PREFACE. 
Vll 
I have, therefore, endeavoured to divest the subject 
of much of its natural perplexity and dryness, in 
order to render it intelligible to the many, and not 
a sealed book accessible only to the few. 
It must necessarily happen that the lives of men 
whose days have been devoted to conquests, will afford 
less variety than the lives of those whose existence has 
been distinguished by a more diversified field of action, 
and a more varied tenour of circumstances: for the 
conqueror, however extended the sphere of his opera- 
tions, is always, so to speak, in the same element, 
and discloses therefore, at all times, pretty nearly the 
same, or at least similar, moral features under every 
aspect of his career. Nevertheless, there is much to 
arrest the reflections of thinking men, in viewing the 
issues resulting from the ambition of heroes, whose in- 
satiable thirst for glory causes them to look upon the 
ruin of countries and the subversion of empires with a 
bounding heart and a sparkling eye. Their actions are 
often the embryos of great moral revolutions : — this 
might be strikingly illustrated by the Mohammedan 
conquest of Hindostan, if here were the place to pur- 
sue such an inquiry. 
There will, in truth, be found much salutary food 
