216 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
modem states. The Roman, which before its decline was 
pre-eminent among nations, standing like a mighty 
Colossus amid the sovereignties by which it was sur- 
rounded, owed its foundation to an outcast, whose 
very birth was at once a mystery and a reproach. 
He gathered within the rude walls of a hamlet a few 
vagabonds, who lived by robbing the honest com- 
munity by whom they were discarded ; and from this 
petty concourse of plunderers arose that vast empire 
which finally embraced under its dominion almost 
the whole civilized earth. Those walls over which 
the brother of the founder leaped in contempt, and 
for which he paid the forfeit of his life, became the 
nucleus of a city memorable in ancient times as 
the greatest capital in the world, and even now con- 
secrated by associations which rank it as the first in 
renown, if not in splendour. The Mahratta power 
had a similar beginning to that founded by Ro- 
mulus on the plains of Italy. Though less mighty, 
it has nevertheless based itself upon that of the 
Mogul, which, under the descendants of the house of 
Timur, rose to an eminence scarcely inferior to the 
ancient Roman. An adventurer and his predatory fol- 
lowers, few, indeed, but desperate, laid the foundation 
of a state which has long contested the supremacy of 
the British arms, and is at this moment the only power 
in India capable of disputing that supremacy. It has 
indeed lately declined, but its energies are by no 
means extinguished ; they are still formidable, and 
likely to demand a vigorous resistance, whenever poli- 
tical oppression or personal ambition may call them into 
exercise. 
