Page:Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India etc. (Volume III.).djvu/404

362 had met with many persons both in Europe, and at Calcutta (where nothing of the kind exists) who spoke of the present natives of India as a degenerate race, whose inability to rear such splendid piles was a proof that these last belong to a remote antiquity. I have seen, however, enough to convince me, both that the Indian masons and architects of the present day only want patrons sufficiently wealthy, or sufficiently zealous, to do all which their ancestors have done; and that there are very few structures here which can, on any satisfactory grounds, be referred to a date so early as the greater part of our own cathedrals. Often in Upper Hindostan, and still more frequently in Rajpootana and Malwah, I have met with new and unfinished shrines, cisterns, and ghats, as beautifully carved, and as well proportioned as the best of those of an earlier date. And though there are many buildings and ruins which exhibit a most venerable appearance, there are several causes in this country which produce this appearance prematurely. In the first instance, we ourselves have a complex impression made on us by the sight of edifices so distant from our own country, and so unlike whatever we have seen there. We multiply, as it were, the geographical and moral distance into the chronological, and can hardly persuade ourselves that we are contemporaries with an object so far removed in every other respect. Besides this, however, the finest masonry in these climates is sorely tried by the alternate influence of a pulverizing sun, and a continued three months’ rain. The wild fig-tree