dia to the Agra Fort, and deposited
there with great ceremony. As a matter of fact, the wood is deodar,
and not sandalwood, and from the style of the ornament there can be
hardly a doubt that the gates were made at or near Ghazni. One glance
would convince any expert in Oriental archaeology that they could not
by any possibility have been the gates of a Hindu temple.

It has been supposed that the original gates were destroyed by fire,
and that these were made to replace them, but there seems to be
considerable doubt whether Mahmud really took away any gates from the
Somnath temple. It certainly would have been unusual for the great
Muhammadan plunderer to have burdened himself with an archaeological
relic which, in those days, was not easily convertible into cash.

A horse-shoe which is nailed to the gate is not, as is generally
supposed, a propitiation of the Goddess of Fortune, but a token from
the owner of some sick animal that he would bring an offering to
the shrine in the event of a cure resulting from his visit. This was
an old custom among the Tartars and other nomad tribes, who valued
horses and cattle as their most precious possessions.

The Jahangiri Mahal.

The palace called after Jahangir, the Jahangiri Mahal, is in many
respects the most remarkable building of its class in India. Nothing
could be more striking than the contrast between the extreme elegance,
bordering on effeminacy, of the marble pavilions of Shah Jahan's
palaces, and the robust, virile, yet highly imaginative architecture
of this palace of Akbar; for though it bears Jahangir's name there
cannot be much doubt that it was planned, and partially, if not
completely, carried out by Akbar with the same architects who built
Fatehpur Sikri. It is the perfected type of the style which we see
in process of evolution at Fatehpur, and were it not for the Taj,
we might regret the new element which came into Mogul architecture
with Itmad-ud-daulah's tomb. Both of these styles, which appear side
by side in the Agra Fort, are intensely typical of the men and the
times which produced them. The one is stamped throughout with the
personality of Akbar, the empire-builder, and distinguished by the
stately solidity of Jain and Hindu architecture. In the other the
native vigour of the earlier Indian styles has been softened by the
cultured eclecticism of Persia and Arabia, for the manly dignity of
Akbar's court had given place to the sensual luxury of Sha