Nothing jars; for if the jewel were away the setting would still be among the noblest monuments on earth. The minarets at the four corners of the platform are a moment’s stumbling-block: they look irreverently like the military masts of a battleship, and the hard lines where the stones join remind you of a London subway. But look at the Taj itself, and the minarets fall instantly into place; they set off its glories, and, standing like acolytes, seem to be challenging you not to worship it. At each side, below the Taj, is a triple-domed building of sandstone and marble; the hot red throws up the pearl-and-ivory softness of the Taj. The cloisters round the garden, the lordly caravanserai outside the gate, the clustering domes and mosaic texts from the Koran on the great gate itself--all this you hardly notice; but when you do, you find that every point is perfection. As for the garden, with shady trees of every hue, from sprightly yellow to funereal cypress, with purple blossoms cascading from the topmost boughs, with roses and lilies, phloxes and carnations--and the channel of clear water with twenty fountains that runs through the garden, and the basin with the goldfish.... It is pure Arabian Nights! You listen for the speaking bird and the singing tree. And was it not hither that Prince Ahmed, leaving his brother Ali to cuddle Nuronnihar in the palace, followed his arrow? And is not that the fairy Peri-Banu coming out of the pleasure-house to welcome him? Surely man never made such a Paradise: it must be the fabric of a dream wafted through gates of silver and opal. O Shah Jehan, Shah Jehan, you are bewitching a respectable newspaper-correspondent. The thought of you is strong wine. Shah Jehan, with your queens and concubines without number, their amber feet mirrored in marble, their ivory limbs mirrored in quicksilver; Shah Jehan, who starved them in the black oubliettes, and hung them from the mouldy beam, and sluiced their beautiful bodies into the cold river; Shah Jehan, with elephants and peacocks; Shah Jehan, returning from the conquered Dekhan, dismounting in the Armoury Square, hastening through the Grape Garden, hastening past the fair ones in the Golden Pavilion to the fairest within the Jasmine Tower!