Night Scene on the Jumna.

331 it is opened for the passage of the trading crafts upwards and downwards. The breach thus daily made is daily repaired. But to put our patience to a sore trial, it happened to be left open by an unlucky turn out on the very night of our arrival, and proving a bar to our driving right on into the city, obliged us to put up with the inconvenience of passing the night in our gharries on the bridge. To make the best of our time under the circumstance, we fell to a musing on the scene before us. On our left lay moored many a boat, the tall masts of which stood like gaunt shadowy figures in the air. From their decks gleamed the fitful fires of the cooking dandees. The river was one flood of moon-lit glory. Beyond rose the dark outlines of the city-the pulse of life stood still there.'

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CHAPTER VIII.

October 31st.-AT the break of day, the evil genius of reality dispelled the nocturnal illusion, and the telltale sun disclosed things in their actual condition. The clear blue Jumna, the classic stream of love and song, scarcely meandered its course of sluggish waters through sandbanks spreading most unpoetic wastes to the view. The bridge was not the self-same bridge of life-sized elephants of hollow lead, which had been flung across the stream in the days of Akber. Decking the river, there were no gay royal barges trimmed with flags and pennons waving in the air. Far inland in these shallow waters, there can ever hope to ply only little pleasure-steamers drawing two feet water. The wretched shipping of Agra at once indicates its fallen greatness, its decayed trade, and its diminished opulence. The pontoon, however, affords a scene of great liveliness. There jog on loaded donkeys, horses, camels, and waggons; ekas and dawk-gharries; turbaned Hindoostanees on foot and on horse, garment-wearing Hindoostanee women, and merchants, travellers, and fakirs-all in a continuous stream and motley procession.

Banks of the Jumna,-a Legend.

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The sight of a Jumna sandbank recalls to mind the birthplace of Vyas. To verify the legend, the mists, too, hung upon the river-though not at the call of a Hindoo Rishi. But there was no ferry, nor any youthful maid to helm you to the other side. This is not the age of romance, but that of the Penal Code-when a love-adventure like that of Parasara is rape, and when females cannot choose to grant favours of a tender kind without scandal in society. The scene of that memorable amour is not exactly known—whether near Allahabad, Muttra, or Hastinapoor. Agra was then unknown, and Indraprastha not yet founded. The hunting excursion of Santanu proves the country to have been woody, in which was the abode of the King of the Fishermen. But no opinion can be hazarded as to even the probable site of the classic spot of Vyas' birth— whether along the course of Upper or Lower Jumna. In ancient Greece, seven cities contended for the birthplace of Homer. In ancient India, not one man cared to remember the spot where Vyas was born. The Aryan Greek decidedly surpassed the Aryan Hindoo in patriotic sentimentalism. In our age, the people along the banks of the Jumna are non-fish-eaters. But in the age of Vyas, the fishermen in these provinces were so large and powerful a class as to have had a king of their own. Perhaps, they were an aboriginal tribe— or that the pre-Buddhist Hindoos did not follow the tenet of tenderness to animal life.

Abul Fazil, the great politician of Mogul history and minister of Akber, was born on this side of the

Jumna. His father kept here a school of law and divinity. Feizi also lies buried in some unknown spot on this side. He was the first Mussulman to apply himself to a study of the Hindoo Shasters, by passing off as a Brahmin lad on a Pundit of Benares, and living under his roof. He had a great taste for books, and left behind him the most magnificent private library in that age. It consisted of 4060 books, carefully corrected and well-bound, on poetry and literature, moral and physical sciences, and theology. Akber, Abul Fazil, and Feizi are the three best characters in the whole range of Moslem history.

Looked round for the Goolfushun of Baber-the famous garden in which that prince had first tried to acclimatize the ananas (pine-apple) and the sandal-tree in the valley of the Doab. Very probably, the Charbagh of Baber afterwards became the Rambagh of Akber's courtiers, who preferred a residence on the cool and quiet banks of the Jumna, to the eternal bustle and noise of an imperial city. The left bank in that age had been inhabited by a large population, and had formed nearly one-third of the city, which extended over a space twenty-six miles in circumference.

Ascended a high pile of rubbish-the remains no doubt of some ancient building-to survey the suburbs. On the right opened upon us the magnificent mausoleum of the Etmad-ud-Dowla. Two or three miles distant towards the south-west, rose in view the matchless Taj -the first sight of which was a sufficient recompense for all the toils of our long journey. Through the misty

Agra, the Etmad-ud-Dowla.

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air, the dome fixed in stately height rose against the sky as if bigger than its actual dimensions.

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Opinions differ as to the architectural merits of the Etmad-ud-Dowla. Jacquemont remarks it to be 'in execrable taste,'-while Sleeman says it is an exceedingly beautiful building.' The majority of travellers concur in the latter opinion. In the tomb of the Etmad-ud-Dowla lie the remains of Chaja Aias, the father of the celebrated Noor Jehan. He was a Persian foreigner, who rose by his own abilities as well as by the influence of his daughter to be the high treasurer of the realm. India was then the land for adventurersit has now become the land in which honour and emolument must be sought through office. The Etmad-udDowla stands near the garden of Rambagh. The valuable stones of the mosaic work have been picked out and stolen. In 1773 the fort and city of Agra had been recovered from the Jâts by Nujeeb Khan, under an understanding that he was to retain one half of the territory he might conquer, and resign the other half to the Emperor. It was then that the building and garden of the Etmud-ud-Dowla had been given away by Nujeeb Khan to one of his nephews, in whose family the mausoleum remained for sixty years, when it went to the hammer by a decree of the Civil Court, to pay the debt of its then proprietor.

To be in Agra is to find yourself in the once imperial capital of the Great Mogul' of Sir Thomas Roe, of Terry, of Tavernier, of Mandelsloe-in fact, of all the nations of Christendom in the seventeenth century: