Cities of India

Excerpt from Cities of India

The sketches which are here collected and reprinted were some of the records of many journeys at the time the writer's avocations led him to travel almost yearly across the continent of India. They were labours of love, written during the intervals of graver occupations, and the author trusts that the work may reflect some of his own keen enjoyment in these cities, and some of their serene charm and Oriental enchantment. He has endeavoured, both by conversation and reading, to enter into the spirit of the times in which each temple or mosque or palace was produced, and into the manners and customs of those who erected it. By selections from the ancient records and old books of travels, and the great Anglo-Indian classics, he has endeavoured to give life to old scenes, and to reproduce sentiments unfamiliar to the present generation. After giving an account of the story of each city, he has referred to the prominent objects of interest in it, and he has borrowed freely from the inquirers of other days whatsoever he considered important, as illustrating their architecture or antiquity. He has endeavoured to acknowledge in all cases the sources of his information, but as some of the papers were written twenty years ago it has not always been easy to trace them. He has also borrowed from the Introductions to the volumes of State Papers edited by him, on the old principle that a man may once say a thing as he would have it said - he cannot say it twice.

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