sight and long
observation. James Morier spent less than six years in Persia; and yet
in a lifetime he could scarcely have improved upon the quality of his
diagnosis. If the scenic and poetic accessories of a Persian picture
are (except in the story of Yusuf and Mariam and a few other instances)
somewhat wanting, their comparative neglect is more than compensated
by the scrupulous exactitude of the dramatic properties with which is
invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian
adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the
plaything of fortune--whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller,
dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah,
outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an
ambassador--equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses,
never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, or get the better of anybody
else in a warfare where every one was similarly engaged in the effort to
get the better of him, and equipped with the ready casuistry to justify
any transgression of the moral code, Hajji Baba never strikes a really
false chord, or does or says anything intrinsically improbable; but,
whether in success or adversity, as a victim of the roguery of others,
or as a rogue himself, is faithful to a type of human character which
modern times and a European surrounding are incapable of producing, but
which is natural to a state of society in which men live by their wits,
where the scullion of one day may be the grandee of the next, and the
loftiest is not exempt from the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, and in
which a despotic sovereign is the apex of a half-civilised community of
jealous and struggling slaves.

Perhaps the foibles of the national character upon which the author is
most severe are those of imposture in the diverse and artistic shapes
in which it is practised by the modern Persian. He delights in stripping
bare the sham piety of the austere Mohammedan, the gullibility of
the pilgrims to the sacred shrines, the sanctimonious humbug of the
lantern-jawed devotees of Kum. One of his best portraits is that of
the wandering dervish, who befriends and instructs, and ultimately robs
Hajji Baba, and who thus explains the secrets of his trade:--

'It is not great learning that is required to make a dervish; assurance
is the first ingredient. By impudence I have been a prophet, by
impudence I have wrought miracles,