The slabs compos

This marble is very translucent. ing the screen of our enclosure were about four inches in thickness, as near as I could guess. Yet when the sun shone bright I could distinctly see through the slab the shadow of my hand, and the outline of every finger was distinct.

In the days of its glory, the palace was the scene of many crimes, of much that in human nature is base and degrading. But the stream of time has swept these impurities away. There remains only a creation of the beautiful; the expression of a spirit of splendour and magnificence for ever passed away.

I fear that if we could recall the past and behold the inmates of these marble courts, we should hardly consider them as equal to their surroundings. Sir Thomas Roe describes the faces that peeped at him through the latticed windows without enthusiasm, noticing only that they were 'but indifferently white.' And a native, who had seen the Zenana of the late king of Delhi, informed me that with but few exceptions the ladies were small, dark, and plain.

CHAPTER XXVII.

QUARRELS.

FROM these dreams of the past we were presently aroused by the disputes of the present. The quarrels had recommenced, and with renewed animosity. To say that the quarrels had recommenced is hardly correct, for that implies that they had previously ceased, which they never had. It was merely that a fresh subject was selected, and just now it was the defences.

The fort having been erected before the days of artillery was deficient in many of the modern requirements among others, it had no glacis. On one side the town, on another side the ruins, came close up to the walls, while the ravines would afford shelter for any amount of assailants. Colonel Fraser had of late been very busy in remedying this defect, so far as it was capable of remedy. He had blown up the ruins, and sloped off the ravines, and he now proposed to demolish the houses. It was on this the dissensions arose.

The part of the city that adjoined the fort was a low suburb, chiefly consisting of mud hovels. Such as they were, however, the owners valued them, and objected to their removal, and their objections were supported by some of the higher civil officials. Others of the authorities supported Colonel Fraser's proposals. Everyone else took one side or the other, and the question,

After much
The houses

which was really one of military engineering, was debated with all the animosity of a party dispute. discussion an arrangement was come to. were to be levelled, and the owners were to receive compensation; but as there was no money to pay it, it was to be given in the form of promissory notes, redeemable with interest on the restoration of order.

The arrangement in itself was a very just one, yet under the circumstances it failed to give satisfaction to either party. The suburb was inhabited by just the class that had been the most active in destroying the station. The English and Christians, who had not been reimbursed for their losses, felt indignant that more consideration should be shown to these people, the authors of the disturbances, than to themselves, the victims. The owners of the houses, on the other hand, regarded the promissory notes, and with some reason, as little better than waste-paper. They did not believe that the Government would ever be in a position to redeem them, nor could they afford to wait for that period should it arrive. Their poverty obliged them to sell their notes for whatever they could get for them, which just then was next to nothing. Practically, the whole compensation found its way into the hands of the grasping money lenders.

This difficulty had hardly been disposed of when a fresh cause of dissension presented itself. In the midst of the suburb, close against the wall of the fort, stood an old mosque, very ugly, but large, massive, and covering a great extent of ground. The Mohammedans of the city came forward in a body, and petitioned that the mosque might be allowed to remain. The chief civil officials still retained their partiality for the Mohammedans, and, notwithstanding all that occurred, their belief in their

loyalty. The rest of the English and Christians were much exasperated against them. A fresh contention arose, in which, except among the engineers, the military question was rather lost sight of. One party would have been glad to see the mosque destroyed because it was a mosque; the other party for that reason desired to preserve it.

The engineers were firm, and they so clearly had common sense on their side that the civil authorities in the end felt obliged to yield. That they might do so gracefully, they proposed to procure a 'futwah,' or judgment from the Cazee, which would, they represented, be a justification for the demolition in the eyes of the other Mohammedans. The military authorities, so the gossip went, gave them to understand that, if it gratified them to procure the 'futwah,' they of course could do $0. But all the same, 'futwah' or no 'futwah,' the mosque should come down.

The reply was not encouraging-nevertheless the futwah was procured. I did not see it, but I heard the contents; and as my informant was the Cazee himself, I imagine I heard them correctly. The 'futwah' sanctioned the demolition on the strength of a precedent of the Emperor Alumgire, that pious monarch, when at war with the Mahrattas, having pulled down a mosque that sheltered them from the fire of his artillery-the doctors of the law having declared that the Almighty would pardon the removal of His temple for so worthy an object as the destruction of His enemies.

The precedent was hardly in point, as it was the preservation, not the destruction, of the unbelievers for which the removal of the building was now desired. However, in the satisfaction of obtaining the 'futwah,' this defect was prudently overlooked.

Beyond the civil authorities the 'futwah' did not

give much satisfaction. The Mohammedans refused to accept it as of any validity, declaring openly that it had been extorted, an opinion that the Cazee himself rather encouraged; while the English considered the procuring it as both an undignified as well as an unwise proceeding for it was practically conceding to our enemies the right to define the limits of our means of defence against them.

The demolition of the mosque was regarded as a defeat for those of the higher officials who had desired its preservation, and, as these were not at the time popular, their defeat gave satisfaction. They, however, had a consolation. The military favourite was Jotee Pershand, the Commissariat contractor, and he had lately erected a very fine new house in the suburb, and this, of course, would come down with the rest; and thus, though Jotee Pershand had escaped arrest, he would suffer injury. In this expectation they were doomed to disappointment. The preliminary difficulties having been arranged, an army of workmen were let loose in the suburb. For some days they were concealed in a cloud of dust, out of which occasionally came the sound of explosions. When the dust cleared away, the mosque had gone, the suburb had gone, but to the indignation of the civil authorities the house of Jotee Pershand appeared as before-bright with fresh paint, white and triumphant.

To the remonstrances made to them the military, so the story went, returned a very curt answer, to the effect that if the enemy approached the house would be destroyed, and that in the meanwhile it could remain as a reward to its owner for his good services; and with this unsatisfactory explanation the civil authorities had to rest content.

These disputes regarding the defences were succeeded