When the court is so small that the proprietor cannot conveniently have both plants and water together, he usually gives the preference to the water, and has a small basin in the middle, furnished with water-spouts. Thus you will understand that the place to which I have conducted you is a court, which is often large, generally oblong in shape, if large, and furnished in its middle part with fountains or basins of water, and planted with trees and flowering bushes. J. That must be very pretty.

U. O. It is; and also very agreeable in the warm season, when the shade of the trees and the basins of fresh water help to keep the air somewhat cool in front of the house. Well, the house, or rather all that a stranger can see of the house, is at the head of this court; and as the front is viewed from the bottom of a rather long court, the appearance is gay and pleasing.

H. But not when you come nearer?

U. O. Perhaps not so much so; as we should see that the style of building and ornament is too much like that which we call "gingerbread" in this country. The truth may be, that we are so much accustomed to plain and substantial

buildings, that we do not make allowance enough for the different and lighter styles which the climate of Persia and the habits of its people require.

F. I understand about the climate, uncle ; but not about the habits of the people.

Whatever

U. O. You shall see presently. may be the rank of the person to whom the house belongs, it is hardly ever higher, if so high above the ground, as a house of two stories in England.

J. But why don't they make their houses higher?

U. O. There are several reasons against it. One is, that they have plenty of land to build upon, and therefore need not build high houses for the sake of making a little ground go a great way: another is, that their habit of keeping the women apart from the men, makes them think it best to have a distinct house for the females, instead of having one large building for the whole family to live in; and another reason is, that they hate the trouble and fatigue of going continually up and down stairs.

H. Indeed!

U. O. Yes. We are so accustomed to lodge

on the first and second floors of houses, and have been so brought up in the habit of going up and down stairs, that it seems an easy and natural thing to us; but the Persians and other people of the East, regard it as such an insupportable inconvenience, that I think it would be alone sufficient to prevent them from building houses of several stories. Persians who have been in England complain of few things more than the nuisance of being obliged to be continually clambering up and going down stairs.

Mr. D. I consider that one reason why we prefer to live up stairs is on account of its being more healthy, because of the unwholesome dampness of the ground floors. Do not the Persians suffer from living, and, of course, sleeping on the ground floors?

U. O. No, Sir. You will recollect that Persia is a remarkably dry country. There is never any damp except in rainy weather, and there is not much of that. Therefore the Persians not only live on the ground floors, but they have no chairs and no bedsteads to raise them above the ground when they sit or when they lie down to sleep. They sit and they sleep upon carpets laid upon the bare ground, as they have no

wooden floors, or any floors to their rooms. If we were to do so, our carpets would soon rot with damp; and we should be killed by colds and agues. But in Persia one may not only sleep on the ground in houses, but in the open air. Night after night, for weeks together, I have slept upon the bare ground in the open country, or in stables and hovels level with the ground, with only a piece of carpet under me, and did not find my health to be at all injured.

H. That must have been a hard bed for you, dear Sir.

U. O. But my bones were not so old and stiff then as they are now, and I slept heartily, though there is no denying that I often awoke with an aching side, and I was not insensible of the comparative luxury of sleeping upon the sand in the deserts. This was because I had always been accustomed to soft beds: the Persians are all their lives accustomed to hard beds, with little between them and the bare ground; and their sides do not, therefore, ache. When I first came to Persia, I thought as you did, Mr. Dillon; and sometimes used to thrust my hand under the carpets to feel if the ground was not damp; but I always found it perfectly

dry. If the damps had not obliged us to remove ourselves above the ground, and if land were not too costly to allow us to spread our houses out widely, I think we should ourselves have built our houses much lower than we do, if not so low as the Persians build theirs.

H. I understood you to say that their houses are as high as our houses of two stories; but now it seems that they have not even one story.

U. O. Not generally, but sometimes and perhaps they are not altogether so high as our houses of two stories, but higher than those of one only. The reason of their height, notwithstanding the want of stories, is that they make their rooms much higher than we do. And besides this, the floor of their rooms is raised two, three or four feet above the level of the court, upon a bank or platform of earth which is faced with brick; so that they ascend to their rooms by steps.

H. Then after all they do raise their floors. above the ground?

U. O. Yes; but it would be all the same so far as damp is concerned, as they are raised only upon a heap of earth. In a damp climate there is no way of preserving a floor from damp,