans, a battalion of Se. poys, and 300 cavalry; and with this small force completely routed the Emperor's army of 12,000 men. Even after this defeat, a possibility yet presented itself for Aulum to attack the province of Bahar advantageously, in consequence of the death of Meeran, the leader of the hostile troops, the loss of their commander occasioning the disbanding of the native soldiery.

The species of guerilla warfare occasioned by Aulum's incursions, little suited the views of the English; the expense incurred by the necessity of maintaining an army to oppose him, was a continual drain on their finances; and on the cessation of the rains in 1761, Major Carnac marched to Gyah Maunpore, where the Emperor was then stationed. The endeavors of the unfortunate monarch to increase his forces were unsuccessful, and he again, in the figurative language of the Oriental historian, "stretched the feet of trepidation on the boundless plains of despond

ency." But now, wearied out with re- | formidable and warlike of the Indian peated failures, unable to rely upon his tribes, and occupied a vast territory in own insolent subjects and allies, fearing the center of Hindostan, comprising the little from the Mahrattas after their late ancient sovereignties of Baglana and Beoverthrow at Panniput, and imagining japore, together with the provinces of that he might confide in his chief support- Berar, Bundelcund, Malwa, Candeish, and er, the Dooranee, Ahmed Shah, who had Goojerat; of this territory Poonah was effected the restoration of some tranquil- the capital city. The Mahrattas themlity after the late revolution at Delhi, selves first became a nation in the reign Aulum willingly listened to the overtures of Aurungzebe, when descending from of peace sent to him through Schitab the western hills, they pillaged successRoy, the brave Governor of Patna. Three fully their wealthy neighbors of the plain. or four years elapsed before this treaty Soon with accumulating possessions, digwas finally arranged, during which Aulum nities and titles arose amongst them; the again ventured on war against the con- descendants of freebooters became mighty querors, was again defeated, and gladly rajahs, whilst the Peishwa, chief minister submitted to the terms proposed by the of the Sevajee, possessed all the state and Company. power of a monarch. Three of their chiefs, Tukajee Holkar, Madhajee Scindia, and Kishu Visagee, full of the desire to repair the disasters of Panniput, and avenge themselves on the Rohillas, whose aid to Shah Ahmed had been the leading cause of his success, took up a position in the neighborhood of Futtahpore, and with a body of 300,000 horse overran the neighboring provinces. They conceived that it would greatly facilitate the accomplishment of their object, could they succeed in placing Shah Aulum on the throne of Delhi investing their proceedings by that means with imperial authority. Aulum, unable to resist the alluring prospect, ratified a secret treaty, in which he ceded Corah and Allahabad to the Mahratta princes; and before taking any active measures, applied to the British Government for a recognition of his intention to resume his father's state and title. This was, of course, refused: the British declaring themselves irresponsible for any consequences resulting from the Emperor's withdrawal from their protection, warning him, also, against trusting to the treacherous Mahrattas, whose disaffection had so often proved pernicious to the Mogul dynasty. The bait, however, was too attractive, and in May, 1771, Aulum marched from Allahabad, at the head of 16,000 men. The first circumstance from which he might have augured what awaited him, was the appearance on the road to Delhi of an ambassador from the Mahratta chiefs, requiring from him grants and concessions amounting in value to ten lakhs of rupees. Hesitation was useless; the Emperor complied, and entered Delhi, on December 15, 1771, with as much magnificence as his resources permitted.

It is at this point of his history that Shah Aulum first experienced something like peace and respite from the vicissitudes that had hitherto alone marked his career. The British Governor, delegated by the East-India Company, assigned to him the province of Allahabad, inclusive of the district of Corah, yielding a revenue of twenty lakhs of rupees, together with an additional annual income of another twenty-six lakhs, in order to enable him adequately to maintain an imperial state. By way of acknowledgment, the Emperor made over to the Company the fertile provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, on the 12th of August, 1765. The city of Allahabad was chosen for the Imperial residence and here, could Aulum but have turned a deaf ear to evil counselors could he have appreciated the safety of the countenance and protection vouchsafed to him, he might have been spared the years of misery that followed. It had ever been the secret object and desire of his life to reassume the ancient state of the Mogul emperors, to enter the capital of his ancestors as their descendant and successor. This desire had been uniformly and politically repressed by the English. No steps towards its attainment could, therefore, be taken with their sanction. Before detailing the circumstances attending upon the Mogul's proceedings in this matter, it will be well to glance at the allies by whose aid he had sought the fulfillment of his project.

Mention has already been made of the battle of Panniput, in which the Mahrattas suffered such overwhelming loss. They might at the period of which we are writing be considered one of the most

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