spacious mosque quadrangle: "Jesus, on whom be peace, said: 'The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but build not upon it. The world endures but an hour; spend that hour in devotion.'" It was at Fatehpur that Akbar sought to set the seal upon his conquests in peace and in war by evolving from a comparative study of all the religions of his empire some permanent remedy for the profound denominational and racial discords by which, unless he could heal them, he foresaw that his life's work would assuredly some day be wrecked. Did he despair of any remedy unless he took the spiritual law, as he had already taken the civil law, into his own hands? Or was even as noble a mind as his not proof against the overweening _hubris_ to which a despotic genius has so often succumbed? One momentous evening, in the Hall of Disputations, he caused, or allowed, his devoted friend and confidant, Abul Fazl, to proclaim the Emperor's infallibility in the domain of faith. From claiming the right to explain away the Koran, which is the corner-stone of Islam, its alpha and omega, to repudiating it altogether, there was but a short step. Akbar very soon took it. He promulgated a new religion, which he called the Din-i-Ilahi, and a new profession of faith, which, instead of the old Islamic formula, "There is no God but God, and Mahomed is his prophet," proclaimed indeed in the same words the unity of God, but declared Akbar to be the one Viceregent of God. The new religion, theistic in doctrine, not only borrowed its prayers chiefly from the Parsees and its ritual from the Hindus, but practically abolished all Mahomedan observances. The orthodox Mahomedans naturally held up their hands in horror, and many preferred honourable exile to conformity. But the awe which Akbar inspired, and perhaps the acknowledged elevation of his motives, generally compelled at least outward acceptance during his lifetime. His Mahomedan subjects had, moreover, to admit that his desire to conciliate Hinduism did not blind him to its most perverse features. Whilst he abolished the capitation tax on Hindus and the tax upon Hindu pilgrims, he forbade infant marriages and, short of absolute prohibition, did all he could to discountenance the self-immolation of Hindu widows. To the Brahmans especially his condemnation, both implied and explicit, of the caste system was a constant stone of offence.