[7] Many of our readers must have seen the beautiful ivory model of this far-famed edifice, lately exhibited in Regent Street, and now, we believe, in the Cambridge University museum. It is fortunate that so faithful a miniature transcript of the beauties of the Taj is in existence, since the original is doomed, as we are informed, to inevitable ruin at no distant period, from the ravages of the white ants on the woodwork. The shrines of Benares, with their swarms of sacred monkeys and Brahminy bulls, were objects of little interest to our Moslem wayfarer, who on the contrary recounts with visible satisfaction the destruction of several of these _But Khanas_, or idol-temples, by the intolerable bigotry of Aurungzib, and the erection of mosques on their sites. Among the objects of attraction in the environs of the city, he particularly notices a famous footprint[8] upon stone, called the _Kadmsherif_, or holy mark, deposited in a mosque near the serai of Aurungabad, and said to have been brought from Mekka by Sheik Mohammed Ali Hazin, whom the translator of his interesting autobiography (published in 1830 by the Oriental Society) has made known to the British public, up to the period when the tyranny of Nadir Shah drove him from Persia. "Here, during his lifetime, he used to go sometimes on a Thursday, and give alms to the poor in the name of God. He was a very learned and accomplished man; and his writings, both in prose and verse, were equal to those of Zahiri and Naziri. When he first came to India, he resided for some years at Delhi; but having had some dispute with the poet-laureate of the Emperor Mohammed Shah, he found himself under the necessity of retiring to Benares, where he lived in great privacy. As he was a stranger in the country, was engaged in no calling or profession, and received no allowance from the Emperor, it was never known whence, or how, he was supplied with the means of keeping up the establishment he did, which consisted of some hundred servants, palanquins, horses, &c. It is said that when the Nawab Shujah-ed-dowlah projected his attack on the English in Bengal, he consulted the Sheik on the subject, who strongly dissuaded him from the undertaking. He died shortly after the battle of Buxar in 1180," (A.D. 1766.) The battle of Buxar was fought Oct. 23, 1764; but that Sheik Ali Hazin died somewhere about this time, seems more probable than that his life was extended (as stated by Sir Gore Ouseley) till 1779; since he describes himself at the conclusion of his memoirs in 1742, when only in his 53d year, as "leading the dullest course of existence in the dullest of all dull countries, and disabled by his increasing infirmities from any active exertion of either body or mind"--a state of things scarcely promising a prolongation of life to the age of ninety.