Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/150

140 and domes, blended them without a line into the azure of immensity.” Let us imagine, if we can, the effect produced here when the funeral dirge was chanted over the tomb of the lovely Empress, and the answering echoes, in the pauses of the strains, would seem to fall like the responses of angel choirs in paradise!

Princely provision was made by the gifted originator of the Taj for its care and services. The light that fell upon that tomb day and night was from perfumed oil in golden lamps; fresh garlands of nature's flowers were laid upon it daily; Mogul musicians furnished appropriate music; five times in each twenty-four hours the Muezzin's cry to prayers resounded from these minarets; and a eunuch of high station, with two thousand Sepoys under his orders, held watch and ward without ceasing over the entire place and all its approaches. None but men of Mohammedan faith were permitted to come within these precincts, or to draw near her tomb; and the entire shrine was by the Emperor's orders expressly held sacred from the approach of any Christian foot.

Arrangements were made for occasionally exhibiting its loveliness by light adequate to bring out its perfect beauty. Rests were provided on the eight corners of the shrine for blue or Bengal lights, and when these were simultaneously fired, as the writer has seen them, the effect was magical. The candles had been previously extinguished and the building left in total darkness, when, at the signal, the brilliant illumination burst forth, and every point and ornament, even to the top of the rich dome itself, was displayed more gloriously than the light of day could ever have exhibited their rich colors. The inlaid ornamentation and filagree of the scenes, now like transparent and delicate lace-work, all seemed, to the astonished vision, like a palace of enchantment, and the mind of the beholder was awed into homage of that rare intellect which could devise and execute this the most beautiful monument on which the human eye can ever gaze on earth!

Perhaps no one has ever rendered such perfect justice to the beauty of this mausoleum as the unnamed author quoted by