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expense of this marriage feast, which was repeated fur three suc- 

 cessive nights in the same manner, cost upwards of three hundred 

 thousand pounds sterling." 



" Asuf-ud-Dowlah, since deceased, was the son of the famous, 

 or rather infamous Shujah-ud-Dowlah, nabob of Oude, who was 

 conquered by the arms of the British East India company, direct- 

 ed by the invincible Clive. He died in 1775, leaving the character 

 of a bold, enterprising, and rapacious prince. His son, Asuf-ud- 

 Dowlah, succeeded to the government by the assistance of the East 

 India company. Mild in manners, polite and affable in his con- 

 duct, he possessed no great mental powers ; his heart was good, 

 considering his education, which instilled the most despotic ideas. 

 He was fond of lavishing his treasures on gardens, palaces, horses, 

 elephants, European guns, lustres, and mirrors. He expended 

 every year about two hundred thousand pounds in English ma- 

 nufactures. This nabob had more than an hundred gardens, 

 twenty palaces, twelve hundred elephants, three thousand fine 

 saddle horses, fifteen hundred double-barrel guns, seventeen hun- 

 dred superb lustres, thirty thousand shades of various form and 

 colour ; several hundred large mirrors, girandoles, and clocks ; 

 some of the latter were very curious, richly set with jewels, having 

 figures in continual movement, and playing tunes every hour; two 

 of these clocks cost him thirty thousand pounds. Without taste 

 or judgment, be Avas extremely solicitous to possess all that was 

 elegant and rare; he had instruments and machines of every art 

 and science, but he knew none ; and his museum was so ridicu- 

 lously displayed, that a wooden cuckoo clock was placed close to 

 a superb time-piece which cost the price of a diadem ; and a vahu 



