There are an immense
number of fine brick buildings in ruins, but not one of brick or
stone at present inhabited. The place was once evidently under the
former government the seat of some great public establishments,
which, with their followers and dependants, constituted almost the
entire population. The occasion which keeps such establishments at a
place no sooner passes away than the place is deserted and goes to
ruin as a matter of course. Such is the history of Nineveh,
Babylon,[3] and all cities which have owed their origin and support
entirely to the public establishments of the sovereign--any
revolution that changed the seat of government depopulated a city.
Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James the First of England to the
court of Delhi during the reign of Jahangir, passing through some of
the old capital cities of Western India, then deserted and in ruins,
writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'I know not by what policy
the Emperors seek the ruin of all the ancient cities which were nobly
built, but now be desolate and in rubbish. It must arise from a wish
to destroy all the ancient cities in order that there might appear
nothing great to have existed before their time.
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