true and essential character of the Saracenic style is expressed in grandeur rather than in delicacy, in chastity rather than in ornament. It was by the grouping of great masses, and by the artistic treatment of simple lines, that the Arab architects first impressed their genius upon the world; and in this respect no more stately product of their talent can

Ruins of
Bibi
Khanym

anywhere be found than in the half-fallen monuments of the city of Tamerlane.

The remaining ruins I must dismiss briefly. The most imposing remains at Samarkand, in bulk and dimensions, are undeniably the medresse and mosque of Bibi Khanym, the Chinese consort of Timur, whom the courtly Don Ruy designated as Caño, the chief wife of the Great Lord.' They are said to have been

erected respectively by the royal lady and her illustrious spouse; and it was this mosque that Timur caused to be pulled down as soon as it was finished, because the entrance was too low, and whose rebuilding he superintended with imperious energy from a litter. What these buildings once were we can only faintly realise by the aid of the colossal piles of

masonry that still stand, and that tower above the other ruins of Samarkand as high as do the vaulted arches of Constantine's Basilica over the southern end of the Forum at Rome. The only perfect relic in the ruined enclosure is the vast rahle, or lectern, which stands on nine low columns in the centre and which once bore in its V-shaped cleft a ponderous Koran. This has survived, because it is of marble instead of

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Skalbefire was too heavy for any conqueror to tranger, and too solid for any vandal to destroy. The remaining parts of the bulling are slowly and steally filling to rain; and in time, unless steps are taken to arrest the process, will become a shapeless heap of bricks.

The cluster of mosques and chapels with seven small cupolas, that bear the name of the Living King —its eperymous saint having been a near relative of the Prophet, whiɔ was martyred here in early times, and who is supposed to be lurking with his decapitated head in his hand at the bottom of a well, although with curious inconsistency his coffined body is also an object of worship in the same building-is both the most perfect and the most graceful of the ruins of Samarkand. A ruin unfortunately it is; for domes have collapsed, inscriptions have been defaced, and the most exquisite enamelling has perished. But still, as we mount the thirty-seven steps that lead upwards between narrow walls, at intervals in the masonry there open out small recessed mosques and tomb chambers with faultless honeycomb groining, executed in moulded and coloured tiles. Gladly would I expatiate upon the beauty of these Samarkandian tiles-turquoise and sapphire and green and plum-coloured and orange, crusted over with a rich siliceous glaze, and inscribed with mighty Kufic letters-by which these glorious metures were once wholly and are still in part

d.

it is more relevant to point out that beyond