Of the use of fur both among civilized and barbarous people there are many traces. Thus we have notices of the employment of the skins of sables, ermine, and squirrels, with various contrivances to produce a variegated surface. The practice is supposed to be of Oriental origin, and the tent of Sapor to supply the earliest instance of this parti-colored arrangement. Tacitus, however, describes the same fashion of variegating furs to have been in use among the German tribes at a still earlier period. The costume of the people who live in cities attains to the highest elegance, splendor, and gorgeousness of which it is capable. Here we discover all that properly belongs to rank, with the means of appeasing an insatiable vanity. Oriental women, in every age, have been distinguished by a passion for dress, personal decoration constituting one of the chief occupations and pleasures of their life. Variety becomes, therefore, an element of delight as well as splendor. But rare and costly garments are also highly prized by the other sex, who frequently regard an immense wardrobe as indicative of rank and taste. “Solomon made for himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, and the covering of it of purple;” and the city is traversed by the varied equipages of an opulent people, in which many of the arts are clearly discernible. War-chariots, observable among other nations, were not to be seen among the forces of the Hebrews, whose great men used them chiefly for purposes of state. Even the tents in which the modern princes of the East often spend the season of summer are arrayed in beauty and magnificence, of which such a fabric might scarcely be deemed susceptible. One belonging to a late king of Persia is said to have cost two millions of money. It was called “the house of gold,” because it was everywhere resplendent with the precious metal. An inscription on the cornice or the antechamber described it as “the throne of the second Solomon.” The Dewan Khass of the far-famed Shah Allun is a building situated at the upper end of a spacious square, elevated upon a terrace of marble. In former times it was adorned with excessive magnificence. It is about a hundred and fifty feet in length, and forty in breadth. The flat roof is supported by numerous columns of fine white marble, which have been richly ornamented with inlaid flowered work of different colored stones, the cornices and borders having been decorated with a frieze and sculptured work. Formerly the ceiling was encrusted, throughout its whole extent, with a rich foliage of silver. The compartments of the walls were inlaid with the greatest delicacy. Around the exterior of the cornice are the following lines, written in letters of gold, on a ground of white marble—“If there be a paradise upon earth, it is this, it is this.”