price of the two latter articles would be
considerably higher than that of the first. It is
seldom that either of the parties have previously
seen each other, so that the lifting of the veil
upon the wedding-day may be a delightful
surprise, or a glum disappointment, according to
circumstances.

A Persian bride, when first bought, is a queer
little body, fattened up with rice and sweet-
meats for the occasion, and sadly besmeared
with cosmetics. Collyrium has been put into
her eyes to make them dark and languishing, and
they are also elongated by some means, so that
they may have the shape of almonds. Her hair
is dyed of a coal black by indigo, or of a reddish
brown by indigo and henna mixed with it,
according to her own fancy or that of the broker.
Her eyebrows are plastered, and painted so
thickly that they look like a large piece of court-
plaister cut into arches stuck upon her face. I
say a large piece, because they are joined
artificially by a thick line across the nose. Her
cheeks are painted in excessively bright colours,
and two shiny locks of hair, gummed together,
are stuck flat on each side of them in the
shape of number sixes, placed the wrong way.
Her hands and feet, finger-nails, and toe-nails,
are dyed a light mahogany colour with henna.
She has no more shape or figure than a bolster.
Poor little thing! She plays such tricks with
herself generally, that at twenty she is an
old woman, with her skin all shrivelled and
burnt up by caustics and poisoned pricks of
needles.

This odd undersized creature waddles about
the apartment of her new lord in the finest and
largest trousers possible. She puts on a great
many pairs of them, and is as proud of the size
of her legs as a British damsel is of the size of
her crinoline. She wears a smart embroidered
jacket with short sleeves, and a pretty chemisette
of some light white silk material, embroidered
with gold threads; but her arms, and legs, and
neck are bare. She hangs upon her little
person, as many jewels, gold coins, and trinkets
as she can possibly get at. She is especially
fond of pearls and diamonds, but is not particular
as to their beauty or value; a diamond is
a diamond for her, whatever flaw it may have;
a pearl is a pearl, whatever its shape or
colour may be. She is very fine, but never
elegant. Her mind is entirely uncultivated.
She has neither education nor accomplishments:
but she has a good deal of flowery talk about
roses and nightingales, with an under-current
of strange roundabout wit and drollery. There
is an utter want of delicacy and modesty in her
conversation. She knows a great many things
which she ought not to know, and child as she
is in years, she would outwit the wisest man
who ever wore a grey beard.

One of the first visits she receives after her
marriage will most probably be from her father,
who will tell her that his home is cold and
cheerless since she has left it, and that her
mother is getting old. This pathetic appeal is
certain to touch her heart, and she will employ
the first money she can coax out of her husband,
to buy her father a new young wife.

All Persia seems fairly wife mad, according
to our Northern notions. A beggar asking for
alms in the street will found his strongest claim
to your charity, on the startling fact that he has
five wives at home, and has just married a
young one. You take a servant from rags and
hunger, and he spends the first few tomauns he
can scrape together in your service, in buying a
bran-new wife. But the eldest, or first married
wife, is usually housekeeper and mistress. She
even distributes rations of food to the rest, who
hold her in much respect and some awe. The
number of marriages is undoubtedly increased
by the strange conditions under which some of
them take place, A marriage contract is seldom
intended to last the life of either party. A lady
may be taken on lease, like a house, for a definite
period; and this species of matrimony is much
encouraged by the moolahs, who derive liberal
fees from it.

Indeed, the proceeding of taking a lady on
a short lease, is common even among Christians
residing in Persia. A friend of mine informed
me that he visited Vannek, a village near
Tehran, some years ago, for the purpose of
making a marriage of this kind. He and a
companion sat down under a tree, smoking
kalcous, while the village damsels under command
of the priest filed past for inspection. When his
choice was fixed, the lease was drawn out in
due form. Forty tomauns (a high rent, about
twenty pounds) was paid for dresses and fine
clothes, and thirty tomauns more were agreed
upon as the price of divorce. The average price
of an Armenian lady is from ten to fifteen
tomauns. They are horribly coarse and ugly.
The small-pox makes shocking ravages among
them, too.

Boys usually marry between twelve and fourteen.
They frequently marry their cousins, but the
race does not degenerate in consequence, as
it has been clearly ascertained to do in other
countries.

Children are not the source of embarrassment,
even to poor people, that they are supposed
sometimes to be in more civilised countries.
There need be no anxiety at all about them,
indeed. They can always pick up rice enough to
live somewhere, and the family of a rich man
is often far too numerous for his children to
expect to be rich men too. Hence it happens
that poverty, far from bringing contempt on a
man in the East, seems even to be invested with
a kind of majesty. All men, therefore, think that
they have nature's own right to marry; and
few trouble themselves at all about the care of
a family: the world is wide enough for everybody,
they say.

The shah, however, is under some difficulty
occasionally in finding a new wife. A shah sent
to one of the great khans to propose for his
daughter, a very beautiful woman. But her
father begged that she might be excused so
inconvenient an honour, for that when his majesty
had enjoyed her society for a month he would