which are decorated with thousands of bits of looking-glass. In Akbar's time the bath was served with water falling in a broad sheet into a marble basin. Behind the waterfall lamps shone. Others blazed amid the fountains, their refracted light gleaming at a thousand points where it caught the miniature mirrors.

Leading out of the Zenana apartments is a small square jealously shut in by high walls. Here the ladies of the Zenana used to chaffer with happy merchants admitted to show their wares. The garden of the Zenana is, save in respect of lack of care, much the same as it was when the imperial wives walked and gossipped under the shadow of its trees. The centre is divided by stone copings into little squares and ovals, sometimes inclosing a foot or two of earth, and again forming the boundaries of a mimic lake. Here, too, is Muchee Bhawan, where Akbar, forgetful of the cares of state and assisted by his favourite wives, whiled away the summer afternoon fishing in a tank.

Recent excavations carried on in the neighbourhood of the fort have brought to light a number of marble pillars, some broken, others whole, but all preserving the imperishable work of the early sculptor. They lie in a heap in one of the courtyards, there being

apparently no settled scheme of dealing with them. Perhaps they might be spared for one of the London parks, as examples of the position which art had reached in India at the time Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England.

Outside Akbar's palace, but still within the circle of the fort, is a palace built by Jehangir, Akbar's son. The passion for palace-building was so great among the Mogul emperors that the beautiful house Akbar had built would not serve his successor. He raised one for himself and to his own perpetual glory. Going back for his model to his father's earlier essay at Futtehpore Sikri, Jehangir's homestead is built of red sandstone, and has in respect of architecture nothing in common with the dainty palace of his great father. Akbar's taste was essentially Mahomedan; Jehangir, a longer settler in the conquered country, made his house a stately monument of native architecture.

Not least in interest to the English visitor are the Gates of Somnath, which find lodgment in Akbar's palace. They are of sandalwood, finely carved, with the colour deepened and enriched by age. As gates go, they are not massive, being only twelve feet high and not more than conveniently broad to be passed

by a pair of loaded camels marching abreast. On a panel on the left doorway are three metal bosses, said to have been taken from the shield of Sultan Mahmood. It was Lord Ellenborough who lifted the Gates of Somnat into a high place in history.

"My brethren and friends," he wrote in the famous proclamation to the princes and people of India, issued at the close of the Afghan campaign of 1842, "our victorious army bears the Gates of Somnath in triumph from Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmood looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of eight hundred years is at last avenged. The Gates of the Temple of Somnath, so long the memorial of your humiliation, are become the proudest record of your national glory, the proof of your superiority in arms over the nations beyond the Indus. To you, princes and chiefs of Sirhind, of Rajivana, of Malwa, and of Guzerat, I shall commit this glorious trophy of successful war. You will yourselves with all honour transmit the gates of sandalwood through your respective territories to the restored Temple of Somnath."

This remarkable production, which reads like the effort of a schoolboy who had spent his nights and days studying the bulletins of

Napoleon the First and Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, met with a fate which must have astonished as much as it pained the noble author. It was greeted in England with a shout of uncontrollable laughter, the reverberation of which stopped the southward progress of the gates. The princes and chiefs of Sirhind, of Rajivana and of Malwa hustled them along through their respective territories as quietly as possible. The Prince of Guzerat conveniently ignored the proud mission.

The gates were stranded at Agra, and now find shelter in the palace of Akbar, surrounded by an iron kitchen-area railing of prim, uncompromising pattern, by which Birmingham shows what it can do when placed upon its metal.

As for the Temple of Somnath, it goes further to ruin without sighing for its sandalwood gates, which in truth there is grave reason to doubt ever belonged to it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CC THE WONDER OF INDIA."

THE tameness of the common birds in India has been nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in this crowded city. On a piece of waste ground skirting one of the main roads a flock of sirus, numbering over half a hundred, are daily accustomed to gather and discuss the occupation of Egypt, the Ilbert Bill, the alleged designs of Russia on India, and other matters of general interest. No one disturbs their consultation. No wicked boy throws stones at them, nor does any man raise gun to shoot. They have their talk out and go their way in search of whatever scraps householders may have provided for them. At the hotel many more sparrows than guests sit down to breakfast. They fly in by open doors, across bedrooms into the dining-room, walk about the floor, and sometimes alight on the tablecloth, helping themselves to crumbs.