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PERSIAN PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 
scribed each personage on the canvass ; telling me, they were 
painted by the best artists that Persia could boast. A European 
connoisseur might have truly said, “ Then, bad is the best!” 
But such naked truth would hardly have been deemed delicate in 
the sincerest country of Europe; and it certainly would not have 
been decent, to censure the prized works of his country, to the 
amiable prince, who took so much condescending pains to yield 
every gracious hospitality to a stranger from our more refined 
Europe. The style of painting was hard and dry ; and the 
portraits of the heir-apparent, and his two brothers, who at that 
moment were confronting their effigies, were so little like them¬ 
selves ; that if the spectator may conclude of the degree of re¬ 
semblance in the rest, from these specimens, it might as well 
have been a family piece of Shah Abbas, as of the present 
monarch of Persia. And yet, the figure of the king himself, 
though executed in so tea-board a manner, was fine; and 
showed so much majestic grace, I could not doubt his royal 
son’s assurance, that it was like his father. 
The other large picture, which hung on the opposite side of 
the room, amongst several of less dimensions, contained a por¬ 
trait of the late king, Aga Mahomed Khan, surrounded by his 
kinsmen and courtiers. In the first class were his seven brothers, 
who had all distinguished themselves in arms ; and were therefore 
habited in armour, though of a strange costume, mingled with the 
present ordinary fashion of Persia. The face of Aga Mahomed 
Khan, is as unprepossessing, as that of his brother Futy Ali Shah 
appears to be the contrary. Even the harsh pencil of the artist 
could not deprive the features of the latter monarch of the 
beauty, sweetness, and benignity, which his son told me are 
their characteristics; and from this fine head, descends a long 
