Later Mughals v1.c4.s5.3

v1.c4.s5.3

Some are inclined to deny Mr. Irvine the title of the Gibbon of India, on the ground that he wrote a mere narrative of events, without giving those reflections and generalizations that raise the *Decline and Fall* to the rank of a philosophical treatise and a classic in literature. But they forget that Indian historical studies are at present at a much more primitive stage than Roman history was when Gibbon began to write. We have yet to collect and edit our materials, and to construct the necessary foundation,—the bed-rock of ascertained and unassailable facts,—on which alone the superstructure of a philosophy of history can be raised by our happier successors. Premature philosophizing, based on unsifted facts and untrustworthy chronicles, will only yield a crop of wild theories and fanciful reconstructions of the past like those which J. T. Wheeler garnered in his now forgotten *History of India*, as the futile result of years of toil.