disappeared, and the whole became fused into a style bearing the distinctive peculiarities of the Saracenic alone.

From the first there were adopted in the Saracenic style two or three elements, of which it has made special use. These are the dome, the pointed arch, minaret towers, and open arcades. The dome seems to have been a most ancient invention, being found among the remains both of the Pelasgians and the Jains. The Romans built domes upon drum-shaped buildings, and formed them of voussoirs, or sections of arches, such as are now adopted everywhere, strengthening the walls of their buildings (as of the Pantheon at Rome) by buttresses, and similar contrivances to counteract the immense lateral thrust. In the east, however, domes were everywhere built of level rings gradually contracted in width, just as English boys build oyster-shell grottoes and naturally became more pointed, than if built, like round arches, in true segments of a circle. The pointed arches seem to have become specially popular throughout the east and in Hindustan especially alternate only with the flat stone architraves, so common in the choultries of southern India. The open courts sprang from the necessity of tempering the heat, by abundance of air, and broad cool shade: promoted especially by fountains of water, bubbling over paved stone floors.

:

In Hindustan, the Mohammedan rule was from the first distinguished by one peculiarity. The Pathans and Moguls were a tomb-building race, and have expended upon their tombs all their resources both of money and of skill. The mosques and palaces they have left behind, are comparatively few; but their tombs form an almost unbroken series, stretching from the times of Shahab-ud-din down to the present day. They display in continuous series the massive strength of the Pathan age, the graceful form and gorgeous finish of the best Mogul times, and the tawdry ornament which began to creep in with the first symptoms of Mogul decay. It is in them, therefore, that the peculiarities of the Indian form of Saracenic architecture most conspicuously appear.

The oldest buildings are the mosques and tombs near the Kuttub Minar at Delhi; the black mosque of Feroze at old Delhi; the mosques at Juanpore and Mandoo. All are characterized by that appearance of massive strength, by which the Pathan and Turk sovereigns were distinguished. The mosques all contain a considerable amount of Hindu architecture, and were built by Hindu architects. Besides the flattened dome, springing straight from its foundation, and the handsome arched way which forms the entrance to the building, the mosque at the Kuttub, and the mosque at Juanpore, have each an arcade built on the Hindu plan, and in the former case of Hindu materials. There seems

little doubt, that the very pillars, architraves and roofs of Jain temples, were taken down and re-built into the verandahs round the courts of mosques; and that in some cases, Jain buildings were taken as they stood, and merely altered by the removal of the centre pillars, and the walling in of the outside, in order to suit the demands and conditions of Mohammedan worship. In rare cases tombs also are found, consisting of a small Hindu pillared hall, supporting a dome instead of the usual flat roof. The Pathan mosques exhibit also another element, brought from Central Asia, and first found among the few monuments left by the Sassanian Kings of Persia. In building a round dome upon a square room, it is necessary to find some support for that portion of the dome, which crosses the corners. The Romans provided heavy buttresses rising from the ground: but in the Sassanian monuments, the corners are filled high up the walls by pendentives or brackets formed of arches, grouped together in the most ingenious way. Brackets of this kind, identical in shape with those of the Sassanian kings, are found in the small mosque near the Kuttub, the oldest of its class now found in Upper India. With such elements, combined in the grandest and most massive forms, Saracenic art was first introduced into India.

With the Mogul emperors, came in a higher degree of size and magnificence in ornament. The tomb of Humayun at old Delhi, the most prominent in that city of tombs which lies to the south of the fortress of Feroze, stands out at once in contrast to the small and contracted mausoleums, by which it is surrounded. It occupies the centre of a large garden, having a massive gateway in each of its four walls. It is a large building, raised on a platform, is two stories in height, has small chambers in each of its four corners, and the central octagonal hall is covered with an immense dome. Smaller domes or kiosks cluster round the chief dome, covered with a green enamel which has preserved its colour to this day. The building is of red sandstone; having the bands around its chief entrances, inlaid with white marble. It is a striking monument, having considerable pretensions to beauty, and forms the starting point of a new era in tomb-building. The tomb of Akbar at Secundra, just out of Agra, is formed on the same model, but is in every way of larger size and more elaborate finish. Its garden is larger, its pavements wider, the gateways are higher, more massive, more elaborately inlaid with the white marble mosaics. The tomb itself is an immense building, with a lofty entrance, deep recesses on its lower story, numerous cupolas and kiosks, covered with green enamel on the upper story-and rising even to a third story: but without the usual dome. The third story is now entirely

white marble, erected in the chastest style, and is said to have been substituted by Shah Jehan for the story of red sandstone, which his grandfather had originally placed above the tomb. Though somewhat straggling, and dull, from the material of which it is chiefly composed, and though deficient in height as compared with its immense breadth, and the space over which it is spread, it is still one of the noblest monuments of the Mogul empire to be found in Upper India. The palaces of Akbar again are not in Saracenic style at all. Considering only the inner palace at Agra to be his, and the outer palace, harem and reception halls, as the work of Shah Jehan, the visitor will at once perceive that the style is purely Hindu: the pillars of the two halls are carved in Hindu fashion, are surmounted by the usual stone brackets with their pendent knobs, and are surmounted by the stone architrave which supports the roof. There are no domes, no pointed arches; every thing is Hindu and a counterpart of this palace can be found in a now deserted temple, built by Akbar's Hindu minister, in the sacred city of Brindabun. The mosque, palace, and other buildings, erected by Akbar at Futtehpore-Sikri, are, as we have seen, most interesting examples of the Saracenic style, as practised in his time.

:

The tomb of Ettima-ud-Dowlah, the minister of Jehangir, on the north side of the Jumna at Agra, exhibits a further advance in the progress of this architecture. The red sandstone, with its flowers and wreaths of white marble inlaid, is confined to the gateways. The garden is small, neatly laid out, and planted amongst other trees with the sombre cypress. The tomb is built entirely of white marble, with towers at the four corners. All the windows are filled with arabesque tracery of various forms, and the whole building is profusely covered, within and without, with Florentine mosaics, of wreaths and flowers, formed of bloodstones, jaspers and cornelians, inlaid into the marble. This style, in which the chief buildings were erected of the richest materials, and profusely inlaid, with the greatest taste, with these beautiful Florentine mosaics, is seen in its noblest and most perfect form in the Taj. It is seen also less perfectly in the palaces erected by Shah Jehan both in Agra and Delhi. The reception rooms, inlaid with mosiacs both on the walls and in the floor, the marble pavilions overlooking the river, the stately halls with the open arcade, on the side of which sat the king on his marble throne, distinguished the former. The noble. hall, with its simple and elegant pillars, the edges, flutings and pedestals of which, with the panels of the roof, were covered with gold, while in the centre blazed the peacock throne, must have made the most gorgeous reception room for the courtiers and tributaries of a mighty monarch, which the world ever saw. The

mosques of Shah Jehan also exhibit the finest forms of the buildings erected for Mohammedan worship. From the Jumma musjid of Delhi, on its lofty platform, with its vast bulbous domes, and tall massive minarets looking down upon the city, oft doomed to destruction, from the little garden-mosque in the palace with its gilded domes; to the Moti musjid at Agra, with its stern simplicity, its exquisite purity, its silent eloquent grandeur, Saracenic architecture in India finds its finest specimens of the purest and most finished type. All culminated in the profusion of wealth and exquisite taste poured upon his princely erections, by the most magnificent king that ever ruled in India. From his time every thing fell away. The power of the empire began to decay, and with it died out rapidly the taste, the elegance, the finish by which these works of Saracen art had hitherto been distinguished. The next reign, that of Aurungzebe, produced nothing better than the mosque at Benares, and that which he erected in the heart of Muttra, with its coarse style, rough materials, and tawdry enamel of green and blue. In central and southern India few Musalman monuments remain beyond the mosque at Beejapore with its noble dome, and the well-known tombs of Hyder and his family in the Lal Bagh of Seringapatam. In Upper India, in the present day, the new Imambaras at Hooghly and Lucknow alone strive to emulate the glories of the past. But with their profuse decorations, their images of flying horses, their innumerable wall-shades, purple, green and yellow, and their green glass tigers, it can scarcely be expected that they will attain to that position which was secured by the mighty magnificence of the kings long dead.

Our limited space prevents us from following Mr. Taylor closely, during his subsequent travels in Upper India, the numerous monuments of which he describes in his best style. After visiting Delhi, in which he greatly admired the wonderful group of ancient monuments around the Kuttub Minar, he set out for Roorkhee, intending to pay a brief visit to the Himalayas. Here he first caught sight of the goal whither he was bound and thus describes their extraordinary appearance :

:

"It was about eight in the morning: an atmosphere of crystal, and not a cloud in the sky. Yet something white and shining glimmered through the loose foliage of some trees on my right hand. My heart came into my mouth with the sudden bound it gave, when, after plunging through the trees like one mad, tumbling into a ditch on the other side, and scrambling up a great pile of dirt, I saw the Himalayas before me! Unobscured by a single cloud or a speck of vapor, there stood revealed the whole mountain region, from the low range of the Siwalik Hills, about twenty miles distant, to the loftiest pinnacles of eternal snow, which look down on China and Thibet.

The highest range, though much more than a hundred miles distant, as the crow flies, rose as far into the sky as the Alps at forty miles, and with every glacier and chasm and spire of untrodden snow as clearly defined. Their true magnitude, therefore, was not fully apparent, because the eye refused to credit the intervening distance. But the exquisite loveliness of the shadows painted by the morning on those enormous wastes of snow, and the bold yet beautiful outlines of the topmost cones, soaring to a region of perpetual silence and death, far surpassed any distant view of the Alps or any other mountain chain I ever saw. As seen from Roorkhee, the Himalayas present the appearance of three distinct ranges. The first, the Siwalik Hills, are not more than two thousand feet in height; the second, or SubHimalayas, rise to eight or nine thousand, while the loftiest peaks of the snowy range, visible from this point, are 25,000 feet above the sea. Far in the north-west was the Chore, an isolated peak, which is almost precisely the height of Mont Blanc, but seemed a very pigmy in comparison with the white cones beyond it.

*

* * *

"I was most struck with their exquisite beauty of form and colouring. The faintest pink of the sea-shell slept upon the steeps of snow, and their tremendous gulfs and chasms were filled with pale-blue shadows, so delicately pencilled that I can only compare them to the finest painting on ivory. When I reflected that each of those gentle touches of blue was a tremendous gorge, "where darkness dwells all day;" that each break in the harmonious flow of the outline on the sky-like the break in a cadence of music, making it sweeter for the pause was a frightful precipice, thousands of feet in depth and inaccessible to human foot, I was overpowered by the awful sublimity of the picture. But when their color grew rosy and lambent in the sunset, I could think of nothing but the divine beauty which beamed through them, and wonder whether they resembled the mountains which we shall see in the glorified landscapes of the future world.”

In the following passage, our author describes the range on a much nearer view, when standing on the highest peak of Landour, in the garden of the American Mission :—

"The view from this point best repaid me for my journey to the hills. The mound on which we stood was conical, and only twenty feet in diameter at the summit. The sides of the mountain fell away so suddenly that it had the effect of a tower, or of looking from the mast-head of a vessel. In fact, it might be called the "main truck" of the Sub-Himalayas. The sharp comb, or ridge, of which it is the crowning point, has a direction of north-west to south-east (parallel to the great Himalayan range,) dividing the panorama into two hemispheres, of very different character. To the north, I looked into the wild heart of the Himalayas-a wilderness of barren peaks, a vast jumble of red mountains, divided by tremendous clefts and ravines, of that dark indigo hue which you sometimes see on the edge of a thunder-cloud-but in the back-ground, towerSEPT., 1857.

I