dies of Moomtaza and Shah Jehan, the
priest reads the Koran in a sort of mournful chant, or an attendant
plays with subdued breathings on a flute, the notes are borne up into
the numerous arcades and domes, reduplicated, intermingled, dying
away, fainter and fainter, sweeter and sweeter, until the ravished
hearer, as he departs, can remember no more than that the sounds were
heavenly, and produced a heavenly effect, making him feel, that, if
to die were to listen for ever to those tones, death would be
inconceivable bliss.

Russell, in his "Diary in India," thus records the impression the
scene made on him: "Write a description of the Taj! As well write a
description of that lovely dream which flushed the poet's cheek, or
gently moved the painter's hand, as he lay trembling with delight,
the Endymion of the glorious Art Goddess, who reveals herself and
then floats softly away among the moonbeams and the dew clouds, as he
springs up to grasp the melting form! Here is a dream in marble, the
Taj: solid, permanent; but who, with pen or pencil, can convey to him
who has not seen it the exquisite delight with which the structure
imbues the mind at the first glance, the proportions and the beauty
of this strange loveliness, which rises in the Indian waste, as some
tall palm springs by the fountain in a barren wilderness? It is wrong
to call it a dream in marble: it is a thought, an idea, a conception
of tenderness, a sigh of eternal devotion and love, caught and imbued
with earthly immortality. There it stands in its astonishing
perfection, rising from a lofty platform of marble of dazzling
whiteness, minarets, dome, portals, all shining like a fresh, crisp
snow wreath. The proportions of the whole are so full of grace and
feeling, that the mind rests quite contented with the general
impression, ere it gives a thought to the details of the building,
the exquisite screens of marble in the windows, the fretted porches,
the arched doorways, from which a shower of fleecy marble, mingled
with a rain of gems, seems about to fall on you; the solid walls
melting and glowing with tendrils of bright flowers and wreaths of
blood stone, agate, jasper, carnelian, amethyst, snatched, as it
were, from the garden outside, and pressed into the snowy blocks.
Enter by the doorway in front: the arched roof of the cupola soars
above you, and the light falls dimly on the shrine like tombs in the
centre of the glistening marble, see a winter palace