sacked the palace, despoiled the Divan-i-Khas of its silver ceiling, but when they attempted to sit on this seat of the Great Mogul it broke under the indignity. Half of the court space was once a sunken pond, with a carved niche or throne in the surrounding gallery, where the great one used to sit to fish at ease. It is now but a dry stone court, and no trace remains of the bath-room of precious green marble, whose interior was stripped by the Marquis of Hastings, who wished to send it to England to be reërected as a bath-room for George IV. The loose marbles lay around for years, uncared for, and were finally sold for a trifle. It is not necessary for any outsider to vent his indignation at this barbaric proceeding, as Sir James Fergusson has said it all, with a vehemence none can approach, and has sufficiently laid the lash of his terrible sarcasm on his Philistine countrymen.
From this Court of the Fish-pond a door admits one directly to the Diwan-i-Am, or great audience-hall, its marble lattices and inlaid throne splendid reminders of the past, the rows of British cannon and the red-coated sentries beyond sufficient evidences of the present. We crossed the court and ascended the staircase to the Moti Musjid, the Pearl Mosque, over which three generations of writers have raved as an architectural chef-d'œuvre second only to the Taj. After all the splendid creations of Shah Jahan, this in some way failed to produce an equal impression, and it gave us a distinct sense of disappointment. The simplicity of the white mosque, relieved only by the blue and gray veins
