court and royal family! The embarrassment of poor Najef-Kooli at the
_morne silence_ preserved, which he interpreted as a sign of displeasure,
is amusingly described, till, on touching one of the figures, "he fell
down, and I observed that he was dead; and my brothers and Fraser Sahib
laughed loudly, and said, 'These people are not dead but are all of them
artificial figures of white wax.' Verily, no one would ever have thought
that they were manufactured by men!"

[5] "The Parsees," says Mirza Abu-Talib, describing those whom he
saw at Bombay on his return to India, "are not possessed of a
spark of liberality or gentility.... The only Parsee I was ever
acquainted with who had received a liberal education, was Moula
Firoz, whom I met at the house of a friend; he was a sensible and
well-informed man, who had travelled into Persia, and there
studied mathematics, astronomy, and the sciences of Zoroaster." If
this account be correct, a marvellous improvement must have taken
place during the last forty years. Many of the Parsees of the
present day are almost on a level with Europeans in education and
acquirements; and in their adoption of our manners and customs,
they stand alone among the various nations of our Oriental
subjects--but their exclusive addiction to mercantile pursuits,
and their pacific habits, (in both which points they are hardly
exceeded by the Quakers of Europe,) make them objects of contempt
to the haughty Moslems.

A few days after his visit to Madame Tussaud, we find the Khan making an
excursion by the railroad to Southampton, in order to be present at a
banquet given on board the Oriental steamer, by the directors of the
Oriental Steam Navigation Company, from whom he had received a special
invitation. With the exception of the brief transit from Blackwall to