Identifier: intimateglimpses00ladd Title: Intimate glimpses of life in India; a narrative of observations, educational, social, and religious, in the winter of 1899-1900 Year: 1919 (1910s) Authors: Ladd, George Trumbull, 1842-1921 Subjects: Publisher: Boston, R. G. Badger Contributing Library: The Library of Congress Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Text Appearing Before Image: great size andbeauty. Through the center of the garden and forits entire length runs a channel of water, which hasno fewer than twenty-three fountains distributedalong its course. In front of this channel and at theback of the garden rises a platform, faced withwhite marble, 313 feet square and 18 feet high, witha white minaret at each corner, 133 feet high. Inthe center of this platform stands the mausoleum it-self. The size of the building is a square of 186feet, with the corners cut off to the extent of 33^2feet. The principal dome is 58 feet in diameter and80 feet in height. The dome, which is built of brick,is, however, faced with white marble, so that the en-tire building appears composed of this material,including the smaller domes which are placed at eachof the four corners. But, as has already been said, besides the stand-ards of beauty of form and material, the Mogul ar-chitecture must be especially signalized for its ex-quisite decoration. It is less conspicuously true that

Text Appearing After Image: Relics of Mogul Magnificence 115 it was designed by Titans than that it was finishedas jewellers finish the most beloved of their works.All the spandrils of the Taj, all the angles and moreimportant details, are inlaid with precious stones.While lacking the simplicity and freedom of Greekdecorative art, it has therefore the lavish luxurious-ness which is so acceptable to the Oriental taste. But it is on entering the central chamber, be-neath which the bodies of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the best beloved wife, who after bearing himseven children died in child-bed of the eighth, areresting in a vault; and after taking time to gazeupward and around in thoughtful and appropriatemood,—that the chastened appreciation of thebeauty of the mausoleum reaches its most calm andfinished form. Here, under the center of the centraldome, enclosed by a trellis-work screen of whitemarble, a chef dceuvre of elegance in Indian art,and seen in the softly illuminated gloom of the dis-tant and half-c

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