nob supposed to
be of solid gold, and at the two most delightful minarets, full of grace
in their lines and delicately refined in colour, with lattice work at
their summit.

[Illustration: Handsome Doorway in the Madrassah, Isfahan.]

In the courts and gardens are some fine old trees, amid a lot of uncouth
vegetation, while grass sprouts out between the slabs of stone on the
paths and wherever it should not be; the walls all round, however, are
magnificent, being built of large green tiles with ornamentations of
graceful curves and the favourite leaf pattern. In other places white
ornamentations, principally curves and yellow circles, are to be noticed
on dark blue tiles. In some of the courts very handsome tiles with flower
patterns are still in good preservation.

There are in the college 160 rooms for students to board and lodge. The
buildings have two storeys and nearly all have tiled fronts, less
elaborate than the minarets and dome, but quite pretty, with quaint white
verandahs. When I visited the place there were only some fifty students,
of all ages, from children to old men. Much time is devoted by them to
theological studies and some smattering of geography and history.

One cannot leave Isfahan without visiting the old Palace.

In a garden formerly beautiful but semi-barren and untidy now, on a
pavement of slabs which are no longer on the level with one another,
stands the Palace of the Twenty Columns, called of "the forty columns,"
probably because the twenty existing ones are reflected as in a mirror in
the long rectangular tank of water extending between this palace and the
present dwelling of H. E. Zil-es-Sultan, Governor of Isfahan. Distance
lends much enchantment to everything in Persia, and such is the case even
in this palace, probably the most tawdrily gorgeous structure in
north-west Persia.

The Palace is divided into two sections, the open throne hall and the
picture hall behind it. The twenty octagonal columns of the open-air hall
were once inlaid with Venetian mirrors, and still display bases of four
grinning lions carved in stone. But, on getting near them, one finds that
the bases are chipped off and damaged, the glass almost all gone, and the
foundation of the columns only remains, painted dark-red. The lower
portion of the column, for some three feet, is ornamented with painted
flowers, red in blue vases. The floor under the colonnade is paved with
bricks, and there is a raised platfor