or shahzade, padishah, or caliph, though it had been that darling of
European childhood--Haroun Alraschid himself.

But how could royalty enjoy any privilege of consecration in a land
where it was yet but two generations old? Even those two had been
generations of tumultuous struggle. Oftener had the Shah been seen
racing for his life on a Arab of the Hedjas, than eating
"dillecrout"[1] in peace, or dealing round a card-table grand crosses
of the Dooraunee order. The very origin of Affghan royalty fathoms the
shallowness of the water on which it floated. Three coincidences of
luck had raised Ahmed to the throne. One dark night his master Kouli
Khan, for the benefit of all Asia, had his throat cut. This Kouli, or
Nadir Shah, was much more of a monster than Ahmed; but not very much
less of a usurper. Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar,
Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him,
"Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the
Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or
pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder,
and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his
natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather
of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a
poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of.
Ahmed, after a splendid and tumultuous reign of twenty-six years, died
of cancer in 1773. His son Timour feigned distractedly for twenty
years. Dying in 1793, Timour left a heap of shahzades, amongst whom our
good friend Soojah was almost the youngest. As they call people
Tertius, Septimus, or Vicesimus, from their station in the line of
birth, let us call _him_--Penultimate Soojah Penultimate, if he was, he
could fight as respectably as the rest: and many was the kick he
bestowed on antepenultimate Mahmood. From that year 1793, the zenith of