intention of the founder to make them all sustain and illustrate the matchless grandeur of the finished work. It was in this condition when Tamerlane invaded India A. D. 1398. That “firebrand of the universe,” as he was called, was so enchanted with the great mosque and its minar that he had a model of it made, which he took back with him, along with all the masons that he could find in Delhi, and it is said that he erected a mosque exactly upon this plan at his capital of Samarcund, before he again left it for the invasion of Syria.
The west face of the quadrangle, in which the minar stands, was formed by eleven large alcoves, the center and greatest of which contained the pulpit.
The court to the eastward is inclosed by a high wall, bordered by arcades formed of pillars carved in the highest style of Hindoo art. Those on the opposite side are dissimilar, and the fair inference is, that the Moslem monarch built his mosque, in part, by materials taken from the great Hindoo temples, which he must have desecrated for the purpose. This was after their fashion, and laid the foundation for those bitter feuds and hatreds of the one people against the other, which have lasted to this day.
Close to the minar are the remains of one of those superb portals, so general in the great works of the Patans. The archway of this gate is sixty feet high, and the ornaments with which it is embellished are cut with the delicacy of a seal engraving, retaining, after the lapse of six hundred years, their sharp, clear outlines.
Few who visit the Kootub, if they have strength for the toilsome ascent, fail to go to the summit, and well does it repay the effort. It is sublime to look up to the unclouded heavens, to which you seem so near, while beneath and beyond, the eye wanders over not merely the city beneath, but across to modern Delhi, with its white and glittering mosques and palaces, the silvery Jumna gently pouring along, the feudal towers of Selimghur, and the mausoleums of Humayun and Sufter Jung, all in the soft light of the India sunset; but what must that view have been when imperial splendors, and cultivation like earthly paradises, or “the gar-
