These are not the records which we should have expected from a line of Eastern kings. Regarding this same monument of marriage, the Tâj. So much has been said about it, that little remains to say. Perhaps the most bewildering thing about its beauty is the impossibility of saying wherein that beauty lies. Colour of stone, purity of outline, faultlessness of form, delicacy of decoration--all these are here; but they are also in many a building from which the eye turns--and turns to forget. But once seen, the Tâj--whether seen with approval or disapproval--is never forgotten. It remains ever a thing apart. Something which the world cannot touch with either praise or blame--something elusive, beyond criticism in three dimensional terms. It was Shâhjahân who first thought of it; but who designed, who built it? The very question brings a certain revulsion. It is impossible to dislocate one stone of the Tâj from another, to think of it in fragments, as anything than as a perfect whole. No! it was never built. It is a bit of the New Jerusalem which some yellow Eastern dawn coming after a velvet-dark Eastern night, found standing, as it stands now, amid the cypresses of the garden. AURUNGZEBE A.D. 1657 TO A.D. 1707 With Aurungzebe, the Middle Age of Indian History ends. From the date of his death, interest finally ceases to centre round the dying dynasties of India, and, changing sides, concerns itself absolutely with the coming sovereignty of the West. Even during his long reign of fifty years, the attention is often distracted by the welter of conflicting commerces which, leaving the sea-boards, spread further and further up-country. It requires, therefore, some concentration to deal with Aurungzebe, the last of the Great Moghuls; the last, and, without doubt, the least estimable of them all. In truth, the steps to his throne were littered with black crime. Shâhjahân, his father, had, it is true, made his seat more secure by the deaths by poison, bow-string, or sword, of the three next heirs to the throne--one of them his half-uncle; but Aurungzebe trod on the bodies of three brothers in reaching kingship, and for seven years of that kingship carried about with him the prison key of a deposed and dishonoured father. Of minor sins, such as the poisonings of nephews, cousins, even aunts, there were scores. Well might he exclaim upon his death-bed: "I have committed numerous crimes--I know not with what punishment I may be seized."