Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/364

 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. The whole of the area between the central range of buildings to the south, and eastward from the bazar, measuring about 1000 ft. each way, was occupied by the haram and private apartments of the palace, covering, consequently, more than twice the area of the Escurial, or, in fact, of any palace in Europe. According to the native plan I possess, which I see no reason for distrusting, it contained three garden courts, and some thirteen or fourteen other courts, arranged some for state, some for convenience ; but what they were like we have no means of knowing. Not one vestige of them now remains. Judging from the corresponding parts of the palace at Agra, built by the same monarch, they must have vied with the public apartments in richness and in beauty when originally erected, but having continued to be used as an abode down to the time of the mutiny, they were probably very much disfigured and debased. Taste was, no doubt, at as low an ebb inside the walls of the palace during the last hundred years as it was out- side, or as we find it at Lucknow and elsewhere ; but all the essential parts of the structure were there, and could easily have been disencumbered from the accretions that had been heaped upon it. The idea, however, of doing this was far from entering into the heads of our governors. The whole of the haram courts of the palace were swept off the face of the earth to make way for a hideous British barrack, without those who carried out this fearful piece of Vandalism, thinking it even worth while to make a plan of what they were destroying or preserving any record of the most splendid palace in the world. Of the public parts of the palace all that now remains is the entrance hall, the Naubat Khana, the Diwan-i-'Amm and Khass, and the Rang Mahall long used as a mess-room arid one or two small pavilions. They are the gems of the palace, it is true, but without the courts and corridors connecting them they lose all their meaning and more than half their beauty. 1 Situated in the middle of a British barrack-yard, they look like precious stones torn from their settings in some exquisite piece of Oriental jeweller's work and set at random in a bed of the commonest plaster. 2 1 It ought in fairness to be added that, since they have been in our possession, considerable sums have been expended on the repair of these fragments. 2 The excuse for this deliberate act of Vandalism was, of course, the military one, that it was necessary to place the garrison of Delhi in security in the event of any sudden emergency. Had it been correct it would have been a valid one, but this is not the case. Without touch- ing a single building of Shjih Jahan's there was ample space within the walls for all the stores and materiel of the garrison of Delhi, and in the palace and Salimgarh ample space for a garrison, more than doubly ample to man their walls in the event of an emeute. There was ample space for larger and better ventilated barracks just outside the palace walls, for the rest of the garrison, who could easily have gained the shelter