sea of dark
green foliage, are, next to the Kutub Minar, the most conspicuous
feature in the plain of Delhi. Endowed with many brilliant and amiable
qualities, Humayun was not made of the same stuff as either his father
or his son. Driven out of India by the Afghans, whom Baber had defeated
but not subdued, he had, it is true, in a great measure reconquered it,
when a fall from the top of the terraced roof of his palace at Delhi
caused his death at the early age of forty-eight. But would he have
been able to retain it? He had by no means crushed the forces of
rebellion which the usurper Sher Shah had united against Moghul rule,
and which were still holding the field under the leadership of the
brilliant Hindu adventurer Hemu. Delhi itself was lost within a few
months of Humayun's death, and it was again at Panipat, just thirty
years after his grandfather's brilliant victory, that the boy Akbar had
in his turn to fight for the empire of Hindustan. He too fought and won,
and when he entered Delhi on the very next day, the empire was his to
mould and to fashion at the promptings of his genius.

Akbar was not yet fourteen, but, precocious even for the East, he was
already a student and a thinker as well as an intrepid fighter. He
showed whither his meditations were leading him as soon as he took the
reins of government into his own hands. There had been great conquerors
before him in India, men of his own race and creed--the blood of Timur
flowed in his veins--and men of other races and of other creeds. They
too had founded dynasties and built up empires, but their dynasties had
passed away, their empires had crumbled to pieces. What was the reason?
Was it not that they had established their dominion on force alone, and
that when force ceased to be vitalised by their own great personalities
their dominion, having struck no root in the soil, withered away and
perished? Akbar, far ahead of his times, determined to try another and a
better way by seeking the welfare of the populations he subdued, by
dispensing equal justice to all races and creeds, by courting loyal
service from Hindus as well as Mahomedans, by giving them a share on
terms of complete equality in the administration of the country, by
breaking down the social barriers between them, even those which hedge
in the family. He was a soldier, and he knew when and how to use force,
but he never used force alone. He subdued the Rajput states, but he won
the allegiance