﻿III. 



THE SI XTH 



DISCOURSE: 



ON THE 



PERSIANS. 



DELIVERED 19 FEBRUARY, 1-89. 



Gentlemen, 



I TURN with delight from the vast mountains and 

 barren deserts of Turan, over which we travelled 

 last year with no perfect knowledge of our course, and 

 request you now to accompany me on a literary jour- 

 ney through one of the most celebrated and most 

 beautiful countries in the world : a country, the his- 

 tory and languages of which, both ancient and mo- 

 dern, I have long attentively studied, and on which 

 I may without arrogance promise you more positive 

 information than I could possibly procure on a na- 

 tion so disunited and so unlettered as the Tartars : I 

 mean that which Europeans improperly call Persia, 

 the name of a single province being applied to the 

 whole empire of Iran, as it is correctly denominated 

 by the present natives of it, and by the learned Mus el- 

 mans who reside in these British territories. To give 

 you an account of its largest boundaries, agreeably to 

 my former mode of describing India, Arabia, and 



