The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1877-08-24
THE TAI MAEUL.
The Nest Beautiful Monument Ever Erected To
Woman.

Rev. ". r. Alger in Friendships of Women.
Still more costly honors than Artenisa
lavished on her Mausoleum did the great
mogul, Shah Jehan, pay to his idolized wife
Moomtaza Mahul. She died in 1851 III
giving birth to a daughter. Shah Jehan's
love for this exquisite being appears to
to have been supreme and ineffaceable. Af-
ter her death he at once set his architects
to work, with 10000 laborers, to build a
memorial worthy of her loveliness and of
his grief. For twenty-five years they
tolled, when, at cost equivalent to $780,
OO0, GOO now, unvailed from every disfgur-
ing accompaniment, rose on the banks of
the clear, blue Jnmna at Agra, where it
still stands to enchant the soul of every
traveller who approaches, the Tai Mahul,
the most exquisite building on the globe;
an angelic dream of beauty, materialized
and trf IL ted to earth. 1t is q romance at
once of Oriental royalty, of marriage, and
OF the human heart, that the unrivaled
pearl Of architecture in all the world should
thus be tomb reared over the body of his
wife, by the proudest monarch Of the east.
The quadrangle in which the structure
stands is 964 feet one way and 329 the
other. The area around is laid out in
parterres, planted with flowers, blossoming
shrubs, and expresses, interlaced by rows
of bubbling fountains and avenues paved
with freestone slabs. The mausoleum it.
self, the terrace and the minarets, are all
formed of the finest white marble, and
thickly inlaid with precious stoues. The
funeral vault is q miracle of GOODNESS,
sottness, tenderness and solemnity. Fer
guson, the historian Of architecture, says:
" No words can express the chastened
beauty Of that central chamber-the most
impressive of all the scpuchres of the
wolldH
Rassell, in his % Diary in Iudia,' thus
records the impression the scene made on
him: . Write a description of the Tai ? |
AS we'll write a description of that lovely |
dream which flushed the poets cheek or
gently moved the painters hand as he lay |
trembling with delight-the Endymion of
the glorious art-goddess, who reveals her
self and then floats softly away among the
and the dew clouds as he springs
up to grasp the melting form. Here is a
dream in marble-the Tai: solid, perma-
lent. 1t is wrong to call it dream in
marble; it is thought, an idea, concep-
ion of tenderness. Where it stands in it's
perfection, rising from lofty
platform Of marble OF dazzling whiteness-
dome, portals, all shining like a
resh, crisp snow-wreath. The exquisite
Greens of marble in the windows, the
,orches, the arched doorways, from which
shower of fieecy marble mingled with
ain of gems, seems about to fall on you.
The solid walls, melting and glowing with
endrils OF bright flowers and wreaths of
gate, Jasper cornelian, amethyst, snatch
d, as it were from the garden outside and
'ressed into the snowy blocks. Enter by
be doorway in 'front.' the arched roof of
ne cnpola scars above you, and the light
Ills dimly on the shrine-like tombs in the ,
entire of the glstening marble. See! a
inter palace, in whose glacial walls some ,
emile hand has buried the last flowers Of +
ltumn." .