What do you see before you?
Is the fairy structure growing?
Is it becoming a jewel casket?
"The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally sublime and beautiful." Then Sir William Wilson Hunter: "The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on the river bank." "The materials are white marble and red sandstone." "The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the workmanship baffle description." Sir William continues.

I will italicize some of his words: "The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and of exquisite beauty.

Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a mosque of great architectural merit.

In the center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply truncated so also form an unequal octagon.

The main feature in this central pile is the great dome, which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers at its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent.