frames. They represent the last two Shahs, the Emperor and Empress of
Russia, the Crown Prince at the time of the presentation, and the Emperor
of Austria. A smaller picture of Victor Emmanuel also occupies a
prominent place, but here again we have another instance of the little
reverence in which our beloved Queen Victoria was held in the eyes of the
Persian Court. Among the various honoured foreign Emperors and Kings, to
whom this room is dedicated, Queen Victoria's only representation is a
small, bad photograph, skied in the least attractive part of the room--a
most evident slight, when we find such photographs as that of the Emperor
William occupying a front and honoured place, as does also the photograph
of Queen Wilhelmina of Holland with her mother. Yet another palpable
instance of this disregard for the reigning head of England appears in a
series of painted heads of Sovereigns. The Shah, of course, is
represented the biggest of the lot, and King Humbert, Emperor William,
the Sultan of Turkey and the Emperor of Austria, of about equal sizes;
whereas the Queen of England is quite small and insignificant.

The furniture in this room is covered with the richest plush.

We now come upon the royal picture gallery (or, rather, gallery of
painted canvases), a long, long room, where a most interesting display
of Persian, Afghan, Beluch and Turkish arms of all kinds, ancient and
modern, gold bows and arrows, jewelled daggers, Damascus swords, are much
more attractive than the yards of portraits of ladies who have dispensed
altogether with dressmakers' bills, and the gorgeously framed
advertisements of Brooks' Machine Cottons, and other products, which are
hung on the line in the picture gallery! The pictures by Persian art
students--who paint in European style--are rather quaint on account of
the subjects chosen when they attempt to be ideal. They run a good deal
to the fantastic, as in the case of the several square yards of canvas
entitled the "Result of a dream." It contains quite a menagerie of most
suggestive wild animals, and dozens of angels and demons in friendly
intercourse playing upon the surface of a lake and among the entangled
branches of trees. In the background a pyrotechnic display of great
magnitude is depicted, with rockets shooting up in all directions, while
ethereal, large, black-eyed women lie gracefully reclining and
unconcerned, upon most unsafe clouds. The result on the spectator of
looking at