W.
Bentinck. Had these things fetched the price expected, it is probable
that the whole of the palace, and even the Taj itself, would have
been pulled down, and sold in the same manner.[21]

We visited the Moti Masjid or Pearl Mosque. It was built by Shah
Jahan, entirely of white marble; and completed, as we learn from an
inscription on the portico, in the year A.D. 1656.[22] 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;[23] and is
by some people admired even more than the Taj, because they have
heard less of it; and their pleasure is heightened by surprise. We
feel that it is to all other mosques what the Taj is to all other
mausoleums, a _facile princeps_.

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[24]

I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a
magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor
Jahangir. His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre,
and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or
mosaic. On the top of the building, which is three or four stories
high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault
below.[25] This is beautifully carved, with the 'nau nauwe nam'-the
ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Koran.[26] It
is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the
'words of God' from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.[27] He told
me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the
large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,[28] in addition
to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a
year; but the chief native officer of the Taj establishment demanded
half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he
persuaded his master, the European engineer, _with much difficulty_,
to take all this hay for the public cattle. 'And why could you not
adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?'
'Is not this the way', said he, with emotion, 'that Hindustan has cut
its own throat, and brought in the stranger a