Stocqueler. He thus sketches it: “I have been to visit the Taj. I have returned full of emotion. My mind is enriched with visions of ideal beauty. When first I approached the Taj, eleven years ago, I was disappointed. In after days, when my admiration for the loveliness of this building had grown into a passion, I often inquired why this should have been? And the only answer I can find is, that the symmetry is too perfect to strike at first. It meets you as the most natural of objects. It, therefore, does not startle, and you return from it disappointed that you have not been startled. But it grows upon you in all the harmony of its proportions, in all the exquisite delicacy of its adornment, and at each glance some fresh beauty or grace is developed. And, besides, it stands so much alone in the world of beauty. Imagination has never conceived a second Taj, nor had any thing similar ever before occurred to it.
“View the Taj at a distance! It is as the spirit of some happy dream, dwelling dim, but pure, upon the horizon of your hope, and reigning in virgin supremacy over the visible circle of the earth and sky. Approach it nearer, and its grandeur appears unlessened by the acuteness of its fabric, and swelling in all its fresh and fairy harmony until you are at a loss for feelings worthy of its presence. Approach still nearer, and that which, as a whole, has proved so charming, is found to be equally exquisite in the minutest detail. Here are no mere touches for distant effect. Here is no need to place the beholder in a particular spot to cast a partial light upon the performance; the work which dazzles with its elegance at the coup d'œil will bear the scrutiny of the miscroscope; the sculpture of the panels, the fretwork and mosaic of the screen, the elegance of the marble pavement, the perfect finish of every jot and iota, are as if the meanest architect had been one of those potent genii who were of yore compelled to adorn the palaces of necromancers and kings.
“We feel, as our eye wanders around this hallowed space, that we have hitherto lavished our language and admiration in vain. We dread to think of it with feelings which workmanship less
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