The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1895-01-09

|
royal tomb.
The Tat has sixteen great arched win
dows, four at each corner Also at
each of the four corners of the Tai
stands minaret 1877 feet high. Also at
each side of this building is splendid
mosque of red sandstone.
Two hundred and fifty years has the
Tai stood, and yet not a wall is cracked,
not a mosaic loosened, nor an arch
sagged, nor panel dulled. The storms
of $50 winters have not married, nor
the heats of $50 summers disintegrated
marble. There is no story OF age
/ written by mosses on its white surface.
Montaz, the queen, was beautiful, and
Shah Jehan, the king, here proposed
to let all the centuries of time know 1t.
She was married at twenty years OF age
and died at twenty-nine. Her life
ended as another life began; as the
rose bloomed the rose bud perished.
| To adorn this dormitory of the dead,
at the command of the king, Bagdad
sent to this building its cornelian, and
Ceylon its lapis lazuli, and Punjab its
! jasper, and Persia its amethyst, and
Thibet its turquoise, and Lanka its
sapphire, and Yemen it's agate, and
Punah its diamonds; and bookstores,
and sardonyx, and chalcedony, and
moss agates are as common as though
they were pebbles. You find one spray
OF vine beset with eighty, and another
with one hundred stones. Twenty thou
sand men were twenty years in building
it, and although the labor was slave
labor, and not paid for, the building
cost what would be about $50, 900, 900
OF our American money. Some of the
jewels have been picked out of the
wall by iconoclasts or conquerors, and
substitutes of less value have taken
their places; but the vines the ira
ceries, the arabesques, the spandrels,
the entablatures are so wondrous that
you feel like dating the rest of your
life from the day you first saw them.
In letters of black marble the whole of
the Koran is spelled out in and on this
august pile. The king sleeps in the
tomb beside the queen, although he
intended to build palace as black as
this was white on the opposite side of
the river for himself to sleep in In
deed, the foundation of such NEGRO
polls of black marble is still there, and
from the white to the black temple of
the dead bridge was to cross; but the
son dethroned him and imprisoned
him, and it is wonderful that the king
had any place at all in which to be
buried.
Instead of windows to let in the light
upon the two tombs, there is trellis-
work of marble, cut so delicately
thin that the sun shines through it
as easily as through glass. Look the
world over over and find so much trans
lucency, canopies, traceries, lace-work,
embroideries of stone.
We had heard of the wonderful reso.
nance of this Tai, and so tried it, !
suppose there are more sleeping echoes
in that building waiting to be. Weakened
by the human voice than in any build.
ing ever constructed. uttered one
word, and there seemed descending in
visible choirs in full chant, and there
was reverberation that kept on long
after one would have expected it ia
cease When line of a hymn was
sung there were replying, rolling, ris'
ing, falling, Interviewing sounds that
seemed modulated by beings seraphic-
There were aerial sopranos and ,bassos,
soft, high, deep, tremulous, emotional,
commingling. 1t was like an antiphon-
al of Heaven.
But there are four or five Tai Mahals.
1t has one appearance at sunrise, an
other at noon, another at sunset, and
another by moonlight. Indeed, the sill
yer trowel of the moon, and the COLDER
trowel of the sunlight, and the leader
trowel Of the storm build and rebuild
the glory, so that it never seems twice
alike 1t has all moods, all complex
ions, all grandeurs.
The Tai is the pride of India, and es
pecially of Mohammedanism An En-
glish officer at the fortress told us thai
when during the general mutiny in 1856
the Mohammedans proposed insurrec
tion at Agra, the English government
aimed the guns of the fort at the Ia
and said: You make insurrection
and that same day we will blow you
Tai to atoms," and that threat ended
the disposition for mutiny at Agra
From the top of the Tai, which is 25'
feet high, springs a spire thirty fee
higher and that is enameled gold. Wha
an anthem in eternal rhythm! Lyric
and elegies in marble. Sculptured no
sanna! Masonry as of supernatural
handsl Mighty doxology in stone
shall see nothing to equal it till Sc,
the great white throne, and on it Hin
from whose face the earth and heavens
flee away.
But thought while looking at tha
palace for the dead, all this constructed
to cover handful of dust, but ever
that handful has probably gone from
the mausoleum. How much better i
would have been to expend sixty mil
lions of dollars which the Tai Maha
cost, for the living. What asylums i
1t might have built for the sick, wha
houses for the homelessl What i'm
provements our century has made upor
other centuries in lifting in honor O.
the departed memorial churches, me
mortal hospitals, memorial reading
rooms, memorial observatories. By al
possible means let us keep the memory
Of departed loved ones fresh in mind,
and let there be an appropriate head
stone or monument in the cemetery
but there is dividing line between
reasonable commemoration and wiclref