crowned with a dome and
connected with four wings by long galleries.

The throne-room is a splendid apartment and the seat of the mighty
is the ancient throne of Tipu, one of the southern maharajas,
who, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, gave the
British a great deal of trouble until he was deprived of power.
The banquet hall, the council chamber, the ballrooms and a series
of drawing rooms, nearly all of the same size, are decorated in
white and gold, and each is larger than the east room in the
White House at Washington. The ceilings are supported by rows of
marble columns with gilded capitals, and are frescoed by famous
artists. The floors are of polished teak wood; the walls are
paneled with brocade and tapestries, and are hung with historical
pictures, including full length portraits of the kings and queens
of England, all the viceroys from the time of Warren Hastings,
and many of the most famous native rulers of India. In one of the
rooms is a collection of marble busts of the Caesars. These, with
a portrait of Louis XV. and several elaborate crystal chandeliers,
were loot of the war of 1798, when they were captured from a
ship which was carrying them as a present from the Emperor of
France to the Nyzam of Hyderabad.

The palace cost $750,000 and the furniture $250,000, more than
a hundred years ago, at a time when money would go three times
as far as it does to-day. Lord Wellesley had lofty ideas, and
when the merchants of the East India Company expressed their
disapproval of this expenditure he told them that India "should
be governed from a palace and not from a counting-house, with
the ideas of a prince and not those of a retail dealer in muslin
and indigo."

Great stories are told of the receptions, levees and balls that
were given in the days of the East India Company, but they could
not have been more brilliant than those of to-day. The Government
House has never been occupied by a viceroy more capable of assuming
the dignities and performing the duties of that office than Lord
Curzon, and no more beautiful, graceful or popular woman ever sat
upon the vice-queen's throne than Mary Leiter Curzon. No period
in Indian history has ever been more brilliant, more progressive
or more prosperous than the present; no administration of the
government has even given wider satisfaction from any point of
view, and certainly the social functions presided over by Lord
and Lady Curzon were never surp