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138 they arrived in London they did not see a span of earth uninhabited. Even the peasants who dwelt in English villages had, they remarked, lofty and beautiful houses. At Exeter they rested at an inn, which they described as a wonderful lofty building, and they added the piece of information that there are in that city above five thousand such public places, each gaining "about one thousand tomans per day indeed, say these travellers, "the money here is like dust;" but nothing less than the words of the gallant Najaf Meerza, the literary chief of the party, can do justice to the Persian princes' experiences of the effect of an introduction to a young unveiled English lady. "While we were sitting," he says, "behold! a sun appeared from our East shining and flashing. On seeing this incomparable beauty, and beholding this lovely face like the fall moon, I lost my senses, not to say that I lost my sight, in admiration. No, my eyes, by beholding her smiling, became a hundred times more powerful. The delightful odour of her hair fell into my heart, and I was obliged to rise up and invite her to sit by my side paying her all honourable respect. My heart died away, and unless my mind had gained strength to maintain conversation with this visitor, I should have appeared as if I was lost. I asked who she was. This full moon was a daughter of a captain in the East Indies."

Having thus expended their admiration upon English beauty, the veracious Persian travellers proceed to give their countrymen information of the customs, manners, and government of the country, from which it will probably amuse the reader to select a few passages. "Every person," says Najaf Meerza, "that