Bentinck at Simla in 1831, was asked by an English officer of which eye the Mahárájá was blind. His answer well illustrated the attitude of his Court towards him. 'The splendour of his face is such,' said the Fakír, 'that I have never been able to look close enough to discover.'
The Mahárájá was endowed with some of the most conspicuous and undoubted signs and characteristics of greatness. Judged from a commonplace, ethical standpoint, and measured by a conventional rule, he had no moral character at all. He had a large and indeed an unusual share of the weaknesses and vices which grow up, like ill weeds, in human nature, and his moral being seemed, at a superficial glance, as dwarfed and distorted as its physical envelope. He was selfish, false and avaricious; grossly superstitious, shamelessly and openly drunken and debauched. In the respectable virtues he had no part; but in their default he was still great. With him, as with the most illustrious leaders of men, from Cæsar and Alexander to Napoleon, intellectual strength was not allied to moral rectitude. He was great because he possessed in an extraordinary degree the qualities without which the highest success cannot be attained; and the absence of the commonplace virtues which belong to the average citizen neither diminished nor affected in any way the distinction of his character. He was a born ruler, with the natural genius of command. Men obeyed him by instinct and because they had no power to disobey. The
