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Rh added, and such religion as they knew lent its influence to the sacredness of the locality; while the beautiful birds of India, their plumage bearing

made the calm and sweet retreat more gorgeous by their presence.

The Daughter of the Desert, forgetting forever the unnatural desertion of him whom she so lavishly honored, thus made a paradise of the abode of the dead. Let her have the credit of whatever estimable qualities the great act expressed; she needs this, and every other allowance that fairly belongs to her history, as some offset to the sadder parts of a life and character that, two hundred and fifty years ago, surprised all India by its singularity, its magnificence, and its less worthy qualities—a fame that lingered in their legends and history, and which, after such long interval, settled so fascinatingly on the imagination of Tom Moore, and came forth in his romance of Lalla Rookh. But the poet left out more than half the life of his heroine; he gave her loves and fascinations, but omitted her labors, and those brilliant exploits which, quite as much as her beauty, commended her to the admiration of Jehangeer and his subjects.

Looking at such persons, and their brilliant, yet abused, opportunities, one may well say, “I have seen an end of all perfection.” How transitory, at best, is the fame that rests on such foundations! While we admire the taste, accomplishments, and achievements of this magnificent woman, we seek in vain for any evidence of benevolence or goodness in what she did. She seems to have left God and humanity entirely out of her calculations. In all the tombs and palaces built by her and for her, personal glory and selfish ends—for self and family—alone appear. On these the revenues of a whole people were squandered, and their hard earnings demanded to enable her to exhibit, on this lavish scale, her magnificent caprices. But no hospitals, or schools, or asylums for suffering humanity, exist to call her blessed, or to hand down her name as a pattern or promoter of purity and goodness. How much more “honorable and glorious” is the character, or the lot, of the humblest saint of God