The dead frame alone is left of all this gorgeous picture. The imperishable marble glows white in the sunlight as it did in the days of Shah Jehan. The great red bastions of the Fort frown over the same placid Jumna, and watch each morning the pearly dome of the Taj Mahal rise like a moon in the dawn-glow, shimmer through the parching glare of an Indian day, and at eve sink, rosy, into the purple shadows of swiftly-falling night, as they did when Shah Jehan sat “in the sunset-lighted balcony with his eyes fixed on the snow-white pile at the bend of the river, and his heart full of consolation of having wrought for her he loved, through the span of twenty years, a work that she had surely accepted at the last.”[2]
[2] The Web of Indian Life
We spent a long afternoon in the Fort, and drove out finally through the monstrous gateway in a little Victoria, feeling all the time that none but elephants in all their glory of barbaric caparison could pass through such a portal worthily.
The moon was full almost a week ago, unfortunately, so we determined that, failing moonlight, our first visit to the Taj should be at sunset.
The two miles’ drive along an excellent road was delightful, and the approach to the Taj has been laid out with much skill as a beautiful bit of landscape garden. This care is due to Lord Curzon, who has taken Agra and its monuments into his especial keeping.
A very small golf-course has been laid out, and the familiar form of the enthusiast could be seen, blind to everything but the flight of time and his Haskell, hurrying round to save the last of the daylight.
Beneath a tree was laid out a tea equipage, and a few ladies indolently putting showed that, after all, the game was not taken too seriously.
I have no intention of trying to describe the Taj Mahal. The attempt has already been made a thousand times. I may merely remark that the detestable Indian miniatures, and little ivory or marble models that are, alas! so common, are incapable of giving an idea, otherwise than misleading, of this wonderful building, which is not—as they would vainly show it—glaring, staring, and hard, nor does its formality seem other than just what it should be.
As we saw it first—opalescent in the soft, clear light of sunset—the chief impression it made upon us was that of size; for this we were quite unprepared.
As we approached it from the great red entrance arch, along a smooth path bordering the central stretch of still, translucent water, the lovely dome rose fairy-like from the masses of trees that, in their turn, formed a background of solemn green for gorgeous patches of colour, in bloom and leaf, which glowed on either side as we advanced.