HINDOO AND MAHOMMEDAN BUILDINGS.
[FRONTISPIECE.]
"The Engraving represents a splendid sculptured Portico of a Temple dedicated to Mahadeo, at Moondheyra in Guzerat. This elaborate and magnificent specimen of the best age of Hindoo architecture, has been in ruins since the invasion of Alla o Deen, surnamed Khoonee, or the Bloody. Tradition inscribes to his intolerant spirit the destruction both of this noble edifice and numerous other religious buildings in Guzerat. This temple is so gigantic that the natives ascribe its erection to a deity, and say, that it was built by Ram some thirty lacks of years ago. The most unpretending insist on an antiquity of five thousand years."
History hath but few pages—soon is told
Man's ordinary life,
Labour, and care, and strife,
Make up the constant chronicle of old.
First comes a dream—the infancy of earth,
When all its untried powers
Are on the conscious hours
Warm with the light that called them into birth.
'Tis but a dream—for over earth was said
An early curse—time's flood
Rolls on in tears and blood;
Blood that upon her virgin soil was shed.
Abel the victim—Cain the homicide,
Were type and prophecy
Of times that were to be,
Thus reddened from the first life's troubled tide.
See where in great decay yon temple stands,
Destruction has began
Her mockery of man,
Bowing to dust the work of mortal hands.
What are its annals—such as suit all time
Man's brief and bitter breath,
Hurrying unwelcome death,
And something too that marks the East's bright clime.
For mighty is the birthplace of the sun,
All has a vaster scale
Than climes more cold and pale,
Where yet creation's work is half begun.
Her conquests were by multitudes,—the kings
Who warred on each vast plain,
Looked on a people slain,
As amid conquest's customary things.
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