than ever in wonder at the strange extravagances
of the Feringhis.

These opinions are repeated, shortly after, on the occasion of the Khan's
being present at an evening party at Clapham, which, as the invitation was
_for the country_, he seems to have expected to find quite a different
sort of affair from the entertainments at which he had already assisted in
London. He was greatly surprised, therefore, to find the assemblage, on
his arrival, engaged in the everlasting toil of dancing, "the men, as
usual in this country, clad all in dismal black, and the ladies sparkling
in handsome costumes of bright and variegated colours--another singular
custom, of which I never could learn or guess the reason." But, however
great a bore the sight of quadrilles may have been to the khan, ample
amends were made to him on this occasion by the musical performances, with
which several of the ladies ("though they all at first refused, evidently
from modesty") gratified the company in the intervals of the dance, and at
which he expresses unbounded delight; but this does not prevent his again
launching out into a tirade against the unseemly methods, as they appear
to him, used by the English to signify applause or approbation. "The
strangest custom is, that the audience _clapped their hands_ in token of
satisfaction whenever any of the ladies concluded their performance....
The only occasion on which such an exhibition of feeling is to be
witnessed in Hindustan, is when some offender is put upon a donkey, with a
string of old shoes round his neck, and his face blackened and turned to
the tail, and in this plight expelled from the city. Then only do the
boys--men never--clap their hands and cry hurra! hurra! Thus, that which
in one country implies shame and disgrace, is resorted to in another to
express the highest degree of approbation!"

Passing over the Khan's visits to the Athenaeum Club-house, to Buckingham
Palace, &c., his remarks on which contain nothing noticeable, except his
mistaking some of the ancient portraits in the palace, from their long
beards and rosaries, for the representations of Moslem divines, we find
him at last fairly in the midst of an English winter, and an eyewitness of
a spectacle of all others the most marvellous and incredible to a
Hindustani, and which Mirza Abu-Talib, while describing it, frankly
confesses he cannot expect his countrymen to believe--the ice and the
skaters in the Regent's Park.[8] "What I