little more than usual. Another remarkable thing is, that this fast does
not always happen at the same date, being regulated by the appearance of
the moon; while, in every thing else, the English reckon by the solar
year."

[10] The ten days' lamentation for the martyred imams, Hassan and
Hussein, the grandsons of the Prophet, who were murdered by the
Ommiyades. Some notice of this ceremonial is given at the
beginning of his narrative by the Khan, who attended it just
before he sailed from Calcutta.

We shall offer no comment, as we fear we can offer no contradiction, on
the Khan's account of the singular method of fasting observed in England,
by eating salt fish and cross-buns in addition to the usual viands--but
digressing without an interval from fasts to feasts, we next find him a
guest at a splendid banquet, given by the Lord Mayor. Though Mirza
Abu-Talib, at the beginning of the present century, was present at the
feast given to Lord Nelson during the mayoralty of Alderman Coombe, the
description of a civic entertainment, as it appeared to an Oriental, must
always be a curious _morceau_; and doubly so in the present instance, as
given by a spectator to whom it was as the feast of the Barmecide--since
Kerim Khan, unlike his countryman, the Mirza, religiously abstained
throughout from the forbidden dainties of the Franks, and sat like an
anchorite at the board of plenty. To this concentration of his faculties
in the task of observing, we probably owe the minute detail he has given
us of the festive scene before him, which we must quote, as a companion
sketch of Feringhi manners to the previously cited account of the ball at
Guildhall:--"At length dinner was announced: and all rose, and led by the
queen of the city, (the lady mayoress,) withdrew to another room, where
the table was laid out in the most costly manner, being loaded with dishes,