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Rh of the Shah Namah and the Ramayana; a multitude of exquisite monuments of the Moslem faith, inspired by analogies in far western lands of Islam, but modified, and, if one may say so, sensualized by the grosser architecture of India; a few provinces still owning Mohammedan rulers; a large Moslem minority content to dwell among "infidels" and to obey the behests of the Christians from the distant islands of the West – such are the chief legacies of Islam to India. Nine centuries of association have produced no sensible fusion between the Moslem and the Hindu, any more than two centuries of intercourse have blended either with the dominant English. There are those who believe that the contact of Western energy with Eastern thought, the infusion of European literature in the subtle Indian mind, and the reaction of the ancient philosophies of the Brahman schools upon the imagination of the West, may end in generating a new force in the world, perchance an Indian nation combining the profound speculations of the East with the progressive activities of Europe. Prophecy is no part of the historian's duty; but if any forecast may be deduced from the long period of alien rule surveyed in the preceding pages, it is not favourable to any hopes of such a consummation. The conquerors of India have come in hordes again and again, but they have scarcely touched the soul of the people. The Indian is still, in the main, what he always was, in spite of them all; and however forcible the new and unprecedented influences now at work upon an instructed minority,