I take a carriage to visit the Kutb Minar, the great tower that rears itself up about ten miles from Delhi.

This is Asia’s Appian Way. Ruins from every century, left by three races and three religions, are scattered over a large and dismal plain. The remains of ancient Hindu Delhi, of Afghan Delhi, and of Mogul Delhi, cover a dead expanse of seventy square miles. Slowly, during the flow of centuries, the city has changed its site, as a river changes its bed. As far as the eye can reach, dilapidated domes and broken columns reveal themselves in the midst of the dry brushwood. These yellowish hillocks are the ruins of Indra-Partha, the city of Indra, for which the five brothers of Mahabarata fought three thousand years ago. Farther away a granite pillar, covered with Pali characters, proclaims the edicts of the Buddhist King Asoka. Everywhere, like tombs in a cemetery, the débris of Mongolian art, monumental mausoleums and domes surrounded by kiosks are heaped together, all corroded by time and merged into the uniform tint of the sad and dry vegetation that Nature provides. Several tombs are as large as those of Akbar at Secundra and rise up solitary upon the arid steppe. The blue peacocks that are roaming about are the only living things that haunt the place. Generations have swarmed here and of their living past this almost imperceptible residue is all that is left, just as ancient forests have had to exist in order to make a little piece of coal. The Vedic age, the Brahmanical age, the Buddhist age, the first Mussulman dynasties, the Mogul Empire,—each historical period has left here a small deposit.

You can gather this history around the Kutb: four old Hindu forts, still quite recognizable, once surrounded a large city and some Buddhist temples where the monks in yellow robes with shaven heads walked about peacefully; there remains a large iron post charged with some Sanskrit inscriptions. About the year 1000, over the wall of the Himalayas overflowed the first hordes of the Mussulmans. The city was razed and from the stones of the great temple a mosque was built, the ruins of which now lie around us. Here is a triple colonnade where you recognize the old Buddhist pillars, and the patient, complicated, confused work of the poor Hindu workman, with all of its childish indecency. They are deeply worked, overcharged with chisellings that time has made almost illegible; here and there, figures of a symbolical obscenity appear, a few mutilated by the moral superiority of the conqueror. Little by little, you accustom yourself to read what the eaten away stone has to say, the lines form themselves afresh. You recognize processions of gods surrounded by guards and faithful followers, animals, tigers, lewd monkeys and elephants, which, from a very early period, occupy the Hindu mind. These thousands of stones, which ought to be arranged in irregular chapels and leafy roofs, the Mussulmans have erected into columns, rectangular galleries, or in geometrical and simple rows. Upon the great bare walls, cabalistic numbers and letters that look like the tracks of birds are directed against the unbelievers. Above all, dominating the immense cemetery-like plain, inviolate through time, the Kutb throws its straight rocket of red stone and white marble, two hundred and fifty feet into the sky. Six centuries ago, from its top the sharp chant of the Muezzin broke the silence of the great plain when the sun dropped behind the horizon.

KENILWORTH CASTLE
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE

Apart from the great historical interest attaching to these magnificent ruins, they deserve, architecturally, the closest examination and study, containing, as they do, elaborate specimens of the best constructions, in both military and domestic branches, during the different periods of the art in this country. We find first the massive square Norman keep, which had its protecting moat. This was the work of the original grantee, Geoffrey de Clinton, the treasurer and chamberlain of Henry I. Next comes an era, from 1180 to 1187, when we find entries for building and repairs to walls and fortifications; and again, from 1212 to 1216, the castle being then in the hands of King John, vast sums were expended upon the outer line of walls, with their flanking defences of Lunn’s Tower and the Water Tower, and upon a chamber and other accommodation for the King, most of which still remains, though the timber constructions inside and against the walls have, of course, not survived. The next development is in the Late Decorated or Perpendicular style including the ruins of the great Hall and some other buildings at the west end of the inner court still called Lancaster’s Buildings, of the Fourteenth Century, rather late in the reign of Edward III., being some of the additions made by John of Gaunt, after he obtained Kenilworth by his first wife.

KENILWORTH CASTLE, ENGLAND.

After this portion come the various alterations and insertions of the Elizabethan period, the beautiful gatehouse on the north side, and the towers and works added by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and called the Leicester Buildings. Here are, therefore, examples of four different periods in each of which the particular work is capable of proof by existing documents, showing the gradations and changes which these buildings underwent, according to the requirements of the different ages, in passing from the barbarism of a military despotism to the comforts and splendour of later civilization. It is a magnificent specimen, and one easy of access. As we have said, the Manor of Kenilworth was bestowed by Henry I. upon Geoffrey de Clinton, who founded here a castle and a monastery; deriving, doubtless, from a Norman follower of Duke William, he must have been of worth and eminence among the barons, since besides the Royal posts which he occupied, the King appointed him to the Chief Justiceship of England. He was succeeded by his son Geoffrey, married to Agnes, daughter of Roger, Earl of Warwick, whose son, Henry, parted with Kenilworth, most probably on compulsion, to King John, who made it a Royal residence. One of the rebellious sons of Henry II. had taken possession of it, and held it for a time. Henry III., on his sister, the Princess Eleanor, marrying Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, settled Kenilworth on her for life but in 1254 it was granted for the joint lives of the Earl and Countess of Leicester, and they made their home here. During the Baron’s War which followed, this castle was made the base of operations by de Montfort, who provided it with warlike engines of defence not then known in England, and stores of all sorts, and after the battle of Lewis, Richard, King of the Romans, Henry’s brother, with his youngest son, Edmund, was sent prisoner to Kenilworth, under the care of Leicester’s second son Simon. In 1265, after effecting his escape from the custody of the barons at Hereford, Prince Edward, by a daring night attack, beat up the quarters of young de Montfort at Kenilworth, and took temporary possession of the place, making prisoners thirteen knights bannerets, with their followers, who were unguardedly sleeping in houses around the castle perhaps for the sake of an early bath. Young de Montfort and his pages narrowly escaped capture and only did so by a headlong race “some stark naked, some in breeches or drawers, some in shirts and many with their clothes under their arms.” Departing thence Prince Edward rapidly effected a junction with his friends in the West, and overwhelmed and slaughtered the Earl of Leicester at the battle of Evesham. After this the Royal forces returned to Kenilworth which still held out manfully under the Earl’s second son Simon and underwent a close siege that lasted for six months.

Trenches were cut on the land side of the castle and huge wooden towers, holding slingers and archers, were advanced against the wall, while barges, transported overland from Chester maintained the attack across the castle lake; but the garrison which numbered 1,200 men, met these assaults with the mangonels and other engines of de Montfort, and only gave in when reduced by famine, when, with the surrender of Kenilworth, the Civil War came to an end in December, 1265.

Having thus recovered possession of the fortress, King Henry bestowed it and the manor upon his youngest son Edmund, whom he created, two years later, Earl of Lancaster. In 1279, under the encouragement of that martial prince, Edward I., a very magnificent tournament was held at Kenilworth, under Mortimer, Earl of March, for the space of three days, at which, besides the sports of tilting and the barriers, the new military game of the Round Table was introduced. King Edward II., after his flight and capture, was brought a prisoner here to meet the commission appointed by Parliament, from whose lips he received the announcement of his deposition in favour of his son, at hearing which he fell senseless to the ground. Of the presence chamber, where this mournful scene was enacted, little remains but fragments of walls and two large bay windows festooned with ivy. The unfortunate King was shortly after, on December 5, removed hence to his hideous doom at Berkeley Castle on January 25. On the accession of Edward III., the castle again became the seat of baronial splendour under the Earls of Lancaster, the third of whom, Henry, was created Duke of Lancaster, but dying s. p. male (35 Edward III.), his two daughters became heirs to his great estates: Blanche, the younger, inheriting Kenilworth and bringing it, and afterwards, on her sister’s death the whole property of her father, in marriage to John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III., who shortly after revived in him the title of Duke of Lancaster. The wealth thus obtained from his father enabled in great measure the duke’s son and heir, Henry of Bolingbroke, in later days to oust his cousin, Richard II., from the throne, and to take his place thereon as King Henry IV., being greatly driven thereto by the King’s treatment of him in regard to Kenilworth.