offices or favour, or for a present of more than equal value in return. Some travellers draw a distinction in this respect between the inhabitants of towns and villages, much to the advantage of the latter. Of this we hear, indeed, in all countries; but so far as our experience goes in different countries, (including our own,) this superiority of village character is not easily substantiated. It must be admitted, however, that in Persia the villagers are exempt from many of the influences which tend to produce much of the peculiar evils which have been noticed in the character of the townspeople, as well as from other influences which tend to call forth the brilliant qualities by which the latter are distinguished. On this point it would be unjust to withhold the testimony of sir Harford Jones, whose opportunities of forming a correct judgment are undeniable. After an interval of many years, he passed, in high state as ambassador from the British crown, through a part of the country in which he had previously been known as an invalid in pursuit of health, as a merchant seeking to mix profit with pleasure, or as a fugitive from Shiraz: his impressions on the way are thus recorded :- " There was scarcely one of these places at which I had not formerly made acquaintance with some of its inhabitants in the humbler walks of life; many of them had already gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns;' but such of them as were still alive, invariably found some opportunity or other of visiting me in private; some of them attended by their children-all of them greeting me with the kindest expressions of regard and friendship, and uniformly bringing with them some little present. Some, for instance, brought a favourite kid; others, fresh butter made by their wives; others, cream cheese, or coagulated milk, of which the Persians make great use, under the name of liban." After observing that a friend, who kept a journal at the time, notes all these visits, as proceeding from motives of interest, and not of friendship, and ascribing this to a want of a more intimate knowledge of the Persian peasantry, sir Harford says:-"Now I am bound to declare that there was not one of this class of visitors on whom I could prevail to accept a pecuniary return for the present he made. The general request was, for something to keep in remembrance of me a knife, a penknife, or a pair of scissors. I hope the reader need not be told that I never accepted their favourite kid. I advert to these and such like trifling circumstances, in the hope that the disclosure of them may soften the injurious opinion formed by some persons of the Persian character, from the perusal of books, written by such as had only the opportunity of viewing them superficially, or of books written with the avowed design of amusing the idle, by the recital of absurd tales or extravagant caricature. He who attempts to make us believe that the inhabitants of cities in Persia, and the Persian peasantry, are in moral character the same, knows little or nothing of what he is talking about; and he who imagines that the Persian peasants of Fars, Irak, Azerbijân, or any other province, all possess the same moral qualities, is equally ignorant. Even in this country, it is easy to perceive a distinctive difference in the manners, in the habits, and consequently in the character, of the peasants of different countries." .... The Persian people generally, as regards their personal appearance, he described as a fine race of men. They are not tall, but it is rare to see any of them diminutive or deformed, and they are in general strong and active. Their complexions vary from a dark olive to a fairness which approaches that of a northern European, and if they have not all the bloom of the latter, their florid, healthy look often gives them no inconsiderable share of beauty. As a nation they may be termed brave; though the valour they have displayed, like that of every other people in a similar state of society, has in a great degree depended upon the character of their leaders, and the nature of the objects for which they fought. Their vices are still more prominent than their virtues. Induced, by the nature of their government, to resort on every occasion to art and violence, they are alternately submissive and tyrannical. Many of the other various defects of their character may doubtless be accounted for in the same way; although we are not disposed to agree with those of their apologists, who account for all that is wrong in them from such causes. We find a deeper source in our fallen nature, which in the Persians affords that class of external manifestations which temperament, habit of mind, climate, a false religion, and, among other circumstances but not solely, a bad system of government, may excite and impose. The fallen character of our race assumes in Persia merely one of those diversified aspects in which it is manifested in various countries-the same though different; and we must not be too ready in allowing travellers and historians to deprive us of the universal evidence of man's corruption, by referring every local or national manifestation of the universal disease to special causes and influences. But it is certain, that if we wanted to point out the one country in which more than in another, the grossest and least disguised evidence of man's fallen estate might be found, Persia is the country we should be disposed to indicate, and the Persians the people to whom we should be inclined to refer. And yet there is much in the natural qualities and endowments of this people to justify the expectation, that in the coming time, for which we all sigh, when the abundant outpour*ing of the influences of the Holy Spirit shall have changed even this moral and social wilderness into a garden of God, the diadem of Persia will not be the least illustrious of the Redeemer's many crowns. It is certainly not the least of the advantages which we may derive C |