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Shame were it if Princes and People gathered not together; to the end that they might bring me help. Of all the fair women of my chambers none is left to me but Mubarik Mahal. O Aftab! verily thou hast been this day overthrown by Destiny; yet God shall bless thee and restore thy fallen brightness." Francklin's Shah Alum has been constantly referred to.
"Are you sent by him?" "Perhaps," said Mahal, with a distrustful air. "But are you really the son of Kadja-sing?" "Yes, I tell you but where have you seen General Simon?" "If you are the son of Kadja-sing," resumed Mahal, continuing to regard Djalma with a suspicious eye, "what is your surname?"
Let us view it before starting for Serampore." Bidding farewell to Ananta, my friend and I were soon before the glory of Agra, the Taj Mahal. White marble dazzling in the sun, it stands a vision of pure symmetry. The perfect setting is dark cypress, glossy lawn, and tranquil lagoon. The interior is exquisite with lacelike carvings inlaid with semiprecious stones.
There is a style of architecture in the Orient: The Temple of Omar at Jerusalem has it. The Taj Mahal has it. Interiors crusted with the color of gems and mosaics and rich inlay; the Italian renaissance has it; splashed from a palette that knew no stint no economy. It's a brilliant, triumphant sort of pæan in which the notes are all notes of color. You have it, too and now I'm going to drive on.
In work man creates, whether the product is a bushel of potatoes from a space of once arid ground, or whether it is the Taj Mahal, Westminster Abbey or the Constitution of the United States, and so working he partakes something of the divine power of creation.
The tomb of Itmâd-ud-daulah, "the Lord High Treasurer," is on the east or left bank of the river, and is reached by crossing the pontoon bridge. It was built by Nur Mahal, the favourite wife of Jahangir, as a mausoleum for her father, Mirza Ghîas Beg, who, according to one account, was a Persian from Teheran, and by another a native of Western Tartary.
His accounts were always in perfect order, but "he liked bribes, and showed much boldness in demanding them." On his death his son, Asaf Khan, the father of Mumtaz Mahal, was appointed to succeed him. Itmâd-ad-daulah and his wife are buried in the central chamber; his brother and sister and other members of his family occupy the four corners.
Shah Jahan erected the Jami Masjid mosque at Delhi, and the costly Muti Masjid mosque in Agra Fort, as well as the splendid Khas Mahal, the Diwan-i-ain, and the Diwan-i-khas, likewise in the fort but more satisfying art is represented in the Taj than in all the other structures of his reign.
Anyhow, there it stands, on what was once a lonely strip of sand and sea, a memorial if one can only believe the stone story, now nearly a hundred years old of a great love and a great sorrow; and one can envy the one and pity the other just as much when looking at this queer, unsightly monument as when one stands on the pure marble threshold of the exquisite Taj Mahal at Agra, and reads that it too, in all its grace and beauty, was reared "in memory of an undying love."
Less disciplined are these than zion towns, but nearer the happiness of insensibility the white marbled and jeweled Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal Jehan the builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing the thirty-million-dollar peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a series of terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental splendor.
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