The embassy arrived at Ispahan on the 14th of March; and the shah’s court immediately put itself in training for a grand theatrical exhibition, in order to impress the barbarians with a favourable idea of the greatness of the Asylum of the Universe. While the stage decorations were preparing, our traveller, who entertained a reasonable respect for royal pomp and magnificence, employed himself in observing the city and its environs; and when the important day came, accompanied the ambassador into the presence of the shah. Every thing passed off in the usual style. Exhibitions of elephants caparisoned with gold and silver stuffs; lions led in massive chains of gold; twenty horses superbly caparisoned, having all their saddles and bridles ornamented with gold and silver, and set with sapphires, emeralds, and other precious stones, while the stakes by which they were fastened, and the mallets with which those stakes were driven into the earth, were of solid gold: such were the sights beheld within the precincts of the palace. On the outside, however, poverty, ignorance, and starvation exhibited their gaunt, phantom visages among the crowd, scaring the eyeballs of those who were not too much dazzled by the gorgeous apparatus of tyranny, to discover the real nature of the materials out of which they were forged. When the ambassador was presented to the shah, he made a speech to him in Russian; the “Asylum of the Universe” replied in Persian; and since neither of them understood one word of what was said to him by the other, their speeches must have been exceedingly interesting. However, a third person, “doctus utriusque linguæ,” clothed the shah’s ideas in Russian for the benefit of the ambassador, while he presented the thoughts of the latter, or at least something like them, to the shah, in the mellifluous language of Persia. All this while music, which the traveller did not find inharmonious, was played in the audience-chamber, and the mufti was reading aloud various portions of the Koran. Whether this was intended to show how indifferent, respecting all secular concerns, the holy men of Persia were, or to throw an air of religion over the transaction, or, finally, to exorcise all such devils as might be supposed to accompany such a rabble of Franks, Bell did not inquire; which, I think, was a great oversight. An entertainment, which all parties thought more agreeable than the speeches, followed next. The shah himself, according to ancient usage, was served before his guests; but the ambassador had the honour of being next attended to. Every article of the feast was served up in large gold or china dishes, but, according to the custom of the East, fingers were substituted for knives and forks, and these, as among the ancient Greeks, were wiped with large thin cakes of bread, instead of napkins.