Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/86

 is ever undertaken by Government. Your buildings fitly express your own peculiarity of temperament, but the personal predilection for Indian forms is only a weakness or eccentricity; such designs would be out of harmony with my own more advanced views, which are all in favour of English fashions. The trading classes do well to adhere to Hindustani types, but the landed gentry prefer to range themselves with their rulers, and thus to emphasize their distinction from the vulgar." When I further object that his façade is incorrect even from the European point of view he cannot understand how that is possible. In the same way as Christianity is popularly identified with any denial of religious obligation, so the essence of European architecture is supposed to consist in a reckless disregard of all recognized canons of ornament and proportion. Any outcast is dubbed a Christian, and any ugliness in a building is accounted European. Now that I have had a special drawing made of his gate, he will be more than ever convinced that my criticisms were simply prompted by deficient intelligence, and that he has at last taught me to admire what I once ignorantly disparaged.

A gateway, in a very different style, has lately been added to his house at Bulandshahr by Maulvi Muhammad Bakhsh, the Honorary Magistrate of Chaprávat. It is of special interest as showing the readiness with which the upper classes would return to the true principles of indigenous architecture, if only it were more generally in fashion. The gate is in two stories, with a deeply recessed single arch below; the plinth, shafts and spandrels of which are covered with most delicate diapers and foliage. The balcony above has slender piers of pierced tracery, and its three arches have their heads filled in with stone fan-lights, below which they are fitted with doors of common-place English pattern. These are the solitary defect in the design, and fortunately it is one which admits of an easy remedy. The combination of depth and solidity in the mass with lightness of touch in the ornamental details indicates a true artistic faculty of conception, and the idea has been carried out with much technical skill.

Our engineers' buildings, as a rule, have the one merit of simplicity. They make no pretence of pleasing the eye, but neither do they often wilfully offend it by an obtrusive display of misplaced architectural embellishment. Considered as temporary makeshifts for the deposit of departmental returns, or the casual shelter of distressed officials, they might pass uncriti