Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/119

Rh of these contending chiefs, or the English power, which had already established itself in the South and East of the country? The latter alone had the ability to give peace to the distracted land, and, at the same time, might be relied upon to grant the most generous terms to the falling dynasty. Accordingly, on the 10th of September, 1803, Shah Alum, the last actual possessor of the once mighty throne of the Moguls, thankfully placed himself and his empire under the protection of the British commander, Lord Lake, and thus delivered himself from the cruelty and tyranny of his enemies.

The General, on his entrance to the palace, found the Emperor “seated under a small tattered canopy, his person emaciated by indigence and infirmity, his countenance disfigured by the loss of his eyes, and bearing marks of extreme old age and settled melancholy.” The arrangements made with him, under the directions of the Marquis Wellesley, then English Governor-General, were, no doubt, far beyond in liberality what the poor old man could have expected. Of this more hereafter, in its place.

The gigantic genius of Tamerlane, and the distinguished talents of the great Akbar, with the magnificent taste of Jehan, have thrown a sort of splendor over the crimes and follies of their descendants; and men kept reverence for the ruins of such greatness, and for the ideas which we have all associated in our childhood with the boundless wealth and glory suggested by the title of “The Great Moguls.” Under the new rule India began to return to peace, and such prosperity as was possible, with a still brighter day dawning upon her. Shah Alum enjoyed his honors and emoluments till 1806, when he was succeeded on his titular throne by his son. Shah Akbar, who held it until 1836, when its last possessor—the man whose portrait is here given—commenced his occupancy, and retained it till 1857, when a mad and hopeless infatuation led him to violate his treaty, and defy the power of the actual rulers of his empire, and precipitated him from the height to which his ambition had for a few weeks soared, into the depths of ignominious and unpitied exile.