My aim, as I said, was to take the initiative in the slow work of the regeneration of national character.  I had no wish but to awaken high and noble sentiments in Italian hearts; and if all the literary men in the world had assembled to condemn me in virtue of strict rules, I should not have cared a jot, if, in defiance of all existing rules, I succeeded in inflaming the heart of one single individual.  And I will also add, who can say that what causes durable emotion is unorthodox?  It may be at variance with some rules and in harmony with others; and those which move hearts and captivate intellects do not appear to me to be the worst.

BABER

(1482-1530)

BY EDWARD S. HOLDEN

The emperor Baber was sixth in descent from Tamerlane, who died in 1405.  Tamerlane’s conquests were world-wide, but they never formed a homogeneous empire.  Even in his lifetime he parceled them out to sons and grandsons.  Half a century later Trans-oxiana was divided into many independent kingdoms each governed by a descendant of the great conqueror.

When Baber was born (1482), an uncle was King of Samarkand and Bokhara; another uncle ruled Badakhshan; another was King of Kabul.  A relative was the powerful King of Khorasan.  These princes were of the family of Tamerlane, as was Baber’s father,—­Sultan Omer Sheikh Mirza, who was the King of Ferghana.  Two of Baber’s maternal uncles, descendants of Chengiz Khan, ruled the Moghul tribes to the west and north of Ferghana; and two of their sisters had married the Kings of Samarkand and Badakhshan.  The third sister was Baber’s mother, wife of the King of Ferghana.

The capitals of their countries were cities like Samarkand, Bokhara, and Herat.  Tamerlane’s grandson—­Ulugh Beg—­built at Samarkand the chief astronomical observatory of the world, a century and a half before Tycho Brahe (1576) erected Uranibourg in Denmark.  The town was filled with noble buildings,—­mosques, tombs, and colleges.  Its walls were five miles in circumference[2].

[Footnote 2:  Paris was walled in 1358; so Froissart tells us.]

Its streets were paved (the streets of Paris were not paved till the time of Henri IV.), and running water was distributed in pipes.  Its markets overflowed with fruits.  Its cooks and bakers were noted for their skill.  Its colleges were full of learned men, poets[3], and doctors of the law.  The observatory counted more than a hundred observers and calculators in its corps of astronomers.  The products of China, of India, and of Persia flowed to the bazaars.

[Footnote 3:  “In Samarkand, the Odes of Baiesanghar Mirza are so popular, that there is not a house in which a copy of them may not be found.”—­Baber’s.  ‘Memoirs.’]