Читать книгу Views in India, chiefly among the Himalaya Mountains онлайн

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All the mooring-places within a day's sail of Colgong, are distinguished for their surpassing beauty; and indeed the whole voyage down to Calcutta conducts the traveller through scenes of the softest enchantment. Rajmhal, in particular, excites the attention of all who have any taste for picturesque scenery, the ruins of its once splendid palaces now adding a melancholy interest to the landscape. The origin of this royal city, stretching into remote antiquity, is lost in the obscurity which hangs over the early history of the Hindoo dynasties of India, but retaining its dignity and importance after the Mohammedan conquests, it remained the capital of Bengal during a splendid succession of princes, who embellished it with the tasteful architecture for which they were famed. The stone principally found in these interesting remains is a red granite, and its colour, decayed by age, harmonises well with the lichens and weeds which have flung themselves over every "coigne of vantage," and the trees that now spread their umbrageous foliage over quadrangle and court. Occasionally we find a mixture of marble, the favourite material of the luxurious Moguls, and brought into fashion about the reign of Acbar. A hall of noble dimensions, erected by the sultan Shujah, the unfortunate brother of Aurungzebe, lined throughout with marble, a product rare in Bengal, has been advantageously, though not very happily, employed as a receptacle for coals, for the supply of the steamers which are now common upon the Ganges:— "to what base uses may we come at last!" This hall, one of the few remaining evidences to attest the ​grandeur of the kings and princes who reigned and revelled in Rajmhal, is visited by every European traveller voyaging on the Ganges, many finding a pensive pleasure in musing over those vicissitudes of fortune which have reared the red-cross banner of St. George over the fallen glories of the crescent. While some persons consider the conversion of the marble hall into a depot for coals a shocking desecration, others are of opinion that the element of this new power, which is changing all the moral, political, and physical relations in the world, and is working a revolution more stupendous and radical than any that history records, is well lodged in a palace. The hall, once filled with courtiers blazing in diamonds, now contains the true diamond; while the emblem of that astonishing power, whose gigantic resources it is impossible to calculate, lying at anchor under the buttresses of the ancient towers of Rajmhal, in the shape of a steam-vessel, can scarcely fail to fill the contemplative mind with gorgeous visions of the future.