doms, adorned with splendid cities and populous towns,
since the public establishments of the sovereigns, among whom all the
revenues were expended, spent all they received in the purchase of
the produce of the land and labour of the surrounding country, which
required no other market.

Thus the successful rebellion of one viceroy converted Southern India
into an independent kingdom; and the successful rebellion, of his
lieutenant-governors in time divided it into four independent
kingdoms, each with a standing army of a hundred thousand men, and
adorned with towns and cities of great strength and magnificence.[13]
But they continued to depend upon the causes in which they
originated--the public establishments of the sovereign; and when the
Emperor Akbar and his successors, aided by their own [_sic_]
intestine wars, had conquered these sovereigns, and again reduced
their kingdoms to tributary provinces, almost all these cities and
towns became depopulated as the necessary consequence. The public
establishments were again moving about with the courts and camps of
the emperor and his viceroys; and drawing in their train all those
who found employment and subsistence in contributing to their
efficiency and enjoyment. It was not, as our ambassador in the
simplicity of his heart supposed, the disinclination of the emperors
to see any other towns magnificent, save those in which they resided,
which destroyed them, but their ambition to reduce all independent
kingdoms to tributary provinces.

Notes:

1. January, 1836.

2. A small town, thirty-six miles south of Delhi, situated in the
Gurgaon district, now included in the Panjab, but in the author's
time attached to the North-Western Provinces. The town is the chief
place in the 'pargana' of the same name.

3. Nineveh is not a well-chosen example, inasmuch as its decay was
due to deliberate destruction, and not to mere desertion by a
sovereign. It was deliberately burned and ruined by Nabopolassar,
viceroy of Babylon, and his allies, about 606 B.C. The decay of
Babylon was gradual. See note _post_, note 5.

4. Extract from a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated from
Ajmer, January 29, 1616. The words immediately following 'rubbish'
are 'His own [i.e. the King's] houses are of stone, handsome and
uniform. His great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as
far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or in houses worse than our
cottages. Yet, when the King li