of his changes appear to have been dictated by mere whim and restless curiosity, rather than by reason and judgment. His experimental spirit was displayed in the way he endeavoured to ascertain the natural religion of the untaught child. He separated a score of hapless babies from their mothers, and shut them up in a house where none might speak to them, in order to see what faith they would evolve. After three or four years the children were let out, and they came forth – dumb! The emperor's experiments were not always wise.
Nevertheless, he had wise counsellors, and it was an age of great literary abundance. Faizi was one of the most exquisite poets India has ever produced, and Abu-l-Fazl's "Book of Akbar" (Akbarnamah) , written in 1597, the third volume of which forms the celebrated Ain-i-Akbari, or "Acts of Akbar," will always retain its fascination as a minute record of the customs and institutions of the greatest age of the Moghul empire. As Col. H. S. Jarrett, one of its translators, has said, "it crystallizes and records in brief for all time the state of Hindu learning, and, besides its statistical utility, serves as an admirable treatise of reference on numerous branches of Brahmanical science and on the manners, beliefs, traditions, and indigenous lore, which for the most part still retain and will long continue their hold on the popular mind. Above all as a register of the fiscal areas, the revenue settlements, and changes introduced at various periods, the harvest returns, valuations and imposts throughout the provinces of the
