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this kitid for $0 years and more, that the Gaekwars were: able to fix upon Baroda as their capital; but even then the confusions and wars did not cease for several decades During the first half of this eighteenth century there were several occasions when the people of Gujarat. were called upon to pay the simultaneous blackmail demands ofsome four Mahratta and two Moghul generals. And even when the nominal supremacy temporarily rested with the one or the other of them, war and plunder’ was always in prospect. There was the name of peace for the first time in about the middle of the century when the Moghuls were quite driven away, but still the Peshwa and the Gaekwar were ruling side by side and on jealous terms in the country. The Koli and other turbulent tribes did not lose their opportunity of benefit- ing by this state of things, and it may be said that the whole of this century and apart of the nineteenth were periods of war and plunder throughout the country. Even Baroda afforded no scope for the rise of peaceful arts ; for, ever since it became the capital of princes, it also became the centre of intrigue in high quarters and low.
As might have been expected, this state of things put an absolute stop to the growth of any such poetry as the province had witnessed in the previous century. But the flame that had once been kindled did not become quite extinct. It began td burn with an altered hue and
