dence that it was the first dry land the patriarch saw. Another tradition goes still further back, holding that it was Noah's dwelling before the Flood took place. Be this as it may, it has now no sights to show except the mosques and the ancient palace of the Shah, or rather of his lieutenant, the Sardar of Erivan. This palace is included within the citadel, a Persian fortress, strong by its situation on the top of a basaltic cliff, which rises over the river Zenga; strong also, according to Asiatic ideas, in its high brick walls running along the top of the cliff, though I do not suppose they could resist modern artillery for a day. Part of the fortress is now occupied by barracks, part is in ruins, but two or three chambers have been carefully kept up, and even to some extent restored in genuine Persian style, and give one a lively idea of the architectural style and taste of the only Eastern nation among which art can still be said to live, if indeed it lives even there. The roof, as well as the floors inside, are covered with bright blue, green, or yellow tiles, the older ones of which-you may pick them anywhere out of the ruins-are wonderfully vivid in colour. The walls and ceiling of the principal chamber, which is supposed to have been the audience chamber of the Sardar, are decorated with a profusion of small mirrors, or rather pieces of looking-glass, stuck together in a kind of mosaic, arranged alternately with paintings in excessively bright colours, representing the Shah chasing the lion and the stag, together with various emblematic devices, and patterns of roses and other flowers and shrubs, repeated all round.' A

sort of stalactite ornament in coloured plaster is in a style similar to that of the ceilings in the Alhambra ; indeed, it has been supposed that some of the work there bears traces of a Persian hand. The drawing is stiff and conventional; and though the tints are well harmonized, they are almost too bright; the effect is rather gaudy than gorgeous. One is glad to refresh the sated eye by looking through the one window which opens to the south upon the stream foaming down its rocky bed below, the women washing clothes along its banks, Tatar carriers driving their teams over the bridge, and beyond it the well-watered banks of the Aras, an oasis of delicious green in this parched and dusty land, with the two cloud-girt peaks of Ararat rising five-and-thirty miles beyond.

The principal mosque lies behind the bazaar in a maze of lanes separated by gardens and courtyards. It forms one side of a square enclosure planted with orange and other trees, with a tank in the middle, over which four tall elm trees bend, the whole not unlike in arrangement to, although smaller than, the famous garden of that masterpiece of Mohammedan art, the mosque at Cordova. Here, however, the mosque itself, so far from being a vast and complicated structure is more like what would be called in Italy a loggia, open on one side to the garden, with a deep and lofty horseshoe-shaped recess (the mosque proper), much like a large round apse, or the half of a dome, in the middle of this gallery, part of the interior of which is covered with handsome tiles, and adorned with texts from the Koran. The floor is bare and

open; there is, however, a small wooden pulpit, whence the officiating mollahs read or preach. A little way from the dome that surmounts the mosque, an elegant minaret rises, round and decorated with coloured tiles, like those of Turkey and Morocco, whereas at Cordova and Seville the minaret is a square brick tower. The rest of the gallery which surrounds the enclosure is appropriated to the mollahs attached to the mosque, or made to furnish resting-places for pilgrims, or school-rooms where boys are taught to read the Koran. This mosque belongs to the Muslims of the Shiah persuasion, that which prevails in Persia; and here they come to worship all day long, bowing and prostrating themselves towards the centre of the apse, which is of course in the direction of Mecca. Its ample proportions, the rich yet soft colours of its walls, the silence, the shade, the rustling of the boughs and murmuring of water in the adjoining garden, make it one of the most beautiful and impressive houses of prayer that I have ever seen.

In the same part of the town, not far from the bazaar, are placed most of the caravan-serais, as well as the baths. An Eastern bath has been so often described that he would be a bold traveller who should attempt to describe it again, though here in Persia it is not quite the same thing as in Constantinople or London. The caravan-serai (bower or resting-place of the caravan) is very unlike an inn according to our notions. It is a round or elliptical enclosure between high walls with a strong gate or gates to it. Round the inner wall runs a sort

of gallery, roofed, but open to the air, where the traveller encamps with his cart or camels, providing himself from the market with bread and wine, foddering his beasts himself, and getting nothing from the innkeeper except space, a sort of shelter, and protection against nocturnal thieves. Till lately there was a European inn of some pretensions in the city, but its landlord, according to the story told us, had some months before been thrown into prison on a charge of murdering one of his guests, a Greek banker, whose imprudent display of money had roused his cupidity, and the hotel was therefore closed. The cries and groans of the victim, whose throat was being cut, had been heard by various people in the house, none of whom stirred to help him. Nobody doubted the innkeeper's guilt, but justice moves slowly in these countries, and he may not have been tried, much less executed, even now. The inn in which we stayed had, as I have mentioned, also been closed, and when we returned to Erivan from a journey to Etchmiadzin, it refused to admit us, till compelled to do so by the police authorities. Having been recommended by the vice-governor to their attentions, we thought it would be a pity to make no use of them, and accordingly by their means forced an entrance and got a night's shelter.

The most trivial details of Eastern life are fascinating to those whose childish imagination has been fed by the Bible and the Arabian Nights. To see people sitting or sleeping on the flat roofs, or talking to one another in the gate through which a string of camels

is passing, to visit mosques and minarets and bazaars, watch the beggar crawl into the ruined tomb of a Muslim saint, and ramble through a grove of cypresses strewn with nameless, half fallen gravestones, to stand by the baker or the shoemaker as he plies his craft in his open stall, and listen to the stories told by the barber, even when one does not understand a word, with the sacred mountain of the Ark looking down upon all, this seems like a delightful dream from faroff years, and one wakes with a start to perceive that it is all real, and that in the midst of it stands an unsympathetic Frank, unable to rid himself of a sense of mingled contempt and pity for the "natives," anxious to examine what he has come so far to see, and then press on to something further. One considers how long it would take to tame down a restless Western spirit to the apathy, the acquiesciveness, the sense of boundless time before and around which these people have been steeped in for so many generations. Nevertheless, the light of common day does not wholly disenchant the East. True it is that every-day life here must be unspeakably dull, duller than in the quietest provincial town of France or England. For romance, in the novelist's sense of the word, there is infinitely less opportunity than among ourselves. The great movements of the European world seem much farther away than they had seemed to me six years before in America; for the inhabitants, even those of the better class, had not the smallest interest in them. Even of the approaching rupture with Turkey, which was to bring war into this very plain, and of the forces