TIMOUR, OR TAMERLANE. FROM the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hand of Timour; his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the west, which already trembled at his name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable though narrow sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia, and the lord of so many tomans, or myriads of horse, was not master of a single galley. The two passages of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this great occasion they forgot the difference of religion, to act with union and firmness in the common cause: the double straits were guarded with ships and fortifications; and they separately withheld the transports which Timour demanded of either nation, under the pretence of attacking their enemy. At the same time they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant embassies, and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honours of victory. Soliman, the son of Bajazet, implored his clemency for his father and himself; accepted, by a red patent, the investiture of the kingdom of Romania, which he already held by the sword; and reiterated his ardent wish of casting himself in person at the king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the east, the two journeys of Mohammed into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle, and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity, and I cannot perceive in the life or writings of Mohammed that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted or forced to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mohammed have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mohammed feet of the king of the world. was addicted to religious contemplation: Greek Emperor-either John or Manuel each year, during the month of Ramadan,-submitted to pay the same tribute he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction-that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the Apostle of God.-Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The which he had stipulated with the Turkish sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mogul arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compassa design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This remote and perhaps imaginary danger was averted by the submission of the sultan of Egypt; the honours of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timour; and a rare gift of a giraffe, or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarcand the tribute of the African world. Our imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a Mogul, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates and almost accomplishes the invasion of the Chinese empire. Timour was urged to this enterprise by national honour and religious zeal. The torrents which he had shed of Mussulman blood could be expiated only by an equal destruction of the infidels; and as he now stood at the gates of paradise, he might best secure his glorious entrance by demolishing the idols of China, founding mosques in every city, and establishing the profession of faith in one God and his prophet Mohammed. The recent expulsion of the house of Zingis was an insult on the Mogul name; and the disorders of the empire afforded the fairest opportunity for revenge. The illustrious Hongvou, founder of the dynasty of Ming, died four years before the battle of Angora; and his grandson, a weak and unfortunate youth, was burnt in his palace, after a million of Chinese had perished in the civil war. Before he evacuated Anatolia, Timour despatched beyond the Sihoon a numerous army, or rather colony, of his old and new subjects, to open the road, to subdue the pagan Calmucks and Mungals, and to found cities and magazines in the desert; and by the diligence of his lieutenant, he soon received a perfect map and description of the unknown regions, from the source of the Irtish to the wall of China. During these preparations, the emperor achieved the final conquest of Georgia, passed the winter on the banks of the Araxes, appeased the troubles of Persia, and slowly returned to his capital, after a campaign of four years and nine months. On the throne of Samarcand, he dis played in a short repose his magnificence and power; listened to the complaints of the people, distributed a just measure of rewards and punishments, employed his riches in the architecture of palaces and temples, and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the oriental artists. The marriage of six of the emperor's grandsons was esteemed an act of religion as well as of paternal tenderness; and the pomp of the ancient caliphs was revived in their nuptials. They were celebrated in the gardens of Canighul, decorated with innumerable tents and pavilions, which displayed the luxury of a great city and the spoils of a victorious camp. Whole forests were cut down to supply fuel for the kitchens; the plain was spread with pyramids of meat and vases of every liquor, to which thousands of guests were courteously invited; the orders of the state, and the nations of the earth, were marshalled at the royal banquet; nor were the ambassadors of Europe (says the haughty Persian) excluded from the feast; since even the casses, the smallest of fish, find their place in the ocean. The public joy was testified by illuminations and masquerades; the trades of Samarcand passed in review ; and every trade was emulous to execute some quaint device, some marvellous pageant, with the materials of their peculiar art. After the marriage-contracts had been ratified by the cadhis, the bridegrooms and their brides retired to the nuptial chambers; nine times, according to the Asiatic fashion, they were dressed and undressed; and at each change of apparel, pearls aud rubies were showered on their heads, and contemptuously abandoned to their attendants. general indulgence was proclaimed; every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people were free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timour may remark, that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy period of his life was the two months in which he ceased A more to exercise his power. But he was soon ments. In his religion he was a zealous, awakened to the cares of government and though not perhaps an orthodox, Muswar. The standard was unfurled for the sulman; but his sound understanding invasion of China; the emirs made their may tempt us to believe that a superreport of two hundred thousand, the stitious reverence for omens and propheselect and veteran soldiers of Iran and cies, for saints and astrologers, was only Touran; their baggage and provisions affected as an instrument of policy. In were transported by five hundred great the government of a vast empire he stood wagons, and an immense train of horses alone and absolute, without a rebel to and camels; and the troops might pre-oppose his power, a favourite to seduce pare for a long absence, since more than his affections, or a minister to mislead six months were employed in the tranquil | his judgment. It was his firmest maxim, journey of a caravan from Samarcand to that, whatever might be the consequence, Pekin. Neither age nor the severity of the word of the prince should never be the winter could retard the impatience of disputed or recalled; but his foes have Timour; he mounted on horseback, maliciously observed, that the commands passed the Sihoon on the ice, marched of anger and destruction were seventy-six parasangs (three hundred strictly executed than those of beneficence miles) from his capital, and pitched his and favour. His sons and grandsons, of last camp in the neighbourhaod of Otrar; whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his where he was expected by the angel of decease, were his first and most submisdeath. Fatigue, and the indiscreet use sive subjects; and whenever they deviated of iced water, accelerated the progress of from their duty, they were corrected, his fever; and the conqueror of Asia according to the laws of Zingis, with the expired in the seventieth year of his age, bastonade, and afterwards restored to thirty-five years after he had ascended honour and command. Perhaps his the throne of Zagatai. His designs were heart was not devoid of the social virtues; lost; his armies were disbanded; China perhaps he was not incapable of loving was saved; and fourteen years after his his friends and pardoning his enemies; decease, the most powerful of his children but the rules of morality are founded on sent an embassy of friendship and com- the public interest; and it may be suffimerce to the court of Pekin. cient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch The fame of Timour has pervaded the for the liberality by which he is not imeast and west; his posterity is still in- poverished, and for the justice by which vested with the imperial title; and the he is strengthened and enriched. admiration of his subjects, who revered maintain the harmony of authority and him almost as a deity, may be justified obedience, to chastise the proud, to proin some degree by the praise or confes-tect the weak, to reward the deserving, sion of his bitterest enemies. Although to banish vice and idleness from his he was lame of a hand and foot, his form dominions, to secure the traveller and and stature were not unworthy of his merchant, to restrain the depredations rank; and his vigorous health, so essen- of the soldier, to cherish the labours of tial to himself and to the world, was the husbandman, to encourage industry corroborated by temperance and exercise. and learning, and, by an equal and In his familiar discourse, he was grave moderate assessment, to increase the and modest, and if he was ignorant of the revenue without increasing the taxes, Arabic language, he spoke with fluency are indeed the duties of a prince: but, and elegance the Persian and Turkish in the discharge of these duties, he finds idioms. It was his delight to converse an ample and immediate recompense. with the learned on topics of history and Timour might boast that at his accession science; and the amusement of his leisure to the throne, Asia was the prey of hours was the game of chess, which he anarchy and rapine, whilst under his improved or corrupted with new refine- prosperous monarchy a child, fearless Το Το and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold umphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his from the east to the west. Such was his servants, and even his sons, forgot their confidence of merit, that from this refor- master and their duty. The public and mation he derived an excuse for his vic-private injuries were poorly redressed by tories, and a title to universal dominion. the tardy rigour of inquiry and punishment; The four following observations will serve and we must be content to praise the into appreciate his claim to the public grati-stitutions of Timour as the specious idea tude; and perhaps we shall conclude of a perfect monarchy. 4. Whatsoever that the Mogul emperor was rather the might be the blessings of his administrascourge than the benefactor of mankind. tion, they evaporated with his life. 1. If some partial disorders, some local reign rather than to govern, was the oppressions, were healed by the sword of ambition of his children and grandTimour, the remedy was far more perni- children, the enemies of each other and cious than the disease. By their rapine, of the people. A fragment of the empire cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, Persia might afflict their subjects; but his youngest son; but after his decease, whole nations were crushed under the the scene was again involved in darkness footsteps of the reformer. The ground and blood; and before the end of a which had been occupied by flourishing century, Transoxiana and Persia were cities was often marked by his abomin- trampled by the Uzbecks from the north, able trophies-by columns or pyramids of and the Turkmans of the black and human heads. Astracan, Carizme, Delhi, white sheep. The race of Timour would Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, have been extinct, if a hero, his descendBoursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others, ant in the fifth degree, had not fled were sacked, or burned, or utterly de- before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of stroyed in his presence, and by his Hindostan. His successors-the great troops; and perhaps his conscience Moguls-extended their sway from the would have been startled if a priest or mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, philosopher had dared to number the and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. millions of victims whom he had sacri- Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their emficed to the establishment of peace and pire has been dissolved; their treasures order. 2. His most destructive wars of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian were rather inroads than conquests. He robber; and the richest of their kinginvaded Turkestan, Kipzak, Russia, Hin- doms is now possessed by a company of doostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Christian merchants, of a remote island Georgia, without a hope or a desire of in the northern ocean.—Ibid. preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. 3. The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he laboured to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labours were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted by the absence of the conqueror. While he tri [THOMAS JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES. 1743-1826.] CHARACTER OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in war, where, hearing all suggestions, he an easy and correct style. This he had selected whatever was best; and certainly acquired by conversation with the world, no general ever planned his battles more for his education was merely reading, judiciously. But if deranged during the writing, and common arithmetic, to course of the action, if any member of his which he added surveying at a later day. plan was dislocated by sudden circum- His time was employed in action chiefly, stances, he was slow in a re-adjustment. | reading little, and that only in agriculThe consequence was, that he often ture and English history. His correfailed in the field, and rarely against an spondence became necessarily extensive, enemy in station, as at Boston and and with journalising his agricultural York. He was incapable of fear, meet- proceedings occupied most of his leisure ing personal dangers with the calmest un- hours within doors. On the whole his concern. Perhaps the strongest feature character was, in its mass, perfect, in in his character was prudence, never nothing bad, in a few points indifferent; acting until every circumstance, every and it may truly be said, that never did consideration was maturely weighed; re- nature and fortune combine more comfraining if he saw a doubt, but when once pletely to make a man great, and to place decided, going through with his purpose, him in the same constellation with whatwhatever obstacles opposed. His inte- ever worthies have merited from man an grity was most pure, his justice the most everlasting remembrance. For his was inflexible I have ever known; no motives the singular destiny and merit of leading of interest or consanguinity, of friendship the armies of his country successfully or hatred, being able to bias his decision. through an arduous war, for the estaHe was, indeed, in every sense of the blishment of its independence; of conword, a wise, a good, and a great man. ducting its councils through the birth of His temper was naturally irritable and a government, new in its forms and prinhigh toned; but reflection and resolution ciples, until it had settled down into a had obtained a firm and habitual ascend-quiet and orderly train; and of scrupuancy over it. If ever, however, it broke lously obeying the laws through the its bounds, he was most tremendous in whole of his career, civil and military, of his wrath. In his expenses he was which the history of the world furnishes honourable, but exact; liberal in contri- no other example. butions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid BOSWELL'S FIRST INTRODUCesteem proportioned to it. His person, TION TO DR. JOHNSON. you know was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish; his deportment ON Monday, the 16th of May, when I easy, erect, and noble, the best horseman was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlour, of his age, and the most graceful figure after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. that could be seen on horseback. Al-Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into though in the circle of his friends, where the shop; and Mr. Davies having perhe might be unreserved with safety, he ceived him, through the glass-door in the took a free share in conversation, his room in which we were sitting, advanccolloquial talents were not above medio-ing towards us he announced his awful crity, possessing neither copiousness of approach to me, somewhat in the manner ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, of an actor in the part of Horatio, when when called on for a sudden opinion, he he addresses Hamlet on the appearance was unready, short, and embarrassed. | of his father's ghost, "Look, my lord, it [JAMES BOSWELL. 1740-1795.] |