and a vast multitude of inhabitants; when you have seen one village or town you have seen all; they are without any of those marks of opulence, civilization, or elegance which delight the English traveller.'
Returning towards Calcutta, and dropping down the Ganges in his boat, he presents some retrospect of what he had seen, thus: —
'The ruins of Delhi are of surprising extent, reaching sixteen miles or more, a sickening sight. Oh! it made us sad to go through the scene of awful desolation. Mosques, temples, houses all in ruin, piles of stones, broken pillars, domes, crumbling walls covered the place. The imperial city presents nothing but the palace to give an idea of its greatness, and only appears grand from the magnificent wall. Within is poverty and departed grandeur — all is going to decay. The famous hall of audience remains, built of marble richly inlaid with stones sufficiently beautiful to realize all our expectations. We saw in the gardens the reigning prince, the poor representative of Timur's house.'
We must admit that for such a man as Thomas Thomason, these passages hardly evince the requisite quality of imagination. There was much to distress the gaze of a stranger, as he justly says. There was squalor close to objects of the highest beauty. Nevertheless, these very scenes have since that time delighted European travellers, and furnished countless subjects for the pencil and the brush. At Benares if he had embarked in a pleasure-boat at sunrise, and floated down the stream of the Ganges past the long river-frontage of the classic city,
