TAJ MAHAL, the most famous mausoleum in the world, built by the emperor SHAH JAHAN to keep alive forever the memory of his beloved queen, MAMTAZ MAHAL.

For five-and-twenty years of my life had I been looking forward to the sight now before me. Of no building on earth, I heard so much as of this, which contains the remains of the Emperor SHAH JAHAN and his wife. We had ordered our tents to be pitched in the gardens of this splendid mausoleum, that we might have our fill of the enjoyment, which everybody seemed to derive from it; and we reached there about eight o’ clock. I went over the whole building before I entered my tent, and I can truly say that everything surpassed my expectations.

After my quarter of a century of anticipated pleasure, I went on from part to part in the expectation that I must by and by come to something that would disappoint me. But no, the emotion which one feels at first is never impaired; on the contrary, it goes on improving from the first sight of the dome in the distance to the minute inspection of the last flower upon the screen round the tomb. One returns and returns to it with undiminished pleasure; and through at every turn the visitor’s attention to the smaller parts becomes less and less, the pleasure which he drives from the contemplation of the greater, and of the whole collectively, seems to increase; and he leaves with a filling of regret that he could not have it all his wife within his reach.

The Emperor and his queen lie buried side by side in a vault beneath the building to which we descend by a flight of steps. Their remains are covered by two slabs of marble; and directly over the slabs, upon the floor above, in the great centre room under the dome, stand to other slabs of the same marble, exquisitely worked in mosaic. Upon that of the Queen, amid wreathes of flowers, are worked in black letters passages from the Koran-merely mosaic work of flowers, with his name and the date of his death.

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The slab over the Queen occupies the centre of the apartments above and in the vault below, and that over her husband lies on the left as we enter. At one end of the slab in the vault her name is inwrought, “Mumtaz-i-Mahal banu begum,” the ornament of the palace, Banu Begum, and the date of her death, 1631.

The building stands upon the north side of a large quadrangle, looking down into the clear blue stream of the river Jumna, while the other three sides are enclosed with a high wall of red sandstone. The entrance of this quadrangle is through a magnificent gateway in the south side opposite the tomb; and on the other two sides, are very beautiful mosques facing in wards, and corresponding exactly with each other in size, design, and execution.

The mausoleum itself, the terrace upon which it stands, and the minarets, are all formed of the finest white marble inlaid with precious stones. The wall around the quadrangle including the river face of the terrace is made of red sand stone, with cupolas and pillars of the same white marble. The marble was all brought from the Jaipur territories upon wheeled carriages, a distance. I believe, of two or three hundred miles; and the stand stone from the neighborhood of Dhaulpur and Fatehpur Sikri. Shah jahan is said to have inherited his partially for this color from his grandfather, Akbar who constructed almost all his buildings of this same stone.

We visited the Moti Masjid or pearl Mosque. It was built Shah Jahan, entirely of white marble. There is no mosaic upon any of the pillars or panels of this mosque; but the design and execution of the flowers in bas-relief’ are exceedingly beautiful. It is a chaste, simple and majestic building; and is by some people admired even more than the Taj. Few, however, go to see the “mosque of pearls” more than once, stay as long as they will at Agra; and when they go, the building appears less and less to deserve their admiration; while they go to the Taj as often as they can, and find new beauties in it, or new feelings of pleasure from it, every time.