APPENDIX. 339 



work compares in fineness -with that of the Taj. Within the 

 walls of the fort, nearer the present city, are what remains of the 

 palace, interesting as illustrating the life of Mogul royalty in 

 those days, but containing little fine workmanship compared with 

 the Taj. 



" Fuhttepore Sikra," twenty-two miles west of Agra, also con- 

 tains some fine illustrations of the architecture of the period. It 

 was built by the Emperor Akbar as a sort of imperial suburb, 

 was six miles in circumference, and enclosed by a high embrasured 

 wall of red sandstone. This fortification, with its lofty Saracenic 

 gate, still remains in a tolerable state of repair, but the elegant 

 structures enclosed within this space are now in ruins. 



A little more than one hundred miles to the northwest from 

 Agra is Delhi, another capital of the Mogul empire, with a fort, 

 palace, and other structures remaining, which giv^ one a fuller 

 idea of the magnificence of the Mogul dynasty than do those at 

 Agra. It was here that the famous "Peacock Throne" was 

 erected, in the construction of which Shah Jehan is said to have 

 expended six millions of pounds sterling, or thirty millions of dol- 

 lars. The audience-chamber in which this was placed is a mag- 

 nificent room, and bears the architect's inscription, which Moore 

 has made familiar to all the world in " Lalla Rookh : " "If there 

 be an elysium on earth, it is this." While one cannot but be im- 

 pressed with the magnificence of the works of the Mogul em- 

 perors, yet it is probable that their wealth and power have been 

 vastly over-estimated, and that the resources of their empire were 

 largely expended in building magnificent tombs and palaces, 

 while the material interests of the country were left to languish. 

 The wealth that in most of the countries of the earth is now dif- 

 fused among the people, was then concentrated in the hands of 

 royalty and its favorites, while the people were miserably poor. 

 Some chroniclers have stated that the Taj was built by forced 

 labor, and that the laborers and artisans received only a scanty 

 allowance of food in lieu of wages ; that the mortality' among 

 them was very great, and a satirical couplet was composed at the 

 time, to the effect that the memory of Banoo Begum ought to be 

 green, for it was watered by the tears of thousands. Travellers in 

 'all ages have been apt to accept a single work or class of works as 



