fiscal offices of their own government? and
how can it be accounted for, except by these institutions having been
conducted on an erroneous principle? When I return to India, I must be
like the free-masons, silent and reserved, unless when I meet one who
has been, like myself, in England, and with whom I can converse on the
wonders we have both witnessed in that marvellous country, and which, if
I venture to narrate them in public, or even among my own immediate
friends and relatives, would draw on me such disbelief, that I would
certainly die from grief of heart."--Here leave we Kerim Khan; not
without a hope, that in spite of the apprehensions expressed in the
passage just quoted, of incurring the reproach to which "travellers'
tales" are supposed to be sometimes obnoxious, he has not eventually
persisted in withholding from his countrymen a narrative which, both
from the opportunities of observation enjoyed by the writer, and the
ability and good judgement with which he has availed himself of these
advantages, is better calculated to dispel the incredulity which he
anticipates, than the Travels of Mirza Abu-Taleb, (the text of which has
been printed at Calcutta,) or indeed than any work with which we are
acquainted. Trusting, then, that the Khan's patriotic aspirations for
the welfare of his country may be realized by the speedy introduction of
all those Feringhi appendages to high civilization, the want of which he
so feelingly deplores, and that he may live a thousand years in the full
fruition of all the advantages therefrom resulting, we now take leave
of him.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The palace constructed, in the early ages of the world, by
the giant-king Sheddad, as a rival to the heavenly paradise, and
supposed still to exist, though invisible to mortal eyes, in the
recesses of the Desert--See LANE'S _Thousand and One Nights_, vol, ii.
p. 342.

[12] The Persian princes imagine these children to be collected
from all parts of the United Kingdom, for the purpose of this
procession!

[13] The Khan never gives dates; but on investigation we find
that this must have been on the 11th of June 1841; as among the list of
visitors on that day occur the names of _Kurreen_ Khan, Mohabet Khan,
and, singularly enough, the Parsee poet, Manackjee Cursetjee, who will
be well remembered as a lion of the London drawing-rooms during that
season.

[14] The _polite_ dialect of Hindustani, which differs
considerably from that in u