The stream in the streets sets steadily towards the Golden Temple. From the heavy-browed city gate to the holy pool the winding alleys are splashed with all the familiar hues--orange outshining lemon and emerald throttling ultramarine. Following the stalwart, bearded pilgrims, in the midst of the city of shopkeepers you suddenly break into a wide square: within it, bordered by a marble pavement--white, black, and umber--a green lake dances in the sunlight; and in the midst of that, mirrored in the pool--you look through your eyelashes, for the hot rays fling back sevenfold-heated, blinding--gleam walls and roofs and cupolas of sheer gold. A minute or two you blink and stare, then you see that it is a small temple on an island with a causeway leading to it from under an arch. And after the first blink and stare your notions of beauty rise up and protest against it. The temple is neither imposing by size nor winsome by proportion. It has two stories--the lower of marble, inlaid, like the marble of Agra, with birds and beasts and flowers, but with none of Agra’s grace and refinement; all above it is of copper-gilt. Above the second story rises something half-cupola, half-dome, but it is not in the middle; there are smaller cupolas at the side overlooking the causeway, and others smaller still at the far side. The whole temple is smaller than St. Clement Danes, and a little building has no right to be irregular. If the Taj Mahal, you say, which is three times this size, can take the trouble to be symmetrical--well, if this is the masterpiece of modern India--as for the gold, it blinds you for the first moment and amuses you for the second; but you might as well ask beauty of a heliograph. Nevertheless, do not go away, for you will hardly see anything more Indian. Outside the gate they show you a Government ordinance that everybody must either conform to the religious customs of the place or forbear to indulge his curiosity; you bow, and a bearded giant, who might be a high-priest for dignity, takes off your boots and ties on silk slippers instead. You leave your cigar-case behind you: tobacco must not defile the holy place. Then, behind a white-bearded policeman--who performs the triple function of guiding, preventing you from doing anything impious, and clearing worshippers out of the way before you--you start forth to see.