Page:HMElliotHistVol1.djvu/23

Rh herein, it would take these young Brutuses and Phocions a very short time to learn, that in the days of that dark period for whose return they sigh, even the bare utterance of their ridiculous fantasies would have been attended, not with silence and contempt, but with the severer discipline of molten lead or empalement. We should be compelled to listen no more to the clamours against resumption of rent-free tenures, when almost every page will show that there was no tenure, whatever its designation, which was not open to resumption in the theory of the law, and which was not repeatedly resumed in practice. Should any ambitious functionary entertain the desire of emulating the “exceedingly magnifical” structures of his Moghal predecessors, it will check his aspirations to learn, that beyond palaces and porticos, temples, and tombs, there is little worthy of emulation. He will find that, if we omit only three names in the long line of Dehli Emperors, the comfort and happiness of the people were never contemplated by them; and with the exception of a few saráís and bridges,—and these only on roads traversed by the imperial camps—he will see nothing in which purely selfish considerations did not prevail. The extreme beauty and elegance of many of their structures it is not attempted to deny; but personal vanity was the main cause of their erection, and with the small exception noted above, there is not one which subserves any purpose of general utility. His romantic sentiments may have been excited by the glowing imagery of Lalla Rookh, and he may have