4 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
period in which it is supposed to have been erected. 
It is perfectly unadorned ; built with a severe though 
chaste judgment, and is admirable for the mathematical 
symmetry of its proportions, its ponderous strength., the 
vastness of its forms, and the perfect consonance of its 
various parts. The solid compactness of its bulk, and 
the strength of the materials of which it is composed, 
render it almost imperishable ; for though now almost 
entirely neglected, it has suffered comparatively no- 
thing from the lapse of time, and those changes of 
season, of temperature, and of weather, which in 
every part of the habitable world leave the desolating 
brand of decay upon the proudest monuments of hu- 
man ingenuity. 
In almost every district of Hindostan, those beau- 
tiful structures, which had been raised to protect from 
open desecration the remains of once distinguished men, 
or as a perpetual record to posterity how highly they 
were the objects of cotemporary veneration, are now 
often converted into the abodes of banditti ; where 
these latter share with the most venomous reptiles of 
the jungle — and sometimes even with beasts of prey— - 
a temporary, but always perilous, abode. At a dis- 
tance from populous towns, those repositories of the 
illustrious dead, which have been suffered to decay, 
afford not only a favourable shelter from the incle- 
mency of the elements, but a secure retreat from the 
prying scrutiny of judicial functionaries ; and it too 
often happens that, in India, such functionaries, so long 
as their own immediate neighbourhoods are tolerably 
free from violators of the public peace, seek not to in- 
vestigate at a distance the haunts of the latter, who 
