AKBAR'S WONDERFUL PALACE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3164, 19 August 1881, Page 4

AKBAR'S WONDERFUL PALACE.

The palace of the mighty Emperor Atbar, that makes his city —Agra, India—a place of pilgrimage for all sightseers, is one of the "wonders of the world. It is situated in the great red sandstone fort which he built, whose walls are a mile and a half in circuit and 60 feefc high. The public hall of audience, the private hall of audience, the women's apartments, the bathing-rooms in the I'alaoe of Glass, and the Pearl Mosque, which was the private imperial chapel, are all worthy of the most careful inspection. 'I he same excellencies that characterise the famous Tag Nuhul (Crown Palace) are seen here also—the same purity of glistening marble ; the same beauty of design and delicacy of finish in the inlaid ornamentation and open-work screen; the same lavish loveliness and elegance, not greatly altered after more than two hundred years. . The Glass Palace is very peculiar and curious. Its various chambers and passages are adorned with thousands of small mirrors, disposed in intricate and striking patterns, that flash back the light bewilderingly' and when the marble baths were full, and the fountains and miniature cascades were in play, with hundreds ( 'of lamps ingeniously inserted within or behind the falling or leaping water, the effect must have been fairylike indeed! The Pearl Mosque, also, is in its way unsurpassed the world over. It is truly the pearl of all mosqucu, not largo, but absolutely perfect in style and proportions, the coiwuinate flower of Saracenic architecture,

without a stain or flaw, so severely simple in its design, so transcedently white in its polished marbles (the only material used) that it so cm* a shrine scai'-clv fit for ar.j 'c ..t spotless ant'fcls to worship in—a shrine to rebuke, by its very aspect, the smallest impui'iuy of i,ho"u»!,u. The dust of the great Akbar, the builder of this marvellous edifice, lies under a splendid mausoleum at Secundra, near by.