228 
TABREEZ. 
and cities, he sees nothing on either side of the narrow streets 
but long mud-walls of different heights, though chiefly very low, 
and perforated here and there with small mean-looking doors. 
The domes of a few mosques, the towers of an old citadel, and 
not unfrequently the scattered ruins of past grandeur, being 
all that diversify the general dike-like traverses of the town. 
Wealth, in this country, is the reverse of ostentatious ; there¬ 
fore it is within those mean doors, and behind those mud-walls, 
we must go, to distinguish the mansion of the rich from the 
hovel of the poor. Several courts or quadrangles, larger or 
smaller according to the consequence of the resident, thus shut 
in from the public eye or ingress, and round which are disposed 
the apartments, both of state and domestic convenience, form 
the usual ground-plan of a Persian habitation. These open 
courts give a free air to the house, which the closeness of the 
streets would otherwise utterly deny; and are either paved, with 
little fountains in the middle, or planted sometimes as a garden ; 
but oftener in the more motley style of parterres, with flowers, 
clover, poppies, wheat, &c., all in parallel beds. In the more 
garden sort of enclosure, they put every thing that is green and 
lowly in its growth; for an overtopping arbour in this country, 
would be as imprudent an anomaly in their unpretending abodes, 
as a pillared portico, or a gilded dome. But every where in these 
interior openings, rose-trees of a beauty and fragrance peculiar 
to Persia, flourish in abundance; and perfume the air to so wide 
a distance, that the traveller, riding alone through the dark-hued 
streets, is often lost in wonder, of whence such sweet breath can 
proceed. If the court, paved or planted, be small, the tank of 
the jet d'ean is usually placed in the midst of it. If it be large, 
we then find the water at one end ; and several leaden pipes 
