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 X.

THE STATE ENTRY.

December 29.

IT has been a typical Delhi day, after all; no untimely change of weather has marred the great pageant ; the sun shone from an almost cloudless sky when the Viceroy and the brother of the King-Emperor entered in state the Imperial City. There was the usual cheerless dawn, pallid mist, biting air ; but as the hour drew near, the city took unto itself a genial warmth, the scene was suffused with brilliant light, the shivering moments of daybreak were forgotten. Towards high noon, the great space before the Jumma Masjid, the mighty mosque that Shah Jehan erected, presented a spectacle the like of which Delhi has not witnessed for more than two decades. You look from the wide steps before the huge gate of the Masjid, towards the long line of battlemented walls of the Fort, five hundred yards away. The space between is absolutely bare, save for a few scattered trees. If you wish to know why no building remains upon it, you must consult the records of the Mutiny. Once the city extended right up to the walls of the Fort ; when Delhi was recaptured by the soldiers of the Queen, the streets that had seen so much hard fighting were