But, with all its beauty, Shiraz contains nothing which raises so powerful an enthusiasm in the soul as two tombs,—the tomb of the bard who sung the beauties of the Rocknabad, and of the moral author of the “Rose Garden;” irresistible and lasting are the charms of poetry and eloquence! Our traveller having acquired at Ispahan sufficient knowledge of the Persian language to enable him to relish _Hafiz_, though he complains that he is difficult, as well as the easier and more popular _Saadi_, whose sayings are in Persia “familiar to their mouths as household words,” it was impossible that he should pass through the city where their honoured ashes repose without paying a pious visit to the spot. Having contemplated these illustrious mausoleums with that profound veneration which the memory of genius inspires, he returned to his caravansary half-persuaded, with the Persians, that they who do not study and treasure up in their souls the maxims of such divine poets can neither be virtuous nor happy. From the poets of Shiraz he naturally turned to its roses and its wine; the former, in his opinion, the most fragrant upon earth; and the latter the most balmy and delicious. In his history and description of this wine, one of the most agreeable articles in his “Amœnitates,” there is a kind of bacchic energy and enthusiasm, a rhapsodical affectation of sesquipedalian words, which would seem to indicate that even the remembrance of this oriental nectar has the power of elevating the animal spirits. But whatever were the delights of Shiraz, it was necessary to bid them adieu; and inwardly exclaiming with the calif, “How sweetly we live if a shadow would last!” he turned his back upon Mosellay and the Rocknabad, and pursued his route towards Gombroon. Here, if he was pleased with contrasts, he could not fail to be highly gratified; for no two places upon earth could be more unlike than Shiraz and Gombroon. It was the pestilential air of this detestable coast that had deprived Della Valle of his Maani, and reduced Chardin to the brink of the grave; and Kæmpfer had not been there many months before he experienced in his turn the deadly effects of breathing so inflamed and insalubrious an atmosphere, from which, in the summer season, even the natives are compelled to fly to the mountains. Though no doubt the causes had long been at work, the effect manifested itself suddenly in a malignant fever, in which he lay delirious for several days. When the violence of this disorder abated, it was successively followed by a dropsy and a quartan ague, through which dangerous and unusual steps, as Dr. Scheuchzer observes, he recovered his health, though not his former strength and vigour. Admonished by this rough visitation, he now had recourse to those means for the restoration of his strength which a more rigid prudence would have taught him to put in practice for its preservation, and removed with all possible expedition into the mountainous districts of Laristân.