Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/380

 3 26 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. architect is sure to fall into, it really does contain the germ of a very beautiful design (Woodcut No. 438). The founder was buried beneath in a dimly-lighted vaulted chamber in the basement of the great tower. 1 His tomb is a simple, plain sarcophagus, standing on the floor, and at each angle a grenadier in full uniform stands with arms reversed, in an attitude of grief, as if mourning over the fall of his master. The execution of the monument, like everything about the place, is bad, but the conception is one of the finest that has been hit upon for a soldier's grave. When new, this mansion must have been very striking. At all events, its effect on the Oudh sovereigns was most remark- able. For although their tombs, their mosques, and imambaras were still erected in the debased Saracenic style then prevalent, all the palaces of Lucknow were henceforth erected in this pseudo-Italian style. The Farhat Bakhsh built by Sa'adat 'Alt Khan, the Chattar Manzil of Nasiru-d-Din Haidar, and numerous other buildings, display all the quaint, picturesque irregularity of the age of Francis I., combined with more strange details than are to be found in the buildings of Henry IV. These were far surpassed in grotesqueness by the Qaisar Bagh of Wajid 'Alt Shah. This consisted of a great square of buildings surrounding an immense courtyard : the whole palace being in extent and arrangement by no means unlike the Louvre and Tuileries as joined together by Napoleon III. But instead of the beautiful stone of Paris, all was brick and plaster ; and instead of the appropriate details of that palace, the buildings surrounding the great court at Lucknow are generally two storeys in height and singularly various in design, generally with pilasters of the most attenuated forms running through both storeys, between which Italian windows with Venetian blinds alternate with Saracenic arcades, or openings of no style whatever. These are surmounted by Saracenic battlements, and crowned by domes such as Rome or Italy never saw, and the whole painted with colours as crude as they are glaring. Inside there are several large and handsome halls, but all in the same bad taste as the exterior. A detached building called the Begam Kothi is a better specimen of the style than anything perhaps in the Qaisar Bagh itself, but it cannot either be called a favourable specimen of Italian Art, or a successful adaptation of the style to Oriental purposes, though it has a certain amount of picturesqueness 1 Asafu-d-daula had wished to buy the building for 100 lakhs of rupees, and to prevent its confiscation by the native court after his death, General Martin had his tomb prepared in it. The mutineers in 1857-58 occupied the building, and they opened his tomb and scattered the bones. The tomb was restored in 1865.