History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c31.s8.19

v2.c31.s8.19

The great caravansarais which the Calcutta Bâbus and the native Râjâs have erected for their residences in Lower Bengal are generally in this style, but with an additional taint of vulgarity. But perhaps the most striking example of it all is a pavilion which was erected within the palace at Delhi by the last king. It stood behind, and was seen above, the great audience hall of Shâh Jahân, in which once stood the celebrated peacock throne, and is one of the noblest and most beautiful apartments of its class in any palace in the world. Over this, on entering the palace, you saw a little pavilion of brick and plaster, which its builder assumed to be the Doric Order, with Italian windows and Venetian blinds. The building was painted green, the frieze red, and the ornaments yellow!—the whole in worse taste than the summer-house of a Dutch skipper, as seen overhanging a canal in Holland. Contrasted with the simplicity and elegance of the white marble palace beneath, it told, in a language not to be mistaken, how deeply fallen and how contemptible were the late occupants of the throne, as compared with their great ancestors of the house of Timur, who ruled that mighty empire, and adorned its cities with those faultless edifices described in the previous part of this work.¹