rectness of his appreciation of Persia's condition, corruption, and decline-confirmed, moreover, by many cotemporary writers. But, as we before remarked, in all matters relating to the East he is an Anglophobist (to coin a word for the occasion), and cherishes a sincere conviction that Great Britain is eternally, exclusively, and unscrupulously bent on extending her territory and finding new markets for her manufactures. He belongs to that division of his nation who hold or profess a settled and irrational conviction of the habitual perfidy of this country—a conviction they would be extremely puzzled to justify by the adduction of facts. The English, according to him, have neglected no means, during the last forty years, of weakening and killing Persia, and impoverishing its people. All the influential men in the country are in English pay-rather a heavy pull upon the secret-service money; every Englishman he meets is taken for "one of those agents without any official character, but as enterprising as they are persevering, whom England sends forth whithersoever she has objects to gain and interests to preserve." We feel quite grateful when we find him, however rarely, departing from his usual strain, and bestowing a word or two of commend ation on one of our countrymen-as in the case of Mr Layard, whom he fell in with during his rambles, and of whom (although far from acquitting him of nefarious designs upon the independence of Persia) he speaks as "the ingenious and learned interpreter of the antiquities of Asia." At Persepolis, too, he is so generous as to eulogise the man who out-diplomatised Napoleon's ambassador.

Amongst the names," he says, "that travellers have not feared to engrave upon the palace of Xerxes, very few are those of celebrated men. We read, however, those of two diplomatists who have left more honourable evidence of their passage through Persia than this singular visa inscribed between the legs or on the breast of the colossus of Persepolis. One is that of Sir John Malcolm, ambassador to Feth-Ali-Shah in 1807, who has written an excellent history of the country. The other is that of

the charming author of the Persian Gil Blas, of Hadji Baba-Morier, who to his literary talent added that of an observer and painter of manners." We may content ourselves with these two brief paragraphs of praise, and ransack the volumes in vain for further laudation of Englishmen. In doing so we stumble upon a passage exemplifying the amusing ingenuity with which M. Flandin everywhere detects the mischievous hand of English influence. He is speaking of the narcotic drug haschis, extracted from hemp, and principally used in Egypt. "It was imported into Persia; but the accidents that occurred from its use determined the Shah to prohibit it under the severest penalties-amounting, I was assured, to sentence of death-on any who brought it into the country. This solicitude of the king of Persia for his subjects singularly astonished me; but as haschis is a dangerous rival to opium, I asked myself if it might not be possible to recognise the finger of England in this veto. The supposition appeared to me much more natural and probable than the Shah's capricious tenderness for his people."

In the course of his protracted peregrinations it is not to be supposed that M. Flandin had not numerous encounters with persons more interesting and agreeable to meet than covert English emissaries, truculent village mayors, refractory customhouse officers, and Kouli assassins. He came across all sorts of strange characters, such as one scarcely expects to fall in with out of the Arabian Nights, although to experienced wanderers in the far East they are doubtless familiar enough. The following is a striking account of one of these meetings:

Their beards, instead of being carefully dyed of a fine black, according to Persian custom, were perfectly white. They exchanged a few words in a tongue I had not yet heard spoken in those regions; then they addressed me in Persian. In reply to my questions, they told me they were merchants from Yezd, whither they were returning after a long journey in the north of Persia. They added that, like almost all the inhabitants of Yezd, they were Ghebers; and that, in their quality of fire-worshippers, like Djemshid, the great king who had built the palaces of Persepolis, they had been unwilling to pass near those ruins without turning aside to offer up a pious prayer. They had scarcely spoken, when they set to gathering small wood and dry plants, formed a sort of little pile on the edge of the rock on which we were, and lighted it, murmuring prayers in the same language I had heard them speak upon their arrival, and which must have been Zend, the language of Zoroaster and of the Zendavesta, that whose characters were engraven on the walls of Persepolis. Whilst the two Ghebers thus prayed before their fire, I raised my eye to the upper bas-relief of the façade of the funeral vault before which we were. The scene it represented was exactly similar. This worship still had, after more than two thousand years, votaries whose faith had been preserved notwithstanding the persecutions of the sectaries of Mahomet and of Ali. Long after the departure of the two Ghebers, the little pile still smoked, and its light smoke ascended towards heaven in a thin grey column. I felt the influence of a religious impression on finding myself alone beside these ashes which had received the homage of the two prostrate old men; the vapour of the sacrifice slowly rising above the wild rocks that commanded the silent plain, covered with ruins, amidst which are still to be found the remains of the ancient altars of fire."

During the two months M. Flandin's little party passed amongst these interesting remains of Persia's former greatness, few visitors disturbed their solitude. Now and then a traveller deviated from his road to take a cursory but wondering survey of the

strange bas-relief of Takht-i-Jemshid (the throne or palace of Gemschid), and wondered even more to find Franks camped amidst the ruins, at great inconvenience and some risk. These visitors generally explained the presence of the strangers in the way most flattering to their national pride. Doubtless they went thither because in their own country they had nothing so great and magnificent as those monuments. Some, however, took a different view of the matter. In Persia and other parts of the East, the idea prevails that all ancient monuments, particularly those bearing inscriptions, indicate the place of hidden treasures. The men from an adjacent village, whom Messrs Flandin and Coste employed for their archæological diggings, were, like most Persians, too intelligent not to take an interest in the excavations which brought to light fine sculptures, previously almost buried in the earth; but still they could not believe that the mere love of art was the sole stimulant to these researches; they were fully persuaded that they had to do with treasureseekers, and countenanced a report that the Franks daily found gold and jewels, and that they had discovered a vase containing sixteen battemans, or fifty pounds' weight of gold coin, part of which they had sent to the Shah. In vain did M. Flandin point out the absurdity of these notions, and the impossibility of his finding treasures without the knowledge of the men who did all the digging. It was their belief that he made them dig just to the depth at which he knew the treasure lay, and then took it up in the night. Nocturnal alarms from marauders were the consequence of the reports thus spread. Two soldiers, sent by the governor of Shiraz, stood sentry by turns the night through, masking their fire with a barricade, lest they should be picked off from afar by its light. Another ingenious device of these warriors was to put caps and cloaks on stakes planted in the ground round about the fire, to make the robbers think the guard numerous. They had great confidence in the efficacy of these scarecrows. Amongst other odd visits, M. Flandin one day, when hard at work amongst the ruins, impugning Ker Porter's accuracy con

cerning the tails of fabulous monsters, and sketching bas-relief combats between old Persian divinities, was intruded upon by a gentleman in a tigerskin mantle and pointed yellow cap, his arms and legs naked, a large talisman hanging down upon his bare breast, and a cup of Indian nut-shell suspended by a brass chain from his arm. The cup contained some small coins, and a little honey, which he offered to M. Flandin. Under pretence of a gift, he thus asked an alms. This curious-looking stranger, whose skin was blackened by exposure to the sun, and whose long matted hair fell down upon his shoulders, was a dervish or fakir, a sample of one of the greatest nuisances in Persia. These dervishes are generally debauched reprobates and robbers, but are looked upon by the pious as holy men, for whom a snug place is specially reserved amongst the houris of Mahomet's paradise. The vagabonds stroll about the country, installing themselves wherever they please, and remaining as long as they list. None dare refuse them shelter; with their cry of Ya, Ali! incessantly repeated, they obtain whatever they desire. They are supposed to have remedies for all ills; barren women consult them, and men dread them on account of their reputed power of casting spells. "I knew one," says M. Flandin, "who was called dervishShah, because he had quartered him self upon the king. He never quitted the royal residence, but followed the Shah wherever he went, and had his tent and his mule or horse to enable him to do so. He was the greatest possible scamp; drunken, a gambler, a debauchee, he combined all imaginable vices in his own person. He was nevertheless esteemed a saint, and some day perhaps a tomb will be raised to him, bearing the name of iman, in token of profound veneration." Their vow of poverty imposes no privation upon these gentry, since they get everything for the asking; and sometimes they renounce it, to become mirzas or khans, if fortune favours them so far. Some few of them really are austere religious fanatics, who pass whole days in prayer and fasting, and live apart from the world, plunged in a sort of stupid

ecstasy, which the Mussulmans greatly admire. In connection with the popular belief that they possess mysterious cures for the bites of serpents and the sting of scorpions, M. Flandin relates a curious incident which occurred when he was at Ispahan: "The Persian servant of a European had been stung by a scorpion, and his master wished to apply ammonia, the usual remedy in such cases, but the man refused, and ran off to the bazaar. When he returned, he said he was cured, and appeared to be so. The European, rather surprised at this almost instantaneous cure, questioned him, and found that he had been to a dervish who enjoyed great reputation in such cases. This dervish, he said, after examining the wound and uttering a few words, had several times lightly touched it with a little iron blade. Still more astonished at the remedy than at the cure, the European desired to see the instrument by which the latter was said to have been effected. At the cost of a small pichkeck he was allowed to have it for a few minutes in his possession. After careful examination, finding nothing extraordinary in the instrument, he made up his mind that the cure was a mere trick; that the dervish was an impostor, that the scorpion's sting had not penetrated, and that his servant bad been more frightened than hurt. He threw the blade contemptuously upon the table, when, to his great surprise, he beheld it attach itself strongly to a knife. The quack's instrument was simply a magnet. But what power had the loadstone's attraction over venom? This discovery was very odd; incredulity was at a nonplus; and yet the man stung by the scorpion" was cured, and he who had cured him was in great renown at Ispahan for the treatment of that sort of wound. I relate these facts without comment; who knows if science will not one day discover something as yet unknown to it, but practised by the Persians? Have not savages remedies composed of the juice of plants, of whose existence our European science is ignorant?"

In Persia there is a legend or tradition for everything, and some of these are as fanciful as they are absurd. When at Teheran, M. Flandin was told various strange stories relat

ing to the lofty peak of Demawendthat gigantic cone, eternally icecrowned, which in clear weather is visible, through the transparent atmosphere of Persia, a hundred leagues off, in the city of Ispahan. One of the most generally believed tales relating to the mountain is, that a plant grows upon its slopes, and there alone, which produces gold. The origin of this story is to be traced to the golden colour assumed by the teeth of the sheep that crop the herbage of the Demawend. The phenomenon is easily explained by a colouring property of the grass; but the Persians, constant lovers of the marvellous, prefer to behold in it an indication of the presence of gold. Some of those whose faith is strongest ascend the mountain with great labour, to gather this grass, and extract its precious essence. There are no instances upon record of fortunes having been made in this manner. A more poetical tradition is that preserved with respect to a mauvais pas on the mountain of Pyrazan in Fars, at a short distance from the Persian Gulf. When descending the mountain, and soon after quitting a little caravanserai, about half way down, at which they had passed the night, Messrs Flandin and Coste came to what is called the Cotal-Doukhtar, or the young girl's staircase. A stupendous mountain of rock, flanked by a bottomless abyss, has to be descended by a narrow track which zigzags down its almost perpendicular side. The path is worn smooth and slippery, there is no foothold for the horses and mules, and few caravans accomplish the dangerous passage without loss of baggage, and often of beasts. When ascending, the muleteers push and support their animals; when descending, they hold them back by the tail. Not unfrequently they are compelled to unload them, and to carry their burthens piecemeal over the worst parts of the path. This was formerly less dangerous; there were steps cut in the rock; crevices were filled up with stones. A parapet diminished at least the appearance of danger; but of the parapet scarcely a vestige remains, and the road is a mere goat-track. The Persians tell of a young princess who once dwelt upon the summit of Pyrazan, and whose lover daily went

to visit her. He arrived so panting and exhausted, that she had a staircase cut in the rock to facilitate his visits. But the lovers are long since dead, and their stairs are broken up and degraded. Again, when scaling some rocks in the neighbourhood of the little town of Hamadan, supposed to stand upon the site of Ecbatana, the ancient capital of Media, the guides pointed out to the travellers, in a tone of great veneration, a huge stone mass split into two. Its division had been effected, they religiously believed and confidently affirmed, by a single blow of the scimitar of their great iman, Ali. A few days previously, a mark upon a rock, having the form of a gigantic horse-shoe, had been shown to M. Flandin as having been left there by the hoof of Ali's horse. A more modern, but hardly a more credible marvel, is pictorially represented amongst the ruins of the town of Rhey, near Teheran. Hard by an abundant spring, known as Ali's fountain, and on the face of a rock chiselled smooth for the purpose, amidst nests of eagles and vultures, a bas-relief represents Feth-Ali-Shah on horseback, striking down a lion by a single thrust of his lance. An old man, who had belonged to that prince's court, assured M. Flandin he had been eyewitness of the feat: To which the painter appends the remark, that the Persians love the marvellous, and have very small regard for truth.

On his entrance into Persia, by the northern frontier, M. Flandin received practical proof of Persian dislike to the Russians. Whilst sketching his first halting-place, he was assailed by a shower of stones and abuse, with which was coupled the word Moscov (Russian.) The notion of there being other Franks than the Czar's subjects had probably never entered these people's heads. The ambassador made his complaint, and the stick, that eternal resource in Persia, to which high and low are alike subject, was applied to improve the geographical knowledge of M. Flandin's assailants. The loss of Georgia, and their defeats on the banks of the Araxes, still rankle in the hearts of the Persians. Their antipathy to the Turks is equally strong, kept up partly by the recollection of former wars