242 
EDUCATION OF PERSIAN PRINCES. 
being only for a short time, he had left part of his family, and 
the majority of his official establishment, at Tabreez. Amongst 
the former, was his brother Malek Khassum Mirza, a fine boy of 
about thirteen years of age, with the deportment of a man. He 
was treated at all times with the same deference that was paid 
to the presence of the Prince-governor himself; and as soon as 
he knew I was arrived at Tabreez, he did me the honour to 
express his wish to receive me. I found him a very handsome 
youth; and the ease and dignity of his manners, with the affability 
and pertinence of his remarks, could not fail to give me agreeable 
impressions of the royal brother, with whom he is so great a 
favourite. 
The progress of general knowledge has certainly made a 
most extraordinary advance all over the globe, within this last 
half-century ; and, accordingly, a great and advantageous change 
has taken place of late years, in the style of educating princes of 
the blood-royal in Persia. Formerly, they were shut up in the 
Harem, under the sole direction of women and eunuchs, till 
the death of the reigning monarch called one to a throne, and 
probably, the rest to rebellion or the bow-string. The women, 
from their situations ignorant and selfish, taught these children, 
by precedent and precept, envy, deceit, circumvention, and all 
the mean and mischievous passions which arise from jealousy of 
power, working on weak and totally uninformed minds. Flattery, 
falsehood, and depraved example, with hasty resentments and 
thirst for revenge, make quick dispatch with the tender buds of 
virtue in unsuspicious youth ; and with these weapons, the 
eunuchs added their weight to the pile of early ruin, stifling what¬ 
ever seeds of truth, or other manly disposition, might have been 
sown by nature in the young heart. Then came the last tutor, 
