as the most sensible
member of the family,[30] did an infinite deal of good by cheating
almost all the tradesmen of the town. Till he came down among them
with all his ragamuffins from Delhi, men thought the Padshahs and
their progeny must be something superhuman, something not to be
spoken of, much less approached, without reverence. During the latter
part of his stay my court was crowded with complaints; and no one has
ever since heard a scion of the house of Timur spoken of but as a
thing to be avoided--a person more prone than others to take in his
neighbours. One of these _kings_, who has not more than ten shillings
a month to subsist himself and family upon, will, in writing to the
representative of the British Government, address him as 'Fidwi
Khas', 'Your particular slave'; and be addressed in reply with 'Your
majesty's commands have been received by your slave.'[31]

I visited the college which is in the mausoleum of Ghazi-ud-din, a
fine building, with its usual accompaniment of a mosque and a
college. The slab that covers the grave, and the marble screens that
surround the ground that contains it, are amongst the most richly cut
things that I have seen. The learned and pious Muhammadans in the
institution told me in my morning visit that there should always be a
small hollow in the top of marble slabs, like that on Jahanara's,
whenever any of them were placed over graves, in order to admit
water, earth, and grass; but that, strictly speaking, no slab should
be allowed to cover the grave, as it could not fail to be in the way
of the dead when summoned to get up by the trumpet of Azrail on the
day of the resurrection.'[32] 'Earthly pride,' said they, 'has
violated this rule; and now everybody that can afford it gets a
marble slab put over his grave. But it is not only in this that men
have been falling off from the letter and spirit of the law; for we
now hear drums beating and trumpets sounding even among the tombs of
the saints, a thing that our forefathers would not have considered
possible. In former days it was only a prophet like Moses, Jesus, or
Muhammad, that was suffered to have a stone placed over his head.' I
asked them how it was that the people crowded to the tombs of their
saints, as I saw them at that of Kutb Shah in old Delhi, on the
Basant, a Hindoo festival. 'It only shows,' said they 'that the end
of the world is approaching. Are we not divided into seventy-two
sects among ourselves, all fal