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founded from about the year 1000 on the continent of India, were admirably sustained under the magnificent sovereigns who ruled at Bejapore, Delhi and Agra.

The Great Akbar in the middle of the sixteenth century called into being monuments at least as important both in dimensions and splendour as any of those under cotemporary erection in Europe.

The King Mahomet, who reigned from 1626 to 1660, erected the great Domes at Bejapore, wonders alike of construction and decoration; while the acmé of perfection was contemporaneously attained by Shah Jehan (1628), the builder of the magnificent palaces at Delhi, and that most perfect of all existing mausoleums, the Taje Mahal, at Agra.

I cannot quit this subject, which I feel to be more pregnant with suggestions for the student (at the present juncture) than any other which could be pointed out to you, without referring you to the admirable works published upon these monuments by Mr Owen Jones and Mr Fergusson. The former, from an almost intuitive affinity for the arts of the Saracens, has analysed their method of surface decoration with far greater skill than any other illustrator; while the latter, from his long residence in India, great intelligence and unremitting zeal in the collection and comparison of materials for the illustration of the monuments of the East, has well earned the gratitude of all who would desire to make themselves acquainted with the details of the class of monuments which, but for such labours as those of Mr Fergusson, we could never hope to realise.

The more closely we examine the "bifurcation" of style (if such an expression may be permitted) which started from the station or stand-point of the declension of the arts of Pagan Rome, on the divergent lines of Mahometan and Christian Arts, we cannot but wonder how from any common point of departure human intelligence could have shaped out courses of thought and design differing so absolutely and