168 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
dicular. It is a most quaint river-frontage; and perhaps, to a long 
resident in India, it may look magnificent; but I was much disap- 
int 
placed on a flat requires more lofty buildings than Benares can show, 
with wider streets; also that more prominence and space be given to 
what is good than its dense population, estimated at 600,000, can 
allow. The once magnificent palace, now fast crumbling to ruin, is 
dirty, wholly neglected, and so elbowed by lofty houses, that its inte- 
rior alone can be viewed to advantage. Here the remains of exquisite 
tracery of lattice-work and mosaic, claim high admiration; but they 
are disposed in long galleries, open to the dusty, sultry air, and com- 
mand no other prospect than the roofs of innumerable houses, and a 
far from picturesque river. It may be from want of taste, or of judg- 
ment, or both ; but I could not get the view ofthe Thames and the tiles, 
as seen from the Blackwall railway, out of my head,—a region, too, of 
which one hears a little less than of Benares. The famed mosque, the 
Midardos Minar, built by Aurungzebe on the site of a Hindu temple, 
is remarkable for its two octagonal minarets, 232 feet above the Ganges. 
e view, especially of the European Resident's quarter, over the 
town, is fine; but the building itself is deficient in beauty or ornament : 
it of course commands the muddy river with its thousands of boats, 
its waters peopled with swimmers and bathers, who spring in from the 
many temples, water-terraces, and ghauts on the city-side : the opposite 
is a great sandy plain. The town (of 600,000 inhabitants) below, looks 
a mass of poor, square, flat-roofed houses, of which 12,000 are brick, 
and 16,000 mud and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of 
small temples, the eye wanders in vain for some attractive feature or 
evidence of the wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a 
city celebrated throughout the East for all these attributes. Green 
parrots and pigeons are certainly prettier than crows and sparrows; 
and in this respect alone did Benares excel the many views I have 
had of objects in direi and objects of art. The general appearance 
of an oriental town is always more or less ruinous; and here there 
was nothing to be seen of architecture but crumbling house-tops be- 
yond the banks of the river. The eye is fatigued with pigeons, 
parrots, pots, plaster, pan-tiles,—the ear with prayer-bells and Poojahs ; 
whilst the Peepud and Parkinsonia are the only green things to be 
