play off Múrad against the victor. He accordingly persuaded Murad that his own views were entirely directed to heaven, not to a throne; that neither of his brothers Dára and Shujá was worthy of the crown, on account of their irreligion; that for the sake of old affection, and for the promotion of the true faith, he was desirous to aid Múrad to his father's throne, after which the only boon he should crave would be to retire into obscurity and devote the remainder of his life to the service of his creator.

In the meanwhile Shujá was defeated near the town of Mongeer by Sulaimán, Dára's eldest son, and at the same time intelligence arrived of the advance of a powerful army from the south, under the joint command of Aurangzeb and Múrad. The imperial army, flushed with success, was immediately led against the rebels, but Aurangzeb's valour and policy prevailed. Dára soon after led his whole forces in person against his two brothers, but his principal generals being gained over by the intrigues of Aurangzeb, his army was totally routed, and he himself compelled to seek shelter in the city of Agra. In the meantime the aged Emperor SháhJahán had in some degree recovered from his illness. He was well aware of Aurangzeb's crafty and ambitious character; and with the hope of drawing him into his power, he affected to overlook all that had passed, and to throw the whole blame on his eldest son Dára. But the emperor had to deal with a perfect master in the arts of duplicity. Aurangzeb affected the utmost loyalty, and under pretence of paying a visit to his father, in order to obtain his blessing and forgiveness, he at the same time gave instructions to his son Mohammed, who, with a select body of troops, took possession of the palace, and thus the aged monarch became a prisoner for life. Soon after Aurangzeb seized his brother Murad, whom he had so thoroughly deluded, and confined him in a strong fortress near Delhi. His brothers Dára and Shujá were still at large; but after two or three years' efforts, they were both secured and put to death by Aurangzeb's command. Múrad also shared their fate, and thus the throne of the Great Mogul became the undisputed possession of the crafty usurper. Aurangzeb required importuning before he would accept the imperial diadem. In a garden near Delhi, August 2, A.D. 1658, overcome by the earnest entreaties of his nobles, he at last submitted to receive the insignia of royalty, assuming at the same time the pompous title of 'A'lam-gír, or "conqueror of the world." It must be confessed, however, that Aurangzeb's long reign of half a century, notwithstanding the dishonourable means of which he availed himself to gain the sovereign power, was upon the whole distinguished for its prosperity. From the time that he was firmly established on the throne, the vigilance

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and steadiness of his administration preserved so much internal tranquillity in the empire, that historians have recorded few events worthy of notice. But though the prosperity of the empire appeared not to have suffered any diminution, causes were already in operation which menaced its future destruction at no very distant date. The intolerance of the emperor revived religious animosities between the various sects and parties subject to his sway. The perfidy and insincerity of which he had set such a glaring example spread through his court, so that he had neither a minister nor an officer worthy of confidence. Even his own sons seemed to emulate him in disobedience to their father and distrust of each other. Of all his nobles, the one he dreaded most was Amír Jumla, with whom he had been connected in frequent intrigues in the Dekhan, and by whose instrumentality he had been enabled to ascend the throne. his accession, Aurangzeb appointed this able man governor of Bengal ; but his experience told him that he was never safe while there was a man alive who had the power to hurt him. In order, therefore, to keep in employment this dangerous individual, he recommended to him an invasion of the kingdom of Assam, whose ruler had broken into Bengal during the distractions of the empire, and still remained unchastised. Jumla, who promised himself both plunder and renown from this expedition, immediately undertook the task; but after several victories on the part of the Mogul troops, they were compelled to return, their number greatly reduced by unfavourable weather and the violence of a disease to which their leader at the same time fell a victim. On hearing the news, the emperor remarked to the son of Jumla, whom he had recently made commander-inchief of the horse," You have lost a father, and I have lost the greatest and most dangerous of my friends."

In the third year of Aurangzeb's reign the empire was visited by a severe famine, in consequence of an extraordinary drought, by which all vegetation was suspended. On this trying occasion Aurangzeb used every exertion to diminish the evil; and his conduct forms a pleasing contrast to his previous actions. He remitted the rents and other taxes of the husbandmen; he opened his treasury without reserve, and employed its ample funds in purchasing corn in those provinces where it could be obtained, and in conveying it to such places as were most in want, where it was distributed among the people at very reduced prices. At his own court the utmost economy was observed, and no expense was allowed for luxury and ostentation. From the day he began to reign, he had himself so strictly superintended the revenues and disbursements of the state, that he was now in possession of ample resources,

which he so nobly applied to the relief of his people. In the seventh year of Aurangzeb's reign, his father Shah Jahán died; and though the life of the aged monarch had reached its natural period, yet some able historians have expressed their suspicion that his death was occasioned by a draught of the pousta, a species of slow poison. Such is the statement of Mill, the historian of India, though we know not on what authority. In fact, Aurangzeb could have no object in adding to the list of his crimes that of parricide; as he had nothing to fear from his father, now in the eighth year of his imprisonment in the strong fortress of Agra, weighed down at the same time by old age and a lingering disease. During the whole reign of Aurangzeb, the northern part of India, which constituted the Mogul empire under Akbar, continued in a peaceful and apparently flourishing state; but the bigotry and illiberal policy of the ruler towards his Hindu subjects roused a powerful enemy in the south, which ultimately triumphed over the proud house of Timur. The Marhattas for the first time began to show a formidable aspect under the guidance of the renowned chief Sevagí, who had been originally a leader of plunderers, inhabiting the mountain districts between Canara and Guzerat, He had acquired considerable power and influence during the civil wars that desolated the country at the commencement of Aurangzeb's reign. He at first tendered his allegiance to the usurper, and was invited to court, where he was loaded with insults which his haughty spirit could not brook. In the meantime he was imprisoned virtually, though not literally; his movements being strictly watched, and guards placed around his residence. With great address he managed to effect his escape, and, in conjunction with other chiefs of his nation, devoted the remainder of his life to the prosecution of a defensive war against Aurangzeb. The Marhatta chiefs acted entirely on the guerilla system; they eluded encounter in the field with the Mogul troops, but by the rapidity of their movements, aided by their knowledge of the country, they were enabled to annihilate the enemy in detail, by assailing all his weak points, cutting off his supplies, and laying waste those parts of the country through which he must pass. So enriched were they by the spoils thus obtained, and so strengthened by the number of Hindu adventurers who joined their ranks, that towards the close of Aurangzeb's reign the advantages of the war had so decidedly turned in their favour, that they thenceforth assumed the offensive.

The religious intolerance of Aurangzeb increased as he advanced in years, even so far as to make him blind to his best policy. He gradually withdrew from his Hindu subjects that toleration and kindness which had

so endeared to them the beneficent reign of Akbar and his two successors. He laid upon them a heavy capitation tax called the jazia, nor was this a sufficient protection to them, for his pious zeal rioted in the destruction of their ancient and magnificent temples, and in offering every insult to their religious feelings. By this ill-judged policy, which we must believe to have originated from the more violent of his religious advisers, he completely forfeited the allegiance and affections of the Rajputs, a brave, proud, and high-spirited class of Hindus, occupying the central provinces of the empire. When acting as governor of the Dekhan under his father, Aurangzeb had employed his talents in exciting discord and intrigues between the Mohammedan kings of Bíjapúr and Golconda. These kingdoms, in the course of his reign, he was enabled to seize and add to his already overgrown empire. The latter years of this monarch were passed in misery. He was suspicious of every one around him, and more particularly of his own children. The remembrance of Shah Jahán, of Dára, of Shujá, and of Múrad, now haunted him everywhere. How much he was influenced by remorse for his share in their fate, it is difficult to say; but his actions sufficiently showed how much he feared that a like measure might be meted out to himself. He expired in the city of Ahmednagar, on the 21st of February, 1707, in the eighty-ninth year of his life and fiftieth of his reign. Under Aurangzeb the Mogul empire had attained its utmost extent, consisting of twenty-one provinces, with a revenue of about forty millions sterling. Yet with all this outward show of prosperity, the heart of the state was thoroughly diseased. This was mainly owing to the character and conduct of the ruler, whose government was a system of universal mistrust, every man in office being employed as a spy on the actions of his neighbours. This spirit of suspicion chilled the zeal and attachment of his Mohammedan nobles, whom he on all occasions employed. His Hindu subjects were thoroughly alienated by his narrow views in religion. They were excluded from office, degraded by an odious tax, and their temples, with all that they had deemed sacred, subjected to profanation and destruction. It is true they were not directly persecuted: for it does not appear that any Hindu suffered death, imprisonment, or loss of property for his religious opinions. Yet the long course of degradation and insult, to which this patient race had to submit, at length roused among them the most determined spirit of resistance. It is a curious fact that, in the eleventh year of his reign, Aurangzeb imposed the strictest silence on all the historians within his realm: "preferring," as it is said, "the cultivation of inward piety to the ostentatious display of his actions." Yet to this very prohibition we

probably gave him his daughter or one of his relatives to wife. The wife of Aurelian is called on the medals Ulpia Severina: the name Ulpia renders it probable that she was of the family of Ulpius Crinitus. Aurelian is not mentioned under the reign of Gallienus; but under the warlike Claudius, the successor of Gallienus, he assisted in the defeat of Aureolus (A.D. 268), and gained a victory over the Sarmatians and Suevi. He was sent on an embassy to the Persians, but the time of this embassy is not ascertained.

In the year 270, Claudius died at Sirmium, and Aurelian, who was probably there at the time, was declared Emperor by the soldiers. Quintillus, the brother of Claudius, who was then in Italy, also assumed the purple, but his troops abandoned him in a few days, and he committed suicide. Aurelian came to Rome to confirm his authority, but after a short stay in the city he left it for Pannonia, to oppose the Goths or Scythians, as Zosimus calls them, who had made an irruption into Pannonia. A battle was fought with doubtful success, and the barbarians recrossed the Danube, and afterwards sued for peace. Gibbon states that Aurelian "withdrew the Roman forces from Dacia, and tacitly relinquished that great province to the Goths and Vandals." Tillemont places this event near the close of Aurelian's career. The wars of Aurelian with the Alemanni, Marcomanni, and Juthingi, as these enemies of Rome are variously called by various writers, are probably, as Gibbon remarks, the same war, and with the same people; and he adds, that it requires some care to conciliate and explain the historians. But no care can extract from the confused writers of the period a satisfactory history of the Alemannic wars. The following is briefly Gibbon's view of these wars, to which the writer would not implicitly subscribe.

În A.D. 270 the Alemanni, after devastating the country from the Danube to the Po, made a hasty retreat. Aurelian collected his troops, and marched (it is not said where he marched from) along the border of the Hercynian forest, and lay in wait for the barbarians on the opposite bank of the Danube. He allowed part of the barbarians to cross the river and defeated them, and then passing the Danube, placed himself in the rear of the remainder. In this emergency the Alemanni sent ambassadors to Aurelian's camp, who received them with all the pomp and splendour of military display. The barbarians asked for money as the price of their friendship with Rome, but Aurelian told them that they must submit without conditions, or feel his vengeance. It is said that Aurelian left to his generals the care of completing the Alemannic war, and that in his absence the barbarians escaped from their dangerous position, and retreated over the mountains into Italy. The devastation which they caused

in the territory of Milan recalled the Emperor to Italy, and a contest ensued in which the safety of Rome was at hazard. Aurelian sustained so severe a loss in the neighbourhood of Placentia, that his biographer remarks that the empire was near its dissolution. In a second battle, fought at Fanum in Umbria, the remembrance of which is preserved by an inscription found at Pesaurum, near Fanum (Gruter, p. 276, No. 3), the invaders were defeated, and the remnant of the Alemanni was destroyed in a third battle near Pavia (A.D. 271). During the Alemannic invasion, the Sibylline books were consulted at Rome at the recommendation of the Emperor, and the usual ceremonies were performed to avert the threatened danger.

After the defeat of the invaders, Aurelian came to Rome, and he punished with severity the authors of certain disturbances that had taken place in his absence. He is accused of putting to death not only those who had caused the disturbances, but some senators also on frivolous charges. He also commenced the restoration of the walls of Rome, which were intended to include a circuit of about twenty-one miles. Though these walls were commenced under Aurelian, they were not finished till the reign of Probus, or perhaps till the year A.D. 278, in the reign of Diocletian.

In the year 272, Aurelian set out on his Asiatic expedition. The Roman empire in the East was in the possession of a woman. Septimia Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, was the second wife and the widow of Odenathus, who had raised himself to imperial power in the East, and had been acknowledged by Gallienus as his colleague in the empire. Odenathus was assassinated at Emesa in Syria, A.D. 267, with his son Herodes or Orodes by his first wife; but Zenobia avenged her husband by putting the assassins to death, and she succeeded to his power. Palmyra in the Syrian desert, then the seat of an extensive commerce between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, was the residence of Zenobia, but her authority extended over Syria and a large part of Asia Minor, and she added Egypt to her sway while the warlike Emperor Claudius was engaged with the Goths. After her husband's death she decorated with the purple her son Athenodorus or Vaballath by her first husband. Her sons by Odenathus were Herennianus and Timolaus, to whom also, according to some statements, she gave the imperial insignia, and the title of Augusti. She also had them taught to speak the Latin language. But the government was administered by Zenobia, under the title of the Queen of the East, and she ruled her extensive empire with a manly vigour which secured the peace and respect of the neighbouring Arabs, Persians, and Armenians. This warrior queen, whose active life forms so strong a contrast with the secluded condi