The true northerner., 1877-08-24
TnE TAI MAHUL.
The Most beautiful Monument Ever Erect-
ed tn Woman.

ed tn Woman.
The Rev. w. r. Alger, in "Friend-
ships of Women" says "Still more
costly honors than Artemisia lavished on
her mausoleum did the great Mogul,
Shah Jehan, pay to his idolized wife,
Moomtaza Mahul. She died in 1851 in
giving birth to daughter. Shah
Jehan's love for this exquisite being ap-
pears to have been supreme and in
effaceable. After her death he at once
set his architects to work, with 10000
laborers, to build memorial worthy of
her loveliness and of his grief. For
twenty-five years they toiled, when, at
cost equivalent to $40, 600, 900 now,
unveiled from every disfguring accom-
paniment, rose on the banks of the clear,
blue Jumna, 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, ma
terialized and translated to earth. 1t is
n romance mt 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 proud
est monarch of the East. The quad
rangle in which the structure stands is
964 feet one way, 800 the other. ID, The
area around is laid out into parterres,
planted with flowers, blossoming shrubs,
and Expresses, interlaced by rows of
bubbling fountains and avenues paved
with freestone slabs. The mausoleum
Itself, the terrace and the minarets, are
all formed of the finest white marbles,
and thickly inlaid with precious stones.
The funeral vault is a miracle of cool
ness, softness, splendor, tenderness, and
solemnity. FERGUSON, the historian OF
architecture, says "No words can ex-
press the chastened beauty of that
central chamber-the most graceful and
the most impressive of all the sepul-
chers of the world"
Russell, in his Diary in India, thus
records the impression the scene made
on him "Write n description of the
Tai? AS well write 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 god
dess, who reveals herself and then floats
softly away among the moonbeams and
the dew-clouds as he springs up to
grasp the melting form. Here is a
dream in marble-the Tai solid, perma-
nent. 1t is wrong to call it a dream
in marble it is a thought, an
idea, conception of tenderness where
it stands in it's astonishing perfection,
rising from lofty platform of marble of
dazzling whiteness-minarets, dome,
portals, all shining like a fresh, crisp
snowwreath. The exquisite screens of
marble in the windows, the porches, the
arched doorways, from which shower
of feecy marble mingled with rain of
gems seems about to fall on you. The
solid walls, melting and glowing with
tendrils of bright flowers and wreaths of
agate, jasper, cornelian, amethyst,
snatched, as it were, from the garden
outside and pressed into the snowy
blocks. Enter by the doorway in front,
the arched roof of the cupola scars above
you, and the light falls dimly on the
shrine-like tombs in the center of the
glistening marble. See winter pal
ace, in whose glacial walls some gentle
hand has buried the last flowers of au-
tumn.