drove up the long road that faced it, its three swelling domes and lofty minarets looked down upon us, the very embodiment of the Imperial Delhi of the past. Time-worn, grey with the storms of centuries, it seemed as if it gazed out over the scene of to-day unseeing, wrapt in the memory of the past, and past days of triumph, before the infidel came to deprive it of its place as the cathedral temple of an Imperial race. And as one looked, it carried one back with it into the past. One saw dimly, as in a vision, something of what those grey walls had seen, and a kind of awe and veneration stole upon one as in the presence of great and honoured age.
We were there at last, high up among the domes and minarets, looking down on the wonderful panorama that lay stretched out before our eyes. Away against the sky ran the long line of the Fort, the old red walls of Shah Jehan's Palace a fitting background for the scene below. Lined by smart troops, the centre of the road was gradually clearing. The last arrivals were hurrying to their places. All along one side of the road were covered stands for the spectators whom the Jumma Musjid could not accommodate, filled with the rank and fashion of the west. Opposite, row on row, sat youths from the native schools in Delhi, representative of the youth of India—a lot of healthy, laughing, nut-brown boys strung to wonder and excitement by the doings of the day, each group, distinguished by the different colours of the turbans worn, adding their brightness to the brilliant scene.
