lobe
should found an empire in Venus or Jupiter.

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that the East
India Company would ever become a great Asiatic potentate. The Mogul
empire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and tottering
to its fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance of
undiminished prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the same
month in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of
Conqueror of the World, continued to reign till Anne had been long on
the English throne. He was the sovereign of a larger territory than
had obeyed any of his predecessors. His name was great in the farthest
regions of the West. Here he had been made by Dryden the hero of a
tragedy which would alone suffice to show how little the English of that
age knew about the vast empire which their grandchildren were to conquer
and to govern. The poet's Mussulman princes make love in the style
of Amadis, preach about the death of Socrates, and embellish their
discourse with allusions to the mythological stories of Ovid. The
Brahminical metempyschosis is represented as an article of the Mussulman
creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn themselves with their husbands
after the Brahminical fashion. This drama, once rapturously applauded by
crowded theatres, and known by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies,
is now forgotten. But one noble passage still lives, and is repeated by
thousands who know not whence it comes. [155]

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the East
India Company, that body had a great sway in the City of London. The
offices, which stood on a very small part of the ground which the
present offices cover, had escaped the ravages of the fire. The India
House of those days was a building of timber and plaster, rich with
the quaint carving and lattice-work of the Elizabethan age. Above the
windows was a painting which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing
on the waves. The whole edifice was surmounted by a colossal wooden
seaman, who, from between two dolphins, looked down on the crowds of
Leadenhall Street. [156] In this abode, narrow and humble indeed when
compared with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers which now
bears the same name, the Company enjoyed, during the greater part of the
reign of Charles the Second, a prosperity to which the history of trade
scarcely furnishes any parallel, and which excited the wonder, the