ver
it for four centuries.

No building has been more often described and sketched and painted
and photographed. For three hundred and fifty years it has appeared
as an illustration in the chapter on India in geographies, atlases
and gazetteers; it is used as a model in architectural text-books,
and of course is reproduced in every book that is written about
India. It has been modeled in gold, silver, alabaster, wax and
every other material that yields to the sculptor's will, yet no
counterfeit can ever give a satisfactory idea of its loveliness,
the purity of the material of which it is made, the perfection of
its proportions, the richness of its decorations and the exquisite
accuracy achieved by its builders. Some one has said that the
Moguls designed like giants and finished like jewelers, and that
epigram is emphasized in the Taj Mahal. Any portion of it, any
feature, if taken individually, would be enough to immortalize
the architect, for every part is equally perfect, equally chaste,
equally beautiful.

I shall not attempt to describe it. You can find descriptions
by great pens in many books. Sir Edwin Arnold has done it up
both in prose and poetry, and sprawled all over the dictionary
without conveying the faintest idea of its glories and loveliness.
It cannot be described. One might as well attempt to describe
a Beethoven symphony, for, if architecture be frozen music, as
some poet has said, the Taj Mahal is the supremest and sublimest
composition that human genius has produced. But, without using
architectural terms, or gushing any more about it, I will give
you a few plain facts.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF TAJ MAHAL]

The Taj Mahal stands, as I have already told you, at the bottom
of a lovely garden surrounded by groves of cypress trees, on the
bank of the River Jumna, opposite the great fortress of Agra,
where, from the windows of his palace, the king could always
see the snowwhite domes and minarets which cover the ashes of
his Arab wife. Its base is a marble terrace 400 feet square,
elevated eighteen feet above the level of the garden, with benches
arranged around so that one can sit and look and look and look
until its wonderful beauty soaks slowly into his consciousness;
until the soul is saturated. Rising from the terrace eighteen
feet is a marble pedestal or platform 313 feet square, each corner
being marked with a marble minaret 137 feet high; so slender,
so graceful, so delicate that you cann