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Show THE TAJ MAHAL. At Delphi, at Agra, one's capacity of holding and retaining lovely visions is flooded. A certain impatience at the languor of our slow senses fills the mind realized there in stone are dreams which have been shadowy and shapeless, too beautiful, too strange, to be admitted even in sleep. No monument in all the world, unless it be the Alhambra compares for sensuous delight with the Durbar Hall at Delhi; for magnificence, solid and imposing, with Akbar's palace at Agra, for absolute perfection with the Taj Mahal. The Delhi architect knew the merit of his work, and proclaimed it. In every corner of the hall he wrote, in characters of gold: "If there be paradise on earth, it is here, it is here!" From my soul I pity those who cavil at the artist's boast. Paradise, say these, or would say, if they could express their inarticulate ideas, is not made of barley sugar colored sweetmeats, and looking glass. Paradise is mystic, solemn; an abode through eternity of strong and pious souls, not of luxurious ??. If you tempt these critics to explain themselves more fully, you will see that in their heart of hearts they imagine that the soul, whatever its nationality while incarnate, becomes true British after death. The paradise of Delhi is not even European. It is like nothing they ever saw, or could have fancied. It is, in truth, sunshine and color petrified, and, because our happy land is not familiar with sunshine, while our habits forbid us color, the average Briton cannot see those blessed gifts of the Creator. That the eye sees only what it looks for, is an axiom in art. When a commonplace observer stands before a tablet in the palace-wall, and marks its exquisite inlaying, as careful in the minutest point as in the mass of flowers; when he surveys the marble screens, carved into lace, admitting a soft radiance which is to light as moonbeams to sunshine, he is astonished and delighted. But it presently comes home to him that these lovely things are not pictures, but the very wall itself, that every gap is filled with marble ?? delicate as a Chinese fan-and he revolts. As bric a brac, as bits to display under a glass-case in the drawing-room, these things are charming. But a grand edifice all built of such is a monstrous idea. Where are the broken lines, the "cloud-capped towers," which make our European notion of great architecture? Where are the shadows, the unexpected changes, the up stairs and down-stairs, and the general disarrangement which we are used to call "picturesque." Nowhere.-All the Year Round |