We visited the Moti Masjid or Pearl Mosque.  It was built by Shah Jahan, entirely of white marble; and completed, as we learn from an inscription on the portico, in the year A.D. 1656.[22] There is no mosaic upon any of the pillars or panels of this mosque; but the design and execution of the flowers in bas-relief are exceedingly beautiful.  It is a chaste, simple, and majestic building;[23] and is by some people admired even more than the Taj, because they have heard less of it; and their pleasure is heightened by surprise.  We feel that it is to all other mosques what the Taj is to all other mausoleums, a facile princeps.

Few, however, go to see the ‘mosque of pearls’ more than once, stay as long as they will at Agra; and when they go, the building appears less and less to deserve their admiration; while they go to the Taj as often as they can, and find new beauties in it, or new feelings of pleasure from it, every time[24]

I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor Jahangir.  His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre, and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or mosaic.  On the top of the building, which is three or four stories high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault below.[25] This is beautifully carved, with the ’nau nauwe nam’-the ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Koran.[26] It is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the ‘words of God’ from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.[27] He told me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,[28] in addition to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a year; but the chief native officer of the Taj establishment demanded half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he persuaded his master, the European engineer, with much difficulty, to take all this hay for the public cattle.  ’And why could you not adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?’ ‘Is not this the way’, said he, with emotion, ’that Hindustan has cut its own throat, and brought in the stranger at all times?  Have they ever had, or can they ever have, confidence in each other, or let each other alone to enjoy the little they have in peace?’ Considering all the circumstances of time and place, Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets; and, feeling as a citizen of the world, I reverenced the marble slab that covers his bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any other sovereign with whose history I am acquainted.[29]

Notes: 

1.  December, 1835.

2.  It is not, perhaps, generally known, though it deserves to be so, that the bamboo seeds only once, and dies immediately after seeding.  All bamboos from the same seed die at the same time, whenever they may have been planted.  The life of the common large bamboo is about fifty years. [W.  H. S.] The period is said to vary between thirty and sixty years.  Bamboo seed is eaten as rice when obtainable.  The author’s theories about electricity are more ingenious than satisfactory.