LUC 363 carrying the materials of the temple, if his asses were not of a superior breed to these of Lucknow.* “The concourse of a great number of people perhaps does not anywhers improve their morals; vice and poverty are the only qualities that this people uniformly display. Some saunter, others lie down in a kind of dubious state between existence and annihilation ; others still are intoxi- cating themselves with the hookah ; a few only labour at their professions. The show of rich shops and merchandize is remarkably small, though it supplies the luxury of the court, or rather the palace for here there is little affluence beyond the narrow circle of the prince's family." Various other notices of Lucknow by European travellers have been consulted, but they were apparently so dazzled by the splendours of Luck- now that they have forgotton to note the condition of the country. I Prince Soltikoff, who visited Lucknow in 1841, declared that the sur- rounding country was a " desert sablonneux tout a fait sauvage et sans route;" but he was delighted to perceive that“ le respect qu'on porte ici aux Européens est vraiment unique." Mr. Fergusson writes as follows of Lucknow architecture :- “In an exhaustive attempt to describe all the saracenic styles of India, a chapter ought properly to follow here describing the buildings of these three cities.ll though it is questionable whether the style adopted in them does not rather belong to the volume which is devoted to those styles, designated in Europe as if in mockery • The Renaissance. What- ever may be the case in the west, in India there is no mistake about its being a decadence,' pure and simple ; and no caricatures of architec- ture are so ludicrous or so bad as those in which Italian details are introduced, more specially at Lucknow, but also in the two other capitals. Still the tomb of Haidar Ali has, in spite of its details, a strong smack of the old solema sepulchres of a better age; and in Lucknow there are some mosques and portals whose outline is still grand, though their details are detestable, and one building specially, the Imámbára, which when pot too closely looked into is not unfit to be spoken of in the same chapter as the earlier buildings. “As seen by the plan of the Imámbára, the principal apartment is 162 feet long by 53 feet 6 inches wide. On the two sides are verandahs respectively 26 feet 6 inches and 27 feet 3 inches wide, and at each end an octagonal apartment, 53 feet in diameter; the whole interior dimen- sions being thus 263 feet by 145.**
- Tennant's " Indian Recreatious," Vol. II, page 404.
Page No. 405, Vol. II, of Tennant's " Indian Recreations." See Hodge's Travels in India, 1793, page 107; Archer's Tour in Upper India, 1827, Mondy's Sketches of India, Vol. I, page 23, 1896. $ Soltikoff's Voyage dans l'Inde, Vol. 1., page 188. i Haidarabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Plan of Imambára at Lucknow from measurements by the author-icele 100 feet to 1 inch,
