Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/152

142 exquisite has awakened, and we dare not use, in its praise, language hackneyed in the service of every-day minds. We seek for it a new train of associations, a fresh range of ideas, a greener and more sacred corner in the repository of the heart. And yet, wherefore should this be, since no terms applying to other works of beauty, excepting the most general, can be appropriated here? For those there be phrases established by usage, which their several classifications of style render intelligible to all acquainted with similar works of art. But in the Taj we fall upon a new and separate creation, which never can become a style, since it can never be imitated. It is like some bright and newly discovered winged thing, all beauteous in a beauty peculiar to itself, and referable to no class or order on the roll of zoology, which the whole world flocks to gaze upon with solemn delight, none presuming to designate the lovely stranger, nor to conjecture a kindred for it with the winged things of the earth. Suffice it—Love was its author, Beauty its inspiration.”

There never was erected in this world any thing so perfect and lovely, save Solomon's Temple. In gazing down upon the scene, as the writer did in the closing days of the terrible rebellion in 1858, the effect was wonderful, and akin to those emotions that must thrill the soul which looks out for the first time upon the plains of heaven. Every thing that could remind one of ruin and misery seemed so far away, that as we sat, and the delighted eyes drank in the scene before them, terminated by the gorgeous fane as it rose up toward the blue and cloudless sky, we thought, if John Bunyan could have shared the opportunity, he would surely have imagined his dreams realized, and believed himself looking over the battlements of the New Jerusalem, and viewing that “region of eternal day” where holiness and peace are typified by pearls and gold, and all manner of precious stones, with the fountain of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and the Lamb!

Two questions now remain to be answered: Who was the lady to whom the Taj was erected? and, Who was the architect who designed and executed it?