of biblical customs. How very patriarchal is this! So also is their mode of taxation; they pay no rent for the soil, beyond that of a tenth of its produce. I marked the royal heap once or twice, which I thought fell very short of the competing heaps. However, this I left to his Majesty to find out. The most amicable division seemed to be made amongst the villagers themselves, where there are no enclosures nor boundaries to mark private property. It is brought into one common stock, which is enough for all. There can be no want in a country where the soil produces so abundantly by irrigation only. It comes the nearest to "a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny," to any that I have ever met with.

The natives, in the midst of so much abundance, seem to be negatively happy-a sort of stultification of faculties. I hear of no crime nor commotion amongst them, and they seem blessed with that negative enjoyment, the result of minds buried in the repose of ignorance. As I lay on the heap of corn at lazy length, smoking my pipe of meditation amongst the natives, Shakspeare's enquiry occurred to me:

-What is man,

If his chief good, and market of his time

Is but to sleep and feed! a beast! no more.

Sure He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To rust in us unused."

But rust it does in the Persian villages, where prosperity depends much on the Khan of the district; as, if he be rapacious, they suffer much persecution—if liberal and just, they become flourishing and contented. To avoid the former, they will emigrate to another locality;—“the world is all before them where to choose ;"-the mud walls are soon raised, and in a very short time they establish another village, whilst the crumbling remains of those which they have left bespeak tyranny and oppression.

The natives, although serfs to the Shah, are not transferable with the villages, as they are in Russia; they are in nominal slavery, without being slaves—I mean as property. It is true the Shah may swallow them alive, if he likes; but he never does so. The emigration of the natives is a cause of strife sometimes amongst the neighbouring Khans, since population produces wealth. Where the people are so few, as compared to the

extent of territory, they are tenacious of their subjects being inveigled away, although they have no power to prevent it. I attended once a court of pleas on this subject, than which nothing could be more amusing. The ragged groups—the vociferous defendants, when charged with stealing away-and their rejoinders of oppression and cruelty-it was a scene for an Hogarth. "What dirt have you been eating? make your face white if you can, you Haremzadeh," said the Khan. "I have eat dirt," says the fellow; then crouching before his chief, afraid of the bastinado, “My liver has become water, and my soul has withered up."

There is, too, that passiveness about them which is equally amusing, and the order to "give him the shoe," is as quietly received as it is promptly obeyed by the faroshes, who, taking off their iron-heel slipper, give him such a blow on the mouth as not only to cut short the argument, but sometimes to smash in the teeth of the argufier. This order of the court is pretty effective, and frequently ends the assize; but "turn up his heels" is deemed a still sounder argument.

Some of the villages are walled, and flanked with towers; and in the "chummun," or meadow

districts, where the pasture is rich and abundant, they drive out and bring back their numberless flocks and herds morning and evening, always housing them in the stables at night. They appear to have quite a personal attachment for the brute beasts-a sort of family compact. I recollect particularly at the village of Dubalabad, a very large and flourishing district, where we arrived rather late in the evening, just as the natives were housing their cattle-the lowing of the oxen-the bleating of the sheep-the noise of the dogs, as this army of animals made their march into it. It was a most pleasing rural scene -there was something patriarchal in it. I could fancy Laban and Rebecca, Isaac and Leah amongst the villagers. This is an invariable custom in Persia,-that of housing the cattle every evening. They durst not leave them exposed at night in an unenclosed country; they would be not only subject to stray, but to be abstracted by their neighbours. There can be no security where there are no laws, and no confidence but in caution.

Most of the villages have "menzils," or posthouses, for the traveller; and if he be of any importance, the Ketkodeh comes to pay him

a visit, followed by a motley train of villagers, in their rough garb of sheep-skin coats, and badly slippered (their rags are deemed a protection against spoliation and oppression), who advance by degrees to the Khan's mat, and welcome him with the "Kush guelden," but never presuming to sit without his invitation. Then, when the pipe is produced, and sometimes the coffee (but this latter is a most special favour), he seems to bask in the Khan's countenance, and entreats permission "to rub his forehead at his threshold."

The Persians are very abject; they take hold of the hem of your garment, and entreat permission to kiss the dust off your feet. Their civilities are overwhelming, their language fascinating; for who is there that does not like to be told, "My eyes are enlightened by seeing you?" But their creed is that of Saadi: "Truth is an excellent thing when it suits our purpose, but very inconvenient when otherwise." Slavery is their atmosphere; they despise all other government. I can easily understand this, since every class exercises the same despotism to their dependents. Had the Shah been in the village, the Khan would have been prostrating himself, and playing the same part as