and looking like the habitations of the blessed in the seventh heaven promised to us by the Prophet. "Can this be decay?" again I exclaimed. "These people must have a different way of going to ruin, to the one which I have been accustomed to contemplate. In my country ruin speaks for itself. At Ispahan we see whole districts of broken walls which once were houses, tottering mosques, deserted baths, and untenanted caravanserais. But here, in the short space of twelve years, here is a new creation; unbounded prosperity seems here to speak for itself; and, if this be a country of paupers, what are we to call riches?" As I was turning my steps homewards, I was struck all at once with the conviction that I was near the spot (a spot which had never left my imagination) where, enamoured as I then was of the moonfaced Bessy, I proposed marriage to that heart-enslaver. I looked about me, and recognised the very portal where, under a mutual umbrella,--as it poured with rain,--I told her of my love. I recollected that, not very far off, in this same street, lived her father, and mother, and family; and I determined forthwith to seek them out, and to renew my acquaintance. I paced along the street, looking upon every house with uplifted eyes, in the hope of discovering some sign by which I might recognise it; but the buildings were all so hopelessly alike that I began to despair of hitting upon the right knocker. It came to my mind that a lion's head held the knocker, because I had compared it in former days to the face of the mamma Hogg herself; but, upon inspecting the knockers, they all had lions' heads. What was to be done? "I will try what Fate will do for me," thought I. So, judging that I was somewhere near the spot, I boldly walked up to a door, and gave a knock which, I remembered to have been told, indicated a man of consequence, and, as it turned out, I was not mistaken. The door was opened, not by a well-dressed servant, as it used to be, but by an old woman, who was so surprised at seeing my strange figure that she would have shut it in my face had I not quickly exclaimed, "Is Mr. Hogg at home?" "Mr. Hogg!" she exclaimed, in an astonished voice. "Mr. Hogg has been dead ever so long. Can't you see by the hatchment?" Upon which she pointed to a painting fixed upon the outside of the house, which explained to me, what I had never known before, that, when an Englishman dies, it is the custom to make a painting, as I supposed, explanatory of the history of his life; for, afterwards, in contemplating the said performance, I remarked a boar's head at the top, whilst certain little swine seemed to be scattered about, evidently indicating the name and origin of the family. "But Mrs. Hogg is not dead too?" said I; "where is she, and Mrs. Figsby?"