Delhi has been often besieged, but seldom has a siege been laid to it that at first sight would have appeared more desperate than this.  The city is strong in its artificial defences, and Nature lends her force to the native troops within the walls.  If they could hold out through the summer, September was likely to be as great a general for them as the famous two upon whom the Czar relied in the Crimea.  A wall of gray stone, strengthened by the modern science of English engineers, and nearly seven miles in circumference, surrounds the city upon three sides, while the fourth is defended by a wide offset of the Jumna, and by a portion of the high, embattled, red stone wall of the palace, which almost equals the city wall in strength, and is itself more than a mile in length.  Few cities in the East present a more striking aspect from without.  Over the battlements of the walls rise the slender minarets and shining domes of the mosques, the pavilions and the towers of the gates, the balustraded roofs of the higher and finer houses, the light foliage of acacias, and the dark crests of tall date-palms.  It is a new city, only two hundred and twenty-six years old.  Shah Jehan, its founder, was fond of splendor in building, was lavish of expense, and was eager to make his city imperial in appearance as in name.  The great mosque that he built here is the noblest and most beautiful in all India.  His palace might be set in comparison with that of Aladdin; it was the fulfilment of an Oriental voluptuary’s dream.  All that Eastern taste could devise of beauty, that Eastern lavishness could fancy of adornment, or voluptuousness demand of luxury, was brought together and displayed here.  But its day of splendor was not long; and now, instead of furnishing a home to a court, which, if wicked, was at least magnificent, it is the abode of demoralized pensioners, who, having lost the reality, retain the pride and the vices of power.  For years it has been utterly given over to dirt and to decay.  Its beautiful halls and chambers, rich with marbles and mosaics, its “Pearl” musjid, its delicious gardens, its shady summer-houses, its fountains, and all its walks and pleasure-grounds, are neglected, abused, and occupied by the filthy retainers of an effete court.

The city stands partly on the sandy border of the river, partly on a low range of rocks.  With its suburbs it may contain about one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of whom are Hindoos, and the remainder nominally Mahometans, in creed.  Around the wall stretches a wide, barren, irregular plain, covered, mile after mile, with the ruins of earlier Delhis, and the tombs of the great or the rich men of the Mahometan dynasty.  There is no other such monumental plain as this in the world.  It is as full of traditions and historic memories as of ruins; and in this respect, as in many others, Delhi bears a striking resemblance to Rome,—­for the Roman Campagna is the only field which in its crowd of memories may be compared with it, and the imperial city of India holds in the Mahometan mind much the same place that Rome occupies in that of the Christian.