aurungzebe’s mosque. 
127 
in India^ as a monument of the triumph of the cres- 
cent over the hosts of the idolator. The Hindoo sanc^ 
tuary was destroyed to make room for the Mahomedan, 
and, with all the meanness of a narrow and bigoted 
soul, Aurungzebe used to command his licentious 
soldiers to repair daily to the roof of the mosque; 
which overlooks the sacred gaut below; and gaze 
upon the Hindoo bathers, who considered themselves 
tainted by the scrutiny of profane eyes ; so that they 
were thus cruelly interrupted in their daily devotions, 
while the proud conqueror made those devotions an 
object at once of his ridicule and of his revenge. The 
Hindoos suffered a hard bondage under the government 
of this unfeeling tyrant, who sacrificed all principle 
and all sense of humanity to his ambition ; and they 
may look upon the Mahomedan conquests in India 
as the firon age of their history. 
From the minarets of Aurungzebe’s mosque there is 
the finest prospect imaginable, and English visiters, 
in spite of the contempt in which they are said to be 
held by every true son of the faithful, are obsequiously 
shown the beauties of this building by a pliant sa- 
laaming Mussulman, who for a few rupees would no 
longer hold it profane to allow a Christian visiter to 
take a cool bottle of claret within the sacred shade of 
the sanctuary, dedicated, as his followers captiously 
maintain, to the most abstemious of prophets. From 
the river above Benares, as well as from the mosque, 
the prospect is unusually grand, though the city, 
when examined in detail, scarcely realizes the im- 
pression made by a distant view. It is of great 
extent, and apparently filled with high and stately 
