Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/212

206 traders upon whose small beginnings in the east and west of his wide dominions he had hardly condescended to bestow a glance. When Lord Lake entered Delhi in 1803, he was shown a miserable blind old imbecile, sitting under a tattered canopy. It was Sháh-'Álam, 'King of the World,' but captive of the Maráthás, a wretched travesty of the Emperor of India. The British General gravely saluted the shadow of the Great Mogul. To such a pass had the empire of Akbar been brought by the fatal conscience of Aurangzíb. The ludibrium rerum humanarum was never more pathetically played. No curtain ever dropped on a more woeful tragedy.

Yet Akbar's Dream has not wholly failed of its fulfilment. The heroic bigotry of Aurangzíb might indeed for a while destroy those bright hopes of tolerant wisdom, but the ruin was not for ever. In the progress of the ages the 'vision glorious' has found its accomplishment, and the desire of the great Emperor has been attained. Let Akbar speak in the latest words of our own lost Poet: –

'Me too the black-winged Azrael overcame, But Death hath ears and eyes; I watched my son, And those that follow'd, loosen, stone from stone, All my fair work; and from the ruin arose The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even As in the time before; but while I groan'd, From out the sunset pour'd an alien race, Who fitted stone to stone again, and Truth, Peace, Love and Justice came and dwelt therein.