Eight days in Bombay and we are off for Poona. The first-class railway carriages in India are wider and longer than those in England, with a small bath room attached, and are so arranged as to be easily converted into comfortable sleeping-coaches, but you are expected to furnish your own bedding. Poona, the capital of the Mahrattis, signifies “the holy city,” and is the stronghold of Brahminism. It is situated in a wide-stretching, treeless plain, surrounded with hills. Here are the government English schools, the Sanscrit College and the military headquarters for Western India. A quiet Sunday here in a delightful Scotch manse, twenty-four hours in Ahmednagar, where we are received most hospitably by Americans of the Mahratti mission, and on we go to Agra, to which point the Taj Mahal is drawing us like a magnet. Approaching Agra in the freshness of the morning, an exclamation of delighted surprise from one of the quartette drew the rest of us to the window, and there, about a mile distant across a level country, rose that miracle of loveliness in white marble, the Taj Mahal. We saw it reflected in the Jumna as we crossed the railway bridge, two or three graceful palm trees intervening, and then the grim walls of the extensive fort became visible as we glided into the city. The Taj was built less than two hundred and fifty years ago by the Mogul emperor, Shah Jehan, as a tomb for his favorite wife, Moomtaj a Mahal. It is thought that he purposed rearing a similar tomb for himself on the opposite side of the river, and having the two mausoleums connected by a bridge, but this stupendous project was never executed, and Shah Jehan lies by the side of his beloved wife, whose best known name, from her surpassing beauty, was Noor Jehan, the “Light of the World.” The Taj is situated in a quadrangle measuring eighteen hundred by one thousand feet, enclosed with red sandstone walls, turrets at the angles and a gateway on each side. The colossal gateway itself is a grand object, with its lofty arches of red stone, through which one sees as in a frame the avenue of black cypresses leading up to the dazzling monument. Most attractive gardens stretch away on either side, where are walks, seats and umbrageous trees, and one is at liberty to wander over the soft turf and examine the roses which grow here, under the skilful care of an English florist, with unsurpassable prodigality of bloom and fragrance. The Taj, toward which all this loveliness is but the outer court yard, stands on a superb terrace of white marble 313 feet square, and at each angle rises a slender minaret. From the center of the building, which is an irregular octagon, springs the marble dome, slightly bulbous in shape, 70 feet in diameter, and rising to a height of 120 feet. The dome is surmounted by a gilt crescent 260 feet from the ground level. At each of the four corners is a light marble cupola. Around all the arches of the portals and the windows, around