PERSIAN PAINTING. 
417 
erected by the Nizam-a-Doulah, for the reception of his present 
Majesty, Futteli Ali Shah, should he ever honour this capital 
with his presence. The general architecture of the building is 
in the same style with that of its neighbouring palaces, but 
executed in a more simple and light, and therefore more elegant 
taste. The internal decorations are formed on the usual ground¬ 
work of flowers, and gold, and pieces of mirror; but all are 
disposed here, with a design and a grace, which conspicuously 
show a great advancement in the true principles of ornamental 
invention. 
The hall of audience exhibits a profusion of paintings ; and 
amongst them, several of the King, but resembling his fine 
countenance in nothing but the patriarchal length of his beard. 
One of the largest pictures, which occupies nearly the whole of 
one side of the hall, presents him as the most prominent object, 
and attended by most of his sons. The opposite wall is covered 
with a canvass of the same size, representing a hunt, and the 
same royal personage discharging his bow at a flying antelope. 
It instantly recalled to my recollection a magnificent picture 
painted by Mr. West, the President of the Royal Academy of 
England, on a similar subject; one of the kings of Scotland 
engaged in the chase of the stag, but in the moment of coming-in 
at the death, he is entangled with the wounded animal, who, 
with the shaft in his side, tramples on the fallen monarch. The 
stag, with the big drop of the last struggle in his effulgent eye, 
his breast panting, his tongue hanging from exhaustion out of 
his mouth, his foot on the body of the prostrate James; the 
King’s awful countenance, arming himself for the fate that seems 
inevitable ; the dogs clinging to the stag; the horsemen press¬ 
ing forward to their sovereign’s rescue! Never, since I first 
3 H 
VOL. I. 
