A PATAN PALACE. 
15 
building was superseded by one much more gorge- 
ous, and which exhibits at this moment in India 
some of the finest specimens of ornamental architec- 
ture upon the face of the globe. 
The print represents the dwelling-house of a Pa- 
tan chieftain who probably caroused in its spacious 
halls upwards of four centuries ago. The entrance is 
through a rather low but massy doorway, protected 
by two ponderous buttresses, and surmounted by a 
terrace covering a sort of vaulted arcade which runs 
at right angles from the main building, forming the 
boundary of a court, of considerable extent, which it 
helps to enclose. The terrace is flanked on either 
side by a parapet broken at rather long intervals into 
turrets ; but the interstices are too narrow to admit 
the mounting of cannon, which were evidently not 
employed in Oriental warfare when those edifices were 
erected, though gunpowder is imagined by some to 
have been known in India long prior to its discovery 
in Europe. The windows have the pointed gothic 
arch, and above them there is a plain, heavy, but not 
ungraceful, pediment, supported by brackets, which 
favour the general aspect of solidity. 
It is surprising how perfectly these ruins, even 
now, maintain that appearance of severe but dignified 
simplicity which characterised the people by whom 
they were erected. Those more immediately in the 
neighbourhood of the river, are the almost daily 
resort of travellers, who, notwithstanding the fre- 
quent propinquity of very equivocal neighbours, take 
up their temporary abodes in these deserted buildings, 
where they share with bats and creatures of less in- 
