of expansion, and of a bloom and delicacy of scent that sweetened the whole atmosphere with the most exquisite perfume, &c." "But in this delicious garden of Negaristan, the eye and the smell were not the only senses regaled by the rose. The ear was enchanted by the wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings seem to increase in melody and softness with the unfolding of their favourite flowers, &c.

"At the upper end of the garden is a small and fantastically built palace, inclosed in a little paradise of sweets. The Shah often retires thither for days together at the beginning of summer, before he removes to more distant and temperate regions; and accompanied by the softer sex of his family, forgets, for a while, that life or the world have other seasons than the gay and lovely spring. This building was of a light architecture, and, with its seclu ded garden, presented altogether a scene more congenial to the ideas I had conceived of one of those earthly imitations of the Houri's abodes, than any I had yet met in the east.

"The palace was nearly circular, full of elegant apartments, brilliantly adorned with gilding, arabesque, looking-glasses, and flowers, natural and painted, in every quarter. Some of the largest saloons were additionally ornamented with pictures; portraits of the Shah and his sons; of the chief personages at court; also of foreign ministers; and amongst the rest were General Sir John Malcolm, Sir Hartford Jones, Sir Gore Ousely, Monsieur Gardanne, &c. &c. &c. all pourtrayed in high costume, and all like one and the same ori. ginal. The carpets and nummuds of these apartments were of the most delicate fabric, and literally as we moved we felt treading on velvet. But the place of greatest attraction to an Oriental taste certainly was the summer-bath. It seemed to comprise everything of seclusion, ele. gance, and that luxurious enjoyment which has too often been the chief occupation of some Asiatic princes, and perhaps will ever be the favourite recreation with them all. This bath saloon, or court, (for it is diffi cult to give it an exactly appropriate name,) is circular, with a vast basin in its centre of pure white marble, of the same shape, and about sixty or seventy feet in diameter. This is filled with the clearest water, sparkling in the sun, for its only canopy is the vault of heaven; but rosctrees, with other pendant shrubs bearing flowers, cluster near it, and at times their waving branches throw a beautifully quivering shade over the excessive brightness of the water. Round the sides are two ranges, one above the other, of little chambers looking towards the bath, and furnished with every refinement of the Harem. These are for the accommodation of the

ladies, who accompany the Shah during his occasional sojourns at the Negaristan. They undress or repose in these, before or after the delight of bathing; for so fond are they of this luxury, they remain in the water for hours, and sometimes, when the heat is very relaxing, come out more dead than alive. But in the delightful recess, the waters flow through the basin by a constant spring, thus renewing the body's vigour by their bracing coolness, and en. chantingly refreshing the air, which the sun's influence and the thousand flowers breathing around might otherwise render oppressive with their incense. The royal master of this HORTI Adonis frequently takes his noon-day repose in one of the upper chambers which encircle the saloon of the bath, and, if he be inclined, he has only to turn his eyes to the scene below, to see the loveliest objects of his tenderness sporting like Naiads amidst the crystal stream, and glowing with all the bloom and brilliancy which belongs to Asiatic youth. In such a bath court, it is probable that Bathsheba was seen by the enamoured king of Israel. As he was' walking at evening tide on the roof of his palace,' he might undesignedly have strolled far enough to overlook the Underoon of his women, where the beautiful wife of Uriah, visiting the royal wives, might have joined them, as was often the custom in those countries, in the delights of the bath."

Of all the instances of excessive embellishment (and these are not a few) with which our author has favoured us, none surpasses this absurdly exaggerated description; for besides giving a most inaccurate impression of the whole, he describes things which do not exist. We shall only notice one or two of them.

The bath saloon, or court, which he describes as circular, is an octagon, and the basin, instead of being of pure white marble, is of good brick and lime, with an edging only of marble, and that all above water. So far from being surrounded by "rose-trees and other pendant shrubs bearing flowers," the basin extends to the walls of the surrounding buildings, between which and the water there is nothing but stone. It does not, therefore, and cannot by possibility, contain a single shrub.

The garden is extensive, but miserably kept, and laid out without taste, more for profit than for beauty. The trees are so close together that it is impossible, with any comfort, to go amongst them, and there are no walks except the two avenues which divide each other at right angles in the oen

tre of the place. The fruit-trees are almost entirely hid by ranges of tall poplars, which are set in straight lines so close that their stems almost touch. The palace is a poor building, constructed partly of brick and partly of mud. The small apartments round the bath saloon are much out of repair; indeed, have never been quite finished, and more resemble the cells of anchorites than the habitations of queens. The great chamber or hall which contains the curious painting representing almost every variety of Eastern costume, is dark and dingy, and the whole place, though probably a comfortable spring residence, has little to boast beyond its clear water and its nightingales.

"It is a rarity in these times," says the Knight, "to see a Persian of any class intoxicated with drink." That he should have passed through the country without having seen any of thescenes of drunkenness which so constantly occur, is no bad evidence of the very superficial manner in which he has observed the habits and occupations of the people.

Amongst our author's foibles, none is more remarkable than his desire to add to his own importance by letting us know how much he has been honoured by every great man with whom he comes in contact. A ludicrous instance of this weakness occurs in the account which he gives of taking the Shah's portrait. "His majesty," says Sir Robert, "entered on that which was the object of the morning, and desired me to draw as near him as I should deem necessary, and to be seated. This command was considered the highest personal honour he could confer on any man.'" Sir Robert's vanity and ignorance of Eastern manners induced him to consider it as such; but had he known more of the matter, he would have discovered, that this is an honour which many professional gentlemen share with him, and amongst others that respectable personage the king's barber, who, when in the exercise of his calling, whether cutting his majesty's toe-nails, or shaving his kingly scalp, invariably receives the same order, to be seated. His majesty knows well that the barber cannot perform the duties of his office without being permitted to squat, and he justly concluded that our Knight could not so readily transfer his royal phy

siognomy to paper or canvass unless he was allowed a similar privilege.

About three miles from Teheran are the ruins of the city of Rhey Rhages, of which Sir Robert has given us a plan. Though not by any means an accurate one, it may still serve to give some idea of the place.

From Teheran he proceeded towards Ispahan, by the way of Koom, (a city held sacred by the Persians from its containing the tomb of Fatima, the daughter of Mahommed,) where, he mentions, many Persians purchase themselves graves at a considerable cost, though those who can afford a still greater expenditure obtain a participation in the sanctity of Hoossein, Kerbela, or Allee, at Mesched. This is another blunder. The tomb of Allee is at Nujjif, near Kerbela, not far from Bagdad, whereas Mesched is the capital of Khorassan, quite in the opposite direction, and is the burying-place of another martyred saint named Imaum Reza.

Passing from Koom through Kashan, (famous for its silk and velvet manufactures,) our Knight arrives at Kohrood, after having been again put in bodily fear by the difficulties of the road. Here he discovers an old tombstone, which moved him to much admiration; and being told that it covered the remains of come Pelhiva, (Peilhewan,) and that this word means a warrior, his imagination connects it with Pelhavee, (the ancient language of Persia,) and immediately puts before his "mind's eye" a warrior of the days of Cyrus. Peilhewan did, and still does mean a warrior, but has been extended by courtesy, and is now generally applied to wrestlers, and other gymnastic performers; in short, a Peilhewan of the present day in Persia is pretty nearly what our Gentleman of the Fancy is in England.

Crossing a range of lofty mountains, (which, by the by, is omitted in the map,) Sir Robert journeys on, through heat and direful thirst, to Ispahan. Here he finds the Nizam ud Dowlut, son of the Ameen ud Dowlut governor. This is a mistake which has been continued throughout the work. The Nizam ud Dowlut is the father, not the son of the Ameen ud Dowlut. At Ispahan, the Knight gives us a description of the Chehel Seitoon, (a palace of the Suffooveah Kings,) which is cast in the same mould as that of the Ne

garistan at Teheran, but is scarcely so preposterous, for the Chekel Seitoon does possess some merit. He assures us that the country round Ispahan is I capable of the most productive cultivation;" but unfortunately it is quite the reverse-it is even unusually sterile and unfruitful, and but for the immediate vicinity of so large a city, could not possibly pay the expense of tillage.

But Sir Robert has fallen into another and a more important error, (as it affects the character of a considerable body, already sufficiently depressed and reviled,) in the account which he gives of the morals of the Armenian population of Julpha. That small remnant of a scattered Christian people, ground by their rulers, and bearing the weight of insult and contempt, as well as of grievous political oppression, have certainly deviated much from the rules of their religion, and fallen from the character which they held in better times. But amongst all the evils by which they have been surrounded, they have at least maintained their character for one virtue, and it ill became an Englishman to tread under foot those of his own faith, who are already at the mercy of every ruffian, and to seek to deprive them of the merit of retaining one of a few virtues, to which they may fairly and honestly lay claim. The charge against the Armenian females of Julpha is unfounded; and we wonder the more to find it here, as the "young Persian,"* Sedak Beg, who accompanied Sir Robert, (and through, whom he must have procured almost all his information,) is himself an Armenian in the Persian service, and though not a native of Julpha, might be supposed to have some natural regard for the character of the people of whom he was

good fortune, after a hard chase, to kill it, and bring it to our quarters. From it I completed my sketch."

We believe this is the first instance upon record of the wild ass having been run down in such a manner. We beg leave to extract a few lines from Mr Morier's account of this animal, and of the mode of hunting it.

"On the desert, before we reached Casvin, in the grey of the morning, we gave chase to two wild asses, which the Persians call gour khur, but which had so much the speed of our horses, that when they had got at some distance, they stood still, and looked behind at us, snorting with their noses in the air, as if in contempt of our endeavours to catch them. The Persians sometimes succeed in killing them, but not without great dexterity and knowledge of their haunts. To effect this they place relays of horsemen and dogs upon the track which they are known to pursue, and then hunt them towards the relays, when fresh dogs and horses are started upon the half-exhausted animal. The whole of this account agrees with Xenophon, who says, that their horsemen had no other means of catching them, than by dividing themselves into relays, and succeeding one another in the chase."

From these accounts-from what is generally known of the fleetness of the wild ass, as well as from our own more minute information, we have no hesitation in saying that it was not a wild ass which our Knight describes himself to have slain. It must therefore have been a tame one; and probably some poor villager, who had to bewail the loss which he sustained, has, from that time to this, been wondering by what mysterious hand his ass had been carried from his pastures, little suspecting that the plunderer was no other than a Christian Knight. We really think that Sir Robert would do well to find out the unfortunate man whom he thus deprived of his property, and reimburse him in the full value of the

animal.

If any evidence were wanting to prove that it was not a wild ass, we might find it in the description and the drawing of the animal. For we are told that it had no dark line running down its back, which the wild ass invariably has, though it has no bar across the shoulder; and certain we

are, that no wild ass ever carried such a head on such a neck as is here represented.

At one of the stages between Ispahan and Persepolis, Sir Robert stumbled upon a very liberal-minded Moolah, which gives him occasion to make some remarks on the feelings of Persians towards Europeans, arising from the difference of their religions; and as some of his observations are calculated to mislead persons not well informed on these matters, we shall notice one of them, which is more particularly erroneous. He assures us, that few Persians in the northern parts of the country would have any objection to eat out of the same tray with an European. It is impossible to imagine anything much more inaccurate than this statement. We venture to assert that scarcely any Persian in north or south, who has not emancipated himself from the restraints imposed by his religion, will dip his hand into the dish with an European. We are aware that some remarkable exceptions to this assertion might be quoted, but we say that these have only occurred where the Persian was willing to purchase some considerable advantage by doing what was disagreeable to himself, and what he conceived to be high honour to the infidel with whom he deigned to eat out of the same dish.

In speaking of the Eeleaut, (the wandering tribes of Persia,) Sir Robert displays an ignorance which is quite inexcusable in a man who pretends to give an account of the country. He imagines that all the Eeleaut are of Tartar origin, with the single exception of the Bukhliarees, whereas nearly one-half of their number belongs to neither the one nor the other, and are probably older inhabitants of the country than the divisions which he has mentioned.

The wandering tribes of Persia, comprised under the general term Eel, (of which Eeleaut is the plural,) are usually divided into four nations, viz. The Lacks, who believe themselves to be aborigines of Persia The Koords, (Carducians,) who have migrated from their own country, or been removed by conquerors-The Toorks, who are of Tartar origin, and most of whom came into these parts with Chengis Khan, or with Timoorlung, (Tamerlane ;) and the Arabs, who probably came to Persia soon after the Mahom

medan Conquest. The Bukhtiarees are generally considered as a tribe of the Lack nation, or division; and they speak a dialect of the same language. The language of the Lacks is said to have a near affinity to the Pelhavee, as has also that of the Koords; and a Lack can make himself understood even now in Koordistan. It is therefore not improbable that they may be of the same stock, and that the mountainous parts of Persia and Koordistan may have originally been inhabited by the same people.

The Bukhtiarees (though considered as a tribe of Lacks, from speaking nearly the same language) do not believe themselves to have at all times resided in Persia, but think that they have come from the westward, and are, therefore, not improbably of Koordish origin. It has been suggested that the Bukhtiarees may be a portion of the Greek colony from Baktria, but this is contradicted by their own tradition that they came from the west.

Each of the four nations above enumerated is divided into numerous tribes, and these tribes subdivided into clans, and even the clans into smaller parts. Of these tribes some have almost entirely abandoned their wandering life, and have settled themselves in fixed habitations. Others are in progress towards the same change, having built houses, which they inhabit in the winter; but many spend the whole year in their tents, and have places of encampment for the winter, in some warm spots, and ranges of mountain pastures for the summer.

That Sir Robert should have fallen into so great an error regarding the most interesting portion of the popula tion of Persia, is the more remarkable, as Kerreem Khan, one of the worthiest in the list of Persian monarchs, was himself a Lack, of the tribe Zund, and no more descended from Tartars than from Celts.

The Knight represents this wander ing population as living under tents made of horse hair-a singular supposition, as in that case a man would require the tails of nearly a hundred horses to complete the most ordinary habitation; and as the Persians have a great aversion to cutting their horses' tails, we must imagine each of the individuals who possesses a tent the master of more than a hundred horses. The tents are made of a cloth

manufactured from goats' hair, with sometimes a mixture of coarse wool.

At Moorghaub (Passagardæ,) the Knight finds the remains which were described by Morier, and to satisfy us that the tomb given by the country people to the mother of Solomon, and believed by Morier to be the tomb of Cyrus, is actually the place of rest of that monarch, he quotes a passage from Arrian, which, had he given it rightly, would have gone to prove quite the reverse. He professes to give the words of Arrian, and gives them thus

"The tomb of Cyrus was in the royal paradise of Passargada, round which a grove of various trees was planted. It was supplied with water, and its fields were covered with high grass. The tomb was, below, of a quadrangular shape, built of freestone; above, was a house of stone, with a roof. The door that leads into it is so very narrow that a man, not very tall, with difficulty can get in.''

Let us see what Arrian says, in Rooke's translation.

"The tomb was placed in the Royal gardens at Passargadæ, and round it was planted a grove of all kinds of trees: the place also was well watered, and the surface

of the earth all round clothed with a beautiful verdure. The basis thereof consisted of one large stone, of a quadrangular form. Above, was a small edifice, with an arched roof of stone, and a door, or entrance, so very narrow, that the slenderest man could scarcely pass through."

Here we have a remarkable difference between the two translations; the one stating that the base was built of freestone; the other, that it was of one stone. The one, that it was a house of stone, with a roof; the other, that it was a small edifice, with an arched roof of stone. The one, that a man not very tall, with difficulty can get in; the other, that the slenderest man could scarcely pass through. Now this tomb has not a basis of one quadrangular stone, neither has it an arched roof, neither is the door so narrow, that the slenderest man could scarcely pass through.

Notwithstanding these things, however, we are still inclined to believe that this edifice is the tomb of Cyrus, and, consequently, that Mooghaub is Passagardæ, or Passargadæ, as Arrian writes it. At all events, it corresponds much more nearly with the descriptions which have reached us, than any other place which has been pointed

out.

From Passagardæ our author pro ceeded to Nakshee Roostam, where he found ample occupation for his pencil in copying the bas-reliefs sculptured on its rocks, to which he has done great justice in his drawings. He then went to Persepolis, whence he has brought another set of drawings, which form the most valuable part of his work.

He endeavours to prove that Persepolis owes its ornaments to Darius Hydaspes, but unless we put our faith in Professor Grotefeud's skill to decipher the arroww-headed or Persepolitan character, and to translate the language which it is used to represent, we have not before us evidence sufficient to establish the era to which these truly magnificent ruins belong; and we are sorry to find, that some of the first Orientalists in Europe are very doubtful of the efficacy of Professor Grotefeud's system to bring us to a right understanding of these inscriptions.

At Persepolis, Sir Robert was taken ill, and left something undone which he intended to have done. If he has left any bas-reliefs uncopied, his having been obliged to leave the ruins is much to be regretted. From Persepolis he proceeded to Sheeraz, the city of Hafiz and of Saadee. Here he was for a considerable time in bad health, and was prevented by his indisposition, and the heat of the weather, from descending into the low country. We have lost something by his not having been able to visit Shahpore, for though Morier's drawings of the sculptures there are tolerable, there is a mighty difference between them and those which Sir Robert would have given.

Not far from Sheeraz the Knight saw, on a hill, the ruins of an edifice, on the remaining parts of which (the four doorways) he observed some sculptures, resembling those of Persepolis, but rejects the idea that these have been brought from the great ruin, and states that they must have been executed for their present situation. In this he is certainly mistaken. The lintel of one, at least, of the door-ways is seulptured on the lower side, and so placed that the head and feet of the figure represented upon it rest on the pillars which form the door-posts, and are thereby hid-which could not have been the case, had the stones been originally intended for their present situation. Moreover, the foundations of the walls, which have connected these