■WILLIAM AND MARY.

243

heaps and sequins in mountains; of palaces, compared withwhich Whitehall and Hampton Court were hovels; of armies-ten times as numerous as that which they had seen assembled atTilbury to repel the Armada. On the other hand, it was pro-bably not known to one of the statesmen in the Durbar of Agrathat there was near the setting sun a great city of infidels, calledLondon, where a woman reigned, and that she had given to anassociation of Frank merchants the exclusive privilege of freight-ing ships from her dominions to the Indian seas. That thisassociation would one day rule all India, from the ocean to theeverlasting snow, would reduce to profound obedience greatprovinces which had never submitted to Akbar’s authority,would send Lieutenant Governors to preside in his capital, andwould dole out a monthly pension to his heir, would haveseemed to the wisest of European or of Oriental politicians asimpossible as that inhabitants of our globe should found anempire in Venus or Jupiter.

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicatedthat the East India Company would ever become a great Asiaticpotentate. The Mogul empire, though undermined by internalcauses of decay, and tottering to its fall, still presented todistant nations the appearance of undiminished prosperity andvigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the same month in which OliverCromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror ofthe "World, continued to reign till Anne had been long on theEnglish throne. He was the sovereign of a larger territory thanhad obeyed any of his predecessors. Ilis name was great inthe farthest regions of the West. Here he had been made byDryden the hero of a tragedy which vvould alone suffice to showhow little the English of that age knew about the vast empirewhich their grandchildren were to conquer and to govern. Thepoet’s Mussulman princes make love in the style of Amadis,preach about the death of Socrates, and embellish their dis-

1G*

chap.

XVIII.

1691 .