His

the richest and most powerful empires on earth, we may expect to find an union of the great qualities of a statesman and general; and Baber possessed the leading qualifications of both in a high degree. But we are not, in that age, to look for any deeplaid or regular plans of civil polity, even in the most accomplished princes. Baber's superiority over the chiefs to whom he was opposed, arose principally from his active disposition and lively good sense. Ambitious as he was, and fond of conquest and of glory in all its shapes, the enterprise in which he was for the season engaged, seems to have absorbed his whole soul, and all his faculties were exerted to bring it, whatever it was, to a fortunate issue. His elastic mind was not broken by discomfiture, and few princes who have achieved such glorious conquests, have suffered more numerous or more decisive defeats. personal courage was conspicuous during his whole life, but it may be doubted whether, in spite of his final success, he was so much entitled to the character of a great captain, as of a successful partisan and a bold adventurer. In the earlier part of his career his armies were very small. Most of his expeditions. were rather successful inroads than skilful campaigns. But he showed a genius and a power of observation which, in other circumstances, would have raised him to the rank of the most accomplished commanders. As he had the sense to perceive the errors which he committed in his earlier years, so, with the superiority that belongs to a great mind, conscious of its powers, he always readily acknowledges them. His conduct," during the rebellion of the Moghuls at Kâbul, and the alarm of his army in the war with Rana Sanka, bears the indications of the most heroic magnanimity. The latter period of his life is one uninterrupted series of success.

"But we are not to expect in Baber that perfect and refined character which belongs only to modern times and Christian countries. We sometimes see him order what, according to the practice of modern war, and the maxims of a refined morality, we should consider as cruel executions. We find him occasionally the slave of vices, which, even though they belonged to his age and country, it is not possible to regard in such a man without feelings of regret. We are disappointed to find one possessed of so refined an understanding, and so polished a taste, degrading both, by an obtrusive and almost ridiculous display of his propensity to intoxication. It may palliate, though it cannot excuse this offence, that it appears to have led him to no cruelty or harshness to his servants or those around him; that it made him neglect no business, and that it seems to have been produced solely by the ebullition of high spirits in his gay and social temper. We turn from Baber, the slave of such vices, which probably hastened on a premature old age, and

VOL. II.-PART II,

T

tended to bring him to an early grave, and view him with more complacency, encouraging, in his dominions, the useful arts and polite literature, by his countenance and his example. We delight to see him describe his success in rearing a new plant, in introducing a new fruit-tree, or in repairing a decayed aqueduct, with the same pride and complacency that he relates his most splendid victories. No region of art or nature seems to have escaped the activity of his research. He had cultivated the art of poetry from his early years, and his Diwân, or collection of Turki poems, is mentioned as giving him a high rank among the poets of his country. Of this work I have not been able to learn that any copy exists. Many of the odes in it are referred to in his Memoirs, and quoted by the first couplet. A few specimens of his Persian poetry are also given, which show much of that terseness and delicacy of allusion so much admired in the poets whom he imitated. His Persian Mesnevi, which he published by the name of Mabeiin, I have never met with, though Abulfazl speaks of it as having a great circulation; nor have I seen his versification of the tract of Khwâjeh Ehrar, which has been already mentioned. He also wrote a work on Prosody, and some smaller productions, which he sometimes alludes to in his Memoirs. He was skilful in the science of music, on which he wrote a treatise. But his most remarkable work is, undoubtedly, the Memoirs of his own Life, composed by him in the Turki tongue. The earlier part of them is written with great spirit, and the whole bears strong characteristics of an ingenious, active, and intelligent mind. No history, perhaps, contains so lively a picture of the life and opinions of an eastern prince. The geographical descriptions which he gives of his hereditary kingdom, and of the various countries which he subdued, have, what such descriptions seldom possess, not only great accuracy, but the merit of uncommon distinctness. The Memoirs, however, will be found of unequal value, according to the periods of which they treat. Some years, particularly in the latter periods of his life, present little more than a dry chronicle of uninteresting events, probably written down as they occurred, and never

"Abulfazl, in the introduction to the Akbernameh, quotes a few of his Persian verses with approbation. The following quatrain is not unhappy in the original:Though I am not related to Dervishes,

Yet I am devoted to them heart and soul.

Say not that the state of a prince is remote from that of a Dervish,
Though a king, I am the Dervish's slave.

"He also gives the following elegant Matlaa

I know that separation from thee were my death,

Else might I tear myself from this city.

But, while my heart is encircled with the locks of my beloved,
I forget the world and its cares."

re-written, as the earlier period certainly have been. It probably was his intention to have connected the whole, and completed them in the same strain of happy narrative that runs through the first half of them, a design which it is to be regretted that he did not live to execute.

“A striking feature in Baber's character is, his unlikeness to other Asiatic princes. Instead of the stately, systematic, artificial character, that seems to belong to the throne in Asia, we find him natural, lively, affectionate, simple, retaining on the throne all the best feelings and affections of common life. Change a few circumstances arising from his religion and country, and in reading the transactions of his life, we might imagine that we had got among the adventurous knights of Froissart. This, as well as the simplicity of his language, he owed to his being a Tûrk. That style which wraps up a worthless meaning in a mist of words, and the etiquette which annihilates the courtier in the presence of his prince, were still, fortunately for Baber, foreign to the Turki race, among whom he was born and educated.

Upon the whole, if we review with impartiality the history of Asia, we shall find few princes who are entitled to rank higher than Baber in genius and accomplishments. His grandson Akber may perhaps be placed above him for profound and benevolent policy. The crooked artifice of Aurengzîb is not entitled to the same distinction. The merit of Chengiz Khan, and of Tamerlane, terminates in their splendid conquests, which far excelled the achievements of Baber: but in activity of mind, in the gay equanimity and unbroken spirit with which he bore the extremes of good and bad fortune, in the possession of the manly and social virtues, so seldom the portion of princes, in his love of letters, and his success in the cultivation of them, we shall probably find no other Asiatic prince who can justly be placed beside him.”

SOME delicacy ought, it has been said, to be felt in subjecting the "Reports of the Lords' Committees appointed to search various documents for all matters touching the dignity of a Peer of the Realm," to critical remarks; but we are at a loss to understand upon what grounds their lordships' labours should be exempted from observation. Abounding as they do in statements connected with the interests, either inchoate or perfect, which numerous individuals possess in ancient peerages, it strikes us, that these Reports ought to have been made the subject of examination, as they respectively appeared; that the public attention should have been directed to the learning and research which they occasionally display on points intimately connected with the constitutional history of this country; that the errors they contain should have been refuted; and that the validity of the novel doctrines which they inculcate should have been carefully investigated.

The Reports appeared in the following order:

FIRST REPORT, Presented to the House 12th July, 1819; ordered to be printed 25th May, 1820, and to be re-printed 17th February, 1823. Folio, pp. 489, with Appendixes.

SECOND REPORT. Ordered to be printed 26th July, 1820, pp. 6. These pages chiefly consist of corrections of the former Reportat THIRD GENERAL REPORT. Ordered to be printed 29th July, 1822,

pp. 240.

FOURTH GENERAL REPORT. Ordered to be printed 2d July, 1825, pp. 100.

The first Appendix consists of copies of all writs of summons from the 6th John to the end of the reign of Edward the Fourth, pp. 988, and forms two highly valuable volumes. That part of the contents which relate to the reign of Edward the First

will also be found in the first volume of "Parliamentary Writs," recently printed by the Record Commission, and the subsequent part will be included in the other volumes of that work; so that ultimately the contents of the Appendix to the First Report will be wholly reprinted, with the exception, perhaps, of the writs from the reign of John to the accession of Edward the First. The second, third, and fourth Appendixes consist of a few pages only, and contain some of the documents referred to in the Reports.

It is not our intention to take any further notice of the first three Reports, than to remind those who peruse them that the statements which they contain respecting early titles are sometimes erroneous, and consequently that the conclusions drawn from those statements are fallacious; that a decided bias is every where apparent against the principles upon which peerages have been claimed; but that, after allowing for these blemishes, it is impossible that any one can peruse those documents without gaining valuable information on the early legislature of England. or ro

The "Fourth Report" is chiefly occupied with an inquiry into the law of forfeiture as regards dignities: on this subject, however, we shall not offer any observation, but confine ourselves to the inquiry how far the opinions expressed in the following passages relative to baronies by writ are well founded.

It is observable, that Michael de la Pole, the father, had been summoned to, and sate in Parliament as a baron, in the 39th and subsequent years of Edward the Third, and in the reign of Richard the Second, until he was created Earl of Suffolk; and he would, therefore, according to modern decisions, have gained a dignity descendible to his heirs-general. His son, however, was not restored to that dignity, but only to the dignity of earl limited to heirs-male; as Aubrey de Vere, uncle of the Duke of Ireland, was restored only to the dignity of earl, without mention of his title to the dignity of baron. These circumstances, combined with the fact, that the descendants of many persons summoned to Parliament by writ before the reign of Richard the Second, were not afterwards summoned to Parliament, seem to give colour to the suggestions of former committees, that summons and sitting in Parliament did not originally create a right in the descendants of persons so summoned to require a like writ of summons; and though the descendants of earls, created earls by the crown by patent, or by solemn investiture by girding with the sword, were probably always summoned on the deaths of their respective ancestors, it may be doubted whether anciently their writs of summons, though addressed to them as earls, were not really issued to them, according to the charter of John, as barons, having the name and dignity of earls; as the general assembly of all the lay-peers seems to have been in early times usually denominated an assembly of barons. Perhaps the creation of barons by Letters Patent, which seems to have originated in the reign of Richard the Second, may have been founded on