WOULD the youthful readers of this volume like to hear about the most beautiful tomb in the world?

It is in the city of Agra in India, on the other side of the globe. When Boston children are eating their lunch or playing in the sunshine at noon-recess, it is midnight in India. It is so hot there that if anyone happened to be awake, he would probably be fanning himself and looking out of the window up at the stars which are bigger and brighter than in New England, or down at the gardens where hundreds of great fireflies dart and whirl as if it were Fourth of July without the noise.

The Jewelled Tomb was built about the time when your great-great-grandfathers first came to Plymouth. You know how cold and bleak they found it—the winds were stinging, the earth covered with ice and snow, storms were on the sea and savages on the shore. The Pilgrims made no grand tombs there; they dared not even pile up leaves to mark their graves as the robins did over the Babes in the Wood, but buried their dead in wheat-fields to be hid by the waving grain. They feared the Indians, watching to murder and scalp them, would come at night, count the graves and learn how few were left alive. SHAH-Jehan, the Mogul Emperor, built the Jewelled Tomb. His name means King of the World, because he ruled over so many people. Jewels were like the sand of the sea to him, he owned so many. The Koh-i-noor, “the mountain of light,” was his, and there is but one larger diamond in the world. The Brahmins say that the owner of the Koh-i-noor will always be ruler of India.

Shah Jehan’s soldiers and slaves could not be counted, and there seemed no end of his cities and palaces. One of the oldest establishments in his dominion was a hospital for sick monkeys, where kind nurses took care of the little mimics, cured or made them comfortable, while they jabbered and screeched to their hearts’ content, snatched the medicine or choice fruits from their keepers, and plagued each other like wizened spoilt children. But the great Mogul did not care so much for the health of his subjects—he had so many it did not seem worth while.

He was very fond of elephant fights, and used to sit in a balcony overlooking the space between his palace and the river Jumna to watch them. Sometimes a maddened elephant had to be driven by fireworks into the river and drowned to prevent its trampling to death the whole crowd which had no balcony to see from. So many riders were killed in the sport, that one would often kiss his wife and children, saying, “Good-by, you may never see me again—I am going to amuse the Emperor—we have an elephant fight to-day.” Shah-Jehan enjoyed this spectacle whether his subjects were killed or not. His balcony was hung with rich Persian silks. Diamonds and riches shone in his turban and sparkled on his breast. Every time he moved, his jewels threw rainbows over the crowd and often into the eyes of the combatants.

He had a plan of making a trellis over this balcony. The grapes were to be amethysts, the leaves emeralds, and the stalks pure gold. But one morning the head goldsmith came to him, saying: “May it please your Majesty, your trellis will take all the emeralds and amethysts in the world.”

For once in his life Shah-Jehan gave up his whim and only one bunch of grapes was ever finished.

This monarch loved power and splendor, but more than all he loved his wife Moomtazee. She was the niece of the famous Noor Mahal, and was called the most beautiful woman in the world, and was good as she was beautiful. “Light of the World,” “Pearl of Women,” “Crown of Delight,” were some of the names her husband gave her. For hours he would sit by her side in his palace garden, on seats made soft by cashmere shawls, finer than any that ever crossed the ocean. They listened to the murmur of the river; they watched the pink lilies, as large as christening cups, that floated on its waves. Great leaves and wonderful flowers, such as we see only in conservatories, bent their heads beneath the spray of the fountains. There are few singing birds in that land, but from musicians, hidden behind the trees, came melodies which mingled with the sound of rippling waters.

All this was real, and not a story from the Arabian Nights.

One evening when the glow-worms had lit their lamps under every bush, the Mogul and his Empress were in the garden. Their eldest daughter, best beloved of his children because she most resembled her mother, was playing at their feet.

“Dearest Queen,” exclaimed Shah-Jehan, “here are some flowers that I have just plucked. How happy should I be if you could not die! You are lovely as these roses, and I fear some day you will fade as they do. Allah allows a little worm to destroy a shawl that it has taken a life-time to make—if some unseen enemy should take your life, there would be nothing left me but a kingdom whose sun had set.”

The Queen replied: “I will never leave this earth as long as Allah will let me stay.”

“Jehanara,” she continued to her daughter, “if the Angel of Death should take me from your father, comfort and watch over him, and be all that your mother is to the great and good Emperor.”

“Promise, my lord,” she said, “if I should die, never to marry again; and place a tomb over my grave, grand as a palace, and beautiful as these flowers covered with diamond dew, that the whole world may know how the greatest of earthly monarchs loved his Moomtazee Mahal.”

“I promise,” said her husband, with trembling voice, “if you should leave me, no one shall ever fill your place, and the world has never seen so grand a monument as I will raise over the loveliest of women.”

Soon after the Queen became ill. The Emperor was distracted when she said to him, “Remember my two requests; now I must leave you.”

All the doctors and wise men in the Kingdom were summoned, but they were so afraid their heads would be cut off, they did not know what to do; they suggested so many things that of course the poor Queen stood very little chance. All the love and power of her husband could not save her any more than if she had been the wife of her meanest slave.

She died—the palace was dumb with grief. No official dared to speak to the Emperor and tell him of his loss. Jehanara put her arms softly around her father’s neck and sobbed into his ear, “The Light of the World has gone out.”

The funeral was scarcely over, when Shah-Jehan began to build the tomb of his wife.

In our country when we think of a monument, it is a granite shaft or a marble block; we place it in a cemetery, and plant vines and trees around it. In commemoration of many great and good men we sometimes build a high monument—like that on Bunker Hill—where we can climb to the top and look over the country, telling each other how grand the nation has become because of the patriots beneath us who gave their lives for our liberty.

But in India, diamonds are dug out of the earth, precious stones filtered from streams, and pearls fished from the seas. Every thought of nature is a jewel, and glitters in the sunshine. The beetles are living gems; the orange lizards that peep from under the stones show neck-laces of brilliants. It is the land of peacocks, whose gorgeous eyes repeat in the sunlight all the wonders under ground. No goldsmith can make such dazzling colors as the butterflies carry through the air. So when the Emperor would build a mausoleum to the Pearl of Women, he adorned it with the most splendid gems that ever shone even in that Land of Jewels.

Shah-Jehan had been collecting precious stones all his life; but though he already had a greater number than any one else in the world, he ransacked all countries for more and finer gems to adorn his work.

He brought the most skillful architects from France and Italy. The chief of them was Austin de Bordeaux, named the Jewel-handed.

Seeds planted in the garden round the edifice grew to be tall trees, and children who had watched the levelling of the great platform became middle-aged men and women before the dome was finished. Twenty thousand workmen went home every night, year after year, always telling their families how particular the Emperor was that every stone should be placed right, till at last they grew grey-headed—for it took twenty-two years of hard work to build the tomb.

I cannot tell you how many millions it cost—there are so many different estimates given—it were as easy to tell the majorities on election night. But all agree that it cost an enormous sum.

Nothing interested Shah-Jehan but this tomb of his beautiful wife. It stood on the river Jumna in a garden two-thirds as large as Boston Common, and was surrounded by a red sand-stone wall high as the roof of most houses. The Emperor used to sit in one of the arcades on the inner side of this wall and watch the progress of the building. Careless of the terraced garden with its paths of variegated marble and its eighty fountains throwing diamonds into the air, regardless of the two mosques where Mussulmen go to pray, his eye was always fastened upon the dazzling structure which rose above all and gleamed like a mountain of snow against the blue sky.

At length the Taje Mahal, the “Crown of Edifices,” was completed. Let us visit it. On the side opposite the river we pass the wall through the grand red gate-way. It seems to be ornamented with garlands, but looking closer you observe that what we mistook for flowers are texts from the Koran, the Bible of the Mahommedans. These texts are inlaid in the stone, arranged in graceful lines, and illuminated with colored marbles.

Passing through the garden, an avenue of Italian cypresses shuts us in like a pall, while a voice from the attendant comes out of the darkness, saying: “Close your eyes for a moment; you will not die, but you shall see Heaven.” Emerging from between the trees, we mount to the platform which is raised eighteen feet above the highest garden terrace, and is a square of over three hundred feet, glittering and polished as ice. At each corner and separate from the main building rises a tall slender minaret, through whose open carving appears the circular stairs leading to the top. In the midst we behold the octagonal mausoleum, surmounted by four small cupolas around the central dome, which towers as high as Bunker Hill monument.

Where we stand above the world, everything beneath our feet and around us is made of white marble. There is no tinge of color on the four minarets, but within them the central pile is covered with delicate traceries that look like flowering vines. They are verses from the Koran; every letter is black marble inlaid in the white, and ornamented with jasper, agate, cornelian and lapis-lazuli. When we are told that the whole sacred book is written in this way upon the Taje Mahal, we understand why the work took twenty years.

There is an entrance north, south, east and west. Crossing the threshold of either, we see that the vast interior is divided into several apartments. Beneath each of the four small domes is a separate enclosure. Under the central dome an octagonal space is shut in by colonades roofed with arches. High above you, in the very centre of this great dome, flashes a golden ornament like a constellation of stars. The floor, the walls, the columns, the ceiling, all are of glistening white marble. About seventy-five feet from the floor a carved trellis-work around the base of the dome lights the place, and shows the whole interior to be a mosaic of texts. They are made of black letters; not straight like those in a printed book, but twisted like the tendrils of a vine; and in this central and more sacred chamber, precious stones of every color gleam and sparkle around the words as if from a thorny stem gay flowers had sprung on every side. The buds and leaves look so natural as to deceive the eye. You wonder if the whole building has been decorated for a victory; if those are garlands of evergreens and flowers that cross the arches, drip over the freizes, interlace each other and almost wave in the breeze—and if they are for a Christmas festival?

The great Mogul placed them on these walls, and they are enduring as his love.

You seem to look at banks of snow overspread with wreaths of flowers which the sun, streaming through the high trellised windows, transforms into foaming cataracts falling from the sky, while braided rainbows flash and dance on their waves.

On the floor, under the dome, is an octagonal screen, higher than a tall man, and made of marble as delicately wrought as a veil of lace. It is bordered with lilies, tulips and roses, made of precious stones. Within this screen, beneath the centre of the dome, is a slab of marble six feet in length.

The poor mother covers her darling’s grave with flowers—all she can give; they fade, and she still keeps fresh tokens there. The flowers the great Mogul placed on the grave of his Queen were made of the most costly jewels. The finest rubies that he had searched the world to procure, glowed in a rose near the head, close by an emerald lotus leaf covered with diamond spray. Texts from the Koran, always in black letters, form an inlaid back ground of thorns for the flowers. Mahometans believe these texts make the grave more sacred, and are a charm to preserve it from injury. On the end of the slab next the door are conspicuous the words, “Deliver us from the tribe of unbelievers.”

No royal lady’s brooch was ever of more delicate workmanship than this casket of jewels. It glitters in the marble hall like a clustre of diamonds on a robe of white satin. Sparks of light dart on the screen, kindle the tracery into fire; tongues of flame speak on the floor; points of vivid light live all over the building and transfigure it into glory.

In a vault below this great hall, and just under the precious slab, Queen Moomtazee is buried. A lamp is always burning over her tomb, and a priest, whose white beard falls below his waist, chants from the Koran. A strange echo repeats his voice back and forth in the church above, till it seems to linger in the lofty dome, where an invisible choir whisper his words before they take flight to Heaven.

Shah-Jehan never married again. The tomb for his wife so occupied his thoughts that he did not know that the greatest empire in the world was slipping away from him. The Princess Jehanara kept her promise to her mother. Father and daughter daily laid fresh flowers on the jewelled slab in the Taje Mahal, and the starry roses watched the frail, living ones close their eyes and droop, while their own petals never faded.

The kingly mourner was dethroned by his crafty, cruel son, Aurengzebe, who became Emperor, and imprisoned his father in the very palace from which he used to watch the elephant fights. He had no solace in confinement but his faithful daughter. Every day he looked with infinite longing at the minarets of the mausoleum. He could see the dome which rose high above the grave of his Queen, but he could never lay a flower there. For eight years he could see the outside of his master-piece of architecture, but never again did his eyes behold the jewelled grave, which is the central thought, the heart of the Taje Mahal.

The Moguls no longer rule in the East. The Koh-i-noor, the ransom of a royal captive, belongs to Queen Victoria—the Empress of India.

The different conquerors of that country have destroyed many a marble palace, burnt many a beautiful city; but all of them, even the furious Sepoys, have left unharmed the Taje Mahal—the jewelled wonder, and it stands to-day in its perfect glory—the monument raised by the love of an Eastern despot to his beautiful wife.