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met their death heroically, though life was offered them on the simple condition of cursing their prophet the Baab. Such was the fear of the king's ministers lest the Baabis might avenge these executions by their assassination, that they arranged to divide the responsibility, each minister striking a first shot at the particular prisoner assigned to him; his secretaries and servants then hacked the victim in pieces. The Teheran Gazette describes this strange execution, and stated that "The minister for foreign affairs, the minister of finance, the prime minister's son, the chief of the army, the master of the mint slew (here followed the victim's name) and sent him to hell." A prisoner was slain in addition by the artillery, one each by the cavalry, the camel-artillery, and the infantry.

executed after torture—all these people, erally proves a mixed blessing. Each lady has a house, or at least a suite of apartments, in the royal palace. The principal wife of the late shah was the Shukû-es-Sultaneh, "the glory of the empire," the mother of the present king, a royal princess, granddaughter of Fath Ali Shah. The second wife was the late king's own aunt; a royal princess, and childless. The third wife is the former favorite concubine, the Anys-ed-dowlet, or "Companion of the Government." She was а miller's daughter, and as the shah rode by she offered him some fruit, which he accepted; and next day the miller's daughter entered the royal anderûn, and she grew in favor till, nineteen years ago, the shah made her one of his four lawful wives. Three of her brothers became chamberlains to the king, the fourth preferred to pursue his old avocation, that of a muleteer. The Anys-ed-dowlet had the reputation of a kind-hearted woman, and gave away large sums in charity.

Mahommed Riza, of Kerman, Nussired-din's assassin, may be a Baabi; if so, the statement is probably incorrect that he has denounced his associates. The Sheikh Jamal-ed-din seems to have been an unsuccessful political adventurer rather than a Baabi, and it is quite likely that he instigated the assassination, and that after its perpetration the courage of Mahommed Riza failed him. All this points not to Baabism, but to a political crime; for the Baabi meets death with a smile, and torture or promises of pardon and reward wring no confession from him. Unfortunately, a renewed and vigorous persecution of the Baabis is certain to be the result, while a dreadful death awaits Mahommed Riza, and no mercy will be shown to the Sheikh Jamal-ed-din should he be given up to the Persians by the sul tan.

The family of the late Shah Nussired-din was a large one. He had three legitimate or Akhdi wives, and some fifty concubines. Many of these latter were merely wives in name, for a lady who has once entered the royal "anderûn," or harem, only leaves it at death, or when the shah, as a special mark of favor, gives her in marriage to a subject. The bride in this case gen

The Amin-i-Akdas, a Kurdish slave, is the aunt of the little boy who was long known as the shah's "Luck." The real history of the "Luck" is that when the king was on one of his sporting expeditions, he, while sleeping in a hunting-lodge of massive timbers, was aroused by the child's cries. He went out to quiet the child, and as he left the house it suddenly fell in a heap of ruins. The shah considered that the little child had saved his life, and he clung to the boy for several years as a pet and playfellow.

As Persia was under the government of the late shah, so it will probably remain under Mozaffer-ed-din. The policy will be the same-Russia will be played off against England, England against Russia. In the north the Russian influence will preponderate, while we shall continue to regulate matters in the Persian Gulf. Concessions will be given and afterwards retracted; a bribe will never be refused by any man, be he king or peasant; and Persia will remain a nation of highly civilized barbarians, ruled by a benignant despot. Persia changes not; she only

decays. As she was in James Morier's1 time, so she will continue-a land of beautiful oases in the midst of howling deserts; a land which is a poor man's paradise, and where courtesy and hospitality, combined with every Eastern vice, will continue to make the sprightly Persian the extraordinary enigma that he is to the European mind. C. J. WILLS.

1 The talented author of "Hajji Bala."

From The Cornhill Magazine. MEN AND MANNERS IN FLORENCE. About three visitors of every six who come to fair Florence go straight to a pension. The city may be said to be made up of pensions and antiquities, with flower-girls and royal personages thrown in. Such an error of conduct is therefore excusable. For an error it certainly is, if you propose to feast instructively on mediæval relics, paintings, and memories, and study the modern Florentines into the bargain. I know nothing more distracting mentally than the drama of an Italian pension, in which a couple of dozen individuals of three or four continents, of incongruous ideals and different ages and stations (from dukes and duchesses -Italian-to retired butchers), herd together at one dinner-table, and in the drawing-rooms devote themselves to gossip and love-making. The pension is, in fact, just the stage of a theatre; and the life in it makes up a variety of plays, in which tragedy and farce predominate. This is especially true of Florence when the almond-trees are in blossom and the streets are perfumed by the flower-girls.

And so, as a start, I went to a humble inn in Shoemaker Street, deferring my pension experiences for a week or two. I did not regret it. The common Italian is a much-misunderstood person in England, where we form wrong ideas of the nation from the organ-grinders and ice-cream men it sends us. He is honest, amiable in the extreme, and as natural as Dame Nature herself. At

this plebeian inn they gave me no fewer fleas than I ought to have expected at a "lira" the night. But their civility was unbounded, even as their linen was clean. My window looked across unblushingly at the window of a room occupied by a couple of genial young women, who slept, worked at bonnetmaking, ate, and sang as if they really rather enjoyed than disliked my involuntary supervision of them. My landlord was proud of me-he said so, never before having had an English "Excellency" under his modest roof. He himself sat up to receive me when I stayed out late at nights, and smiled, even through his yawns, as he carried my candle for me. And the dark-eyed chambermaid who brought me my coffee of a morning could not have been more engagingly gentle and devoted if she had had to thank me for her life and ten times as many accompanying blessings as she possessed. Her "buon giorno, Sinny," or her "buona sera," as we clashed on the narrow stairs, was always emphasized by a winning smile of the kind one does not get out of King Humbert's happy realm.

Thus loosely tethered, I could do as I pleased in all essential matters. In fifteen days I had dined at fifteen restaurants and supped at fifteen others. I also made acquaintance with about a score of cafés. That is seeing life in Florence with a vengeance. At any rate, it taught me to lift my hat with ease in entering and leaving these public places of entertainment. The home-staying Englishman may mock at this simple courtesy, but to my mind it is somewhat educative, and the more so that it is violently against the grain of the British temperament. The flower-girls also were one of the salutary trials of the life. Perceiving that I did not wear a Florentine countenance, they invariably made me their victim. In the middle of my macaroni, for instance, one of them would assault me with a bunch of violets and a pin. Covering her attack with a smile all over her brown countenance, and showing a score of eager white teeth, she would fasten the nosegay in my coat

ere I could say five serious words in opposition. The other guests beheld the encounter with pleased impartiality. Life in Florence is all pictorial. I thus contributed a commonplace yet bright little vignette on my own account. And so it happened that regularly as I dined was I adorned with flowers.

It was the same with the mandoline players. How excellently these sweet strummers aid digestion in this city of the Medici! They and their stringed toys appear everywhere. Indeed, the more obscure the eating-house the more systematic their visitations. The music dignifies the viands. Not always was the wine good, nor the cutlet à la milanaise of the tenderest; but one forgets these defects in the plaintive spectacle of a white-bearded sightless mandolinist led into the room by an angel-faced (though not very clean) little girl, to add the sauce of harmony to the meal. I have seen a warmhearted neighbor shed tears over his "carciofi" during the melody, and another let his meat go cold while he beat time to the musician's strumming. The Florentines are all sensibility or nearly. Touch their hearts and you may be sure you have touched their pockets also, though there may be naught inside these. For my part, I reckoned the copper to the mandolinist as an integral part of my dinner bill. The flower-girl and the waiter were the only inevitable extras.

Afterwards it was gay to go into the lively streets with the post-prandial cigar; to roam recklessly for a while among palaces, churches, and slums; or to watch the stars and lamplights in the Arno and Taddeo Gaddi's quaint old bridge, with its shops and crowds of passengers. The evening air here in spring is often keen, thanks to the snow on the distant mountains; but it always reaches the lungs with a "cachet" of purity upon it that the dead dogs visible in the Arno by daylight may appear upon the whole to belie. The pensions and hotels of Lung' Arno after the dinner-hour exhale an air of fascinating frivolity. One beholds illuminated drawing-rooms and

gleaming shoulders, and there is a clang of merry voices. Music, too, floats hence towards the gliding water, and whispers descend from amorous couples nestled in the balconies, with hearts steeped in the romance of their surroundings. And music ascends also to these love-makers; for the omnipresent mandolinist of the street finds them out, and serenades them one by one as fervently as a thrush its mate. The musician's words are often as torrid as his notes. It is convenient. The discreet wooer has only to murmur in the ears of his loved one that his sentiments are precisely those tongued by the melodious rascal below.

Your typical Florentine is epicurean to the toe tips. His enthusiasm and yearnings are quite other than those of the northerner. Give him two francs a day for life and he will toil no more. He may be a marquis, and seventh or eighth in direct descent, but he will be content to forego the assertion of his rank so he may thenceforward enjoy the priceless boon of leisure and independence. His leisure he will dissipate at the café, with perhaps two three-halfpenny sweet fluids per diem; and you may study the effect of his independence in his courtly manners, even though his hat be worn at the brim and his coatback be deplorably shiny. He is a pellucid brook-shallow as you please, yet engaging for his pellucidity. As he sits on the red velvet cushions and looks forth at the carriages and gowns of fashion in the Via Tornabuoni, he shows no trace of envy on his open countenance. What, in effect, have these rich ones more than he, save the ennui of modishness and the indigestion of high feeding? The monuments and blue skies of Florence (not to mention the glorious or stirring memories of its history) are rather more his than theirs. And it is such ineffable bliss to be able to twiddle one's thumbs and defy all and everything (except death) to upset one's sweet tranquillity of soul. Call it vacuity instead of tranquillity, and no harm will be done.

Through sitting twice or thrice as his neighbor, I came to know one of these

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decays. As she was in James Morier's' | this plebeian inn they gave me no fewer time, so she will continue-a land of fleas than I ought to have expected at a beautiful oases in the midst of howling "lira" the night. But their civility was deserts; a land which is a poor man's unbounded, even as their linen was paradise, and where courtesy and clean. My window looked across unhospitality, combined with every East- blushingly at the window of a room ern vice, will continue to make the occupied by a couple of genial young sprightly Persian the extraordinary women, who slept, worked at bonnetenigma that he is to the European mind. | making, ate, and sang as if they really

C. J. WILLS.

1 The talented author of "Hajji Bala."

From The Cornhill Magazine. MEN AND MANNERS IN FLORENCE. About three visitors of every six who come to fair Florence go straight to a pension. The city may be said to be made up of pensions and antiquities, with flower-girls and royal personages thrown in. Such an error of conduct is therefore excusable. For an error it certainly is, if you propose to feast instructively on mediæval relics, paintings, and memories, and study the modern Florentines into the bargain. I know nothing more distracting mentally than the drama of an Italian pension, in which a couple of dozen individuals of three or four continents, of incongruous ideals and different ages and stations (from dukes and duchesses -Italian-to retired butchers), herd together at one dinner-table, and in the drawing-rooms devote themselves to gossip and love-making. The pension is, in fact, just the stage of a theatre; and the life in it makes up a variety of plays, in which tragedy and farce predominate. This is especially true of Florence when the almond-trees are in blossom and the streets are perfumed by the flower-girls.

And so, as a start, I went to a humble inn in Shoemaker Street, deferring my pension experiences for a week or two. I did not regret it. The common Italian is a much-misunderstood person in England, where we form wrong ideas of the nation from the organ-grinders and ice-cream men it sends us. He is honest, amiable in the extreme, and as natural as Dame Nature herself. At

rather enjoyed than disliked my involuntary supervision of them. My landlord was proud of me-he said so, never before having had an English "Excellency" under his modest roof. He himself sat up to receive me when I stayed out late at nights, and smiled, even through his yawns, as he carried my candle for me. And the dark-eyed chambermaid who brought me my coffee of a morning could not have been more engagingly gentle and devoted if she had had to thank me for her life and ten times as many accompanying blessings as she possessed. Her "buon giorno, Sinny," or her "buona sera," as we clashed on the narrow stairs, was always emphasized by a winning smile of the kind one does not get out of King Humbert's happy realm.

Thus loosely tethered, I could do as I pleased in all essential matters. In fifteen days I had dined at fifteen restaurants and supped at fifteen others. I also made acquaintance with about a score of cafés. That is seeing life in Florence with a vengeance. At any rate, it taught me to lift my hat with ease in entering and leaving these public places of entertainment. The home-staying Englishman may mock at this simple courtesy, but to my mind it is somewhat educative, and the more so that it is violently against the grain of the British temperament. The flower-girls also were one of the salutary trials of the life. Perceiving that I did not wear a Florentine countenance, they invariably made me their victim. In the middle of my macaroni, for instance, one of them would assault me with a bunch of violets and a pin. Covering her attack with a smile all over her brown countenance, and showing a score of eager white teeth, she would fasten the nosegay in my coat

ere I could say five serious words in | gleaming shoulders, and there is a clang

opposition. The other guests beheld the encounter with pleased impartiality. Life in Florence is all pictorial. I thus contributed a commonplace yet bright little vignette on my own account. And so it happened that regularly as I dined was I adorned with flowers.

It was the same with the mandoline players. How excellently these sweet strummers aid digestion in this city of the Medici! They and their stringed toys appear everywhere. Indeed, the more obscure the eating-house the more systematic their visitations. The music dignifies the viands. Not always was the wine good, nor the cutlet à la milanaise of the tenderest; but one forgets these defects in the plaintive spectacle of a white-bearded sightless mandolinist led into the room by an angel-faced (though not very clean) little girl, to add the sauce of harmony to the meal. I have seen hearted neighbor shed tears over his "carciofi" during the melody, and another let his meat go cold while he beat time to the musician's strumming. The Florentines all sensibility-or nearly. Touch their hearts and you may be sure you have touched their pockets also, though there may be naught inside these. For my part, I reckoned the copper to the mandolinist as an integral part of my dinner bill. The flower-girl and the waiter were the only inevitable extras.

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Afterwards it was gay to go into the lively streets with the post-prandial cigar; to roam recklessly for a while among palaces, churches, and slums; or to watch the stars and lamplights in the Arno and Taddeo Gaddi's quaint old bridge, with its shops and crowds of passengers. The evening air here in spring is often keen, thanks to the snow on the distant mountains; but it the lungs with a always reaches "cachet" of purity upon it that the dead dogs visible in the Arno by daylight may appear upon the whole to belie. The pensions and hotels of Lung' Arno after the dinner-hour exhale an air of fascinating frivolity. One beholds illuminated drawing-rooms and

of merry voices. Music, too, floats hence towards the gliding water, and whispers descend from amorous couples nestled in the balconies, with hearts steeped in the romance of their surroundings. And music ascends also to these love-makers; for the omnipresent mandolinist of the street finds them out, and serenades them one by one as fervently as a thrush its mate. The musician's words are often as torrid as his notes. It is convenient. The discreet wooer has only to murmur in the ears of his loved one that his sentiments are precisely those tongued by the melodious rascal below.

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Your typical Florentine is epicurean to the toe tips. His enthusiasm and yearnings are quite other than those of the northerner. Give him two francs a day for life and he will toil no more. He may be a marquis, and seventh or eighth in direct descent, but he will be content to forego the assertion of his rank so he may thenceforward enjoy the priceless boon of leisure and independence. His leisure he will dissipate at the café, with perhaps three-halfpenny sweet fluids per diem; and you may study the effect of his independence in his courtly manners, even though his hat be worn at the brim and his coatback be deplorably shiny. He is a pellucid brook-shallow as you please, yet engaging for his pellucidity. As he sits on the red velvet cushions and looks forth at the carriages and gowns of fashion in the Via Tornabuoni, he shows no trace of envy on his open What, in effect, have countenance. these rich ones more than he, save the ennui of modishness and the indigestion of high feeding? The monuments and blue skies of Florence (not to mention the glorious or stirring memories of its history) are rather more his than theirs. And it is such ineffable bliss to be able to twiddle one's thumbs and defy all and everything (except death) to upset one's sweet tranquillity of soul. Call it vacuity instead of tranquillity, and no harm will be done.

Through sitting twice or thrice as his neighbor, I came to know one of these

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