feared not God, nor regarded man,
sailing to Egypt for the express purpose of scoffing at the Pyramids
and--though this is hard to believe--at the great Napoleon who had
warred under their shadow. It is on record that that blasphemous Gaul
came to the Great Pyramid and wept through mingled reverence and
contrition; for he sprang from an emotional race. To understand his
feelings it is necessary to have read a great deal too much about the
Taj, its design and proportions; to have seen execrable pictures of it
at the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition, to have had its praises sung by
superior and travelled friends till the brain loathed the repetition of
the word; and then, sulky with want of sleep, heavy-eyed, unwashed, and
chilled, to come upon it suddenly. Under these circumstances everything,
you will concede, is in favour of a cold, critical, and not too
impartial verdict. As the Englishman leaned out of the carriage he saw
first an opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and, later, certain towers.
The mists lay on the ground, so that the Splendour seemed to be floating
free of the earth; and the mists rose in the background, so that at no
time could everything be seen clearly. Then as the train sped forward,
and the mists shifted, and the sun shone upon the mists, the Taj took a
hundred new shapes, each perfect and each beyond description. It was
the Ivory Gate through which all good dreams come; it was the
realization of "the gleaming halls of dawn" that Tennyson sings of; it
was veritably the "aspiration fixed," the "sigh made stone" of a lesser
poet; and, over and above concrete comparisons, it seemed the embodiment
of all things pure, all things holy, and all things unhappy. That was
the mystery of the building! It may be that the mists wrought the
witchery, and that the Taj seen in the dry sunlight is only, as
guide-books say, a noble structure. The Englishman could not tell, and
has made a vow that he will never go nearer the spot, for fear of
breaking the charm of the unearthly pavilions.

It may be, too, that each must view the Taj for himself with his own
eyes, working out his own interpretation of the sight. It is certain
that no man can in cold blood and colder ink set down his impressions if
he has been in the least moved.

To the one who watched and wondered that November morning the thing
seemed full of sorrow--the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman
he loved, and the sorrow of the workmen who died in the