d at each end of this, on wooden
stands, like those used in our arbours and breakfast rooms, were
arranged coloured glass jars, with flowers of various kinds in them,
well watered and perfectly fresh.

"The walls of this outer hall were ornamented all around by designs of
trees, birds, and beasts, in fanciful forms, executed in white upon a
blue ground. We undressed here, and were led from hence into the inner
bath, where all was still free from everything offensive, either to
the sight or smell. This inner room was originally an oblong space
of about fifty feet by twenty-five, but had been since made into two
square divisions. The first, or outer one, was a plain paved hall,
exactly like the undressing-room, except that it had no side recesses,
but its floor was level, close to the walls. There were here also four
pillars; and in the square space which they enclosed in the centre of
the room, was a cistern of water as in the outer one. It was on the
floor of this that the visiters lay, to be washed by the attendants;
for there were no raised seats for this purpose as in Turkish baths,
and the great octagonal one, with its cold fountain, the sides and
tops of which are ornamented with mosaic work of marble in Turkey, was
here replaced by the cistern described.

"The second division to which this room led, consisted of three parts;
the central one was a large and deep bath, filled with warm water,
its bottom being level with the lower floor of the building, and the
ascent to it being by three or four steep steps.

"As few pleasures are entirely perfect, so here, with all its general
apparent superiority to the baths of Turkey, this was inferior to them
in the most essential points. The attendants seemed quite ignorant
of the art of twisting the limbs, moulding the muscles, cracking the
joints, opening the chest, and all that delicious train of operations
in which the Turks are so skilful. The visitors were merely well
though roughly scrubbed, and their impurities then rinsed off in the
large cistern above, from which there was neither a running stream
to carry off the foul water, nor cocks of hot and cold to renew and
temper it at pleasure, as in Turkey.

"In place of the luxurious moulding of the muscles, the use of the
hair-bag, or glove, for removing the dirt, and the profusion of
perfumed soap, with which the Turks end a course of treatment full
of delight, the Persians are occupied in staining the beard and hair