ered Northern India. He was still young, but still as incapable
of founding a stable empire as when he succeeded his father.

He left behind him writings which prove that, had his life been
spared, he would still have tried to govern on the old plan which had
broken in the hands of so many conquerors who had gone before him,
and in his own. Just before his death he drew up a system for the
administration of India. It was the old system of separate camps in a
fixed centre, each independent of the other, but all supervised by
the Emperor. It was an excellent plan, doubtless, for securing
conquered provinces, but it was absolutely deficient in any scheme
for welding the several provinces and their people into one
harmonious whole.

The accident which deprived Humayun of his life before the second
battle of Panipat had bestowed upon the young Akbar, then a boy of
fourteen, the succession to the empire of Babar, was, then, in every
sense, fortunate for Hindustan. Humayun, during his long absence, his
many years of striving with fortune, had learnt nothing and had
forgotten nothing. The boy who succeeded him, and who, although of
{9} tender years, had already had as many adventures, had seen as
many vicissitudes of fortune, as would fill the life of an ordinary
man, was untried. He had indeed by his side a man who was esteemed
the greatest general of that period, but whose mode of governing had
been formed in the rough school of the father of his pupil. This boy,
however, possessed, amid other great talents, the genius of
construction. During the few years that he allowed his famous general
to govern in his name, he pondered deeply over the causes which had
rendered evanescent all the preceding dynasties, which had prevented
them from taking root in the soil. When he had matured his plans, he
took the government into his own hands, and founded a dynasty which
flourished so long as it adhered to his system, and which began to
decay only when it departed from one of its main principles, the
principle of toleration and conciliation.

I trust that in the preceding summary I have made it clear to the
reader that whilst, in a certain sense, Babar was the founder of the
Mughal dynasty in India, he transmitted to his successor only the
idea of the mere conqueror. Certainly Humayun inherited only that
idea, and associating it with no other, lost what his father had won.
It is true that he ultimately regained a portion of it, but st