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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
SHERE ALL The genius of Dost Mahomed was to a great extent inherited by the majority of his sons. Akbar Khan, our opponent in 1842 ; Hyder Gholam, for many years the heir-apparent; Af zul, a successful soldier, and ultimately Ameer; Azim, not less successful in warfare, and, for a brief space, also de facto Ameer; Ameen, Akhram, both slain in battle, and Shereef,— were all in their way remarkable, both as types of the Afghan character and for their personal qualities. But none of these brothers inherited so much of their father's genius as Shere Ali, the late ruler of Afghanistan. Both as a soldier and as an administrator he approached most nearly to the greatest of theBarucksyes. Like his father, lie was above the influence of adverse fortune. He never appeared more noble than when crushed by defeat. But the fortitude which he evinced in the face of disaster deserted him in his days of prosperity. The temper of his mind was as keen and polished as could be imagined, but he lacked that serenity which had made Dost Mahomed as formidable as an octogenarian as he had been in the days of his fiery youth. Essentially Shere Ali's character was deficient in ballast. He was great in his conception, but weak in his execution of a design. He could nerve himself to bear stoically the greatest reverse of fortune; but he could not achieve the same victory when fortune had showered favours upon him and he was nursed in the lap of prosperity. His biography, rightly regarded, is of scarcely less interest than that of his father; and its tenour is the more important in proportion as the Afghan question has increased in significance during the last twenty years. Shere Ali was born in, or about, the year 1820. His mother, a lady of noble birth, was the same who had borne to Dost MahomedAkbar a...