forty further; and the fourth twenty-four feet above the third.  Up to the third balcony, the tower is built of fine, but somewhat ferruginous sandstone, whose surface has become red from exposure to the oxygen of the atmosphere.  Up to the first balcony, the flutings are alternately semicircular and angular; in the second story they are all semicircular, and in the third all angular.  From the third balcony to the top, the building is composed chiefly of white marble; and the surface is without the deep flutings.  Around the first story there are five horizontal belts of passages from the Koran, engraved in bold relief, and in the Kufic character.  In the second story there are four, and in the third three.  The ascent is by a spiral staircase within, of three hundred and eighty steps; and there are passages from this staircase to the balconies, with others here and there for the admission of light and air.[20]

A foolish notion has prevailed among some people, over-fond of paradox, that this tower is in reality a Hindoo building, and not, as commonly supposed, a Muhammadan one.  Never was paradox supported upon more frail, I might say absurd, foundations.  They are these:  1st, that there is only one Minar, whereas there ought to have been two—­ had the unfinished one been intended as the second, it would not have been, as it really is, larger than the first; 2nd, that other Minars seen in the present day either do not slope inward from the base up at all, or do not slope so much as this.  I tried to trace the origin of this paradox, and I think I found it in a silly old ‘munshi’ (clerk) in the service of the Emperor.  He told me that he believed it was built by a former Hindoo prince for his daughter, who wished to worship the rising sun, and view the waters of the Jumna from the top of it every morning.[21]

There is no other Hindoo building like, or of the same kind as this;[22] the ribbons or belts of passages from the Koran are all in relief; and had they not been originally inserted as they are, the whole surface of the building must have been cut down to throw them out in bold relief.  The slope is the peculiar characteristic of all the architecture of the Pathans, by whom the church to which this tower belongs was built.[23] Nearly all the arches of the church are still standing in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in design, proportion, and execution to the tower.  The ruins of the old Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India, are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them, that they might for ever tend to enhance its grandeur.[24] It is sufficiently clear that the unfinished minar was commenced upon too large