f and Mariam, down to the minutest details, such as the
throwing of a hand-grenade into one of the subterranean dwellings of the
Armenians, and the escape of the girl by leaping from a window of the
serdar's palace at Erivan, is a reproduction of incidents that actually
occurred in the Russo-Persian war of that date. Finally, Mirza Firouz
Khan, the Persian envoy to Great Britain, and the hero of "Hajji Baba
in England", is a portrait of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, a nephew of the
former Grand Vizier, who visited London as the Shah's representative
in 1809-10, and who was subsequently sent on a similar mission to
Petersburg. This individual made a considerable sensation in England by
his excellent manners and witty retorts, among which one is worthy of
being quoted that does not appear in Morier's pages. When asked by
a lady in London whether they did not worship the sun in Persia, he
replied, 'Oh yes, madam, and so would you in England too, if you ever
saw him!'

The international politics of the time are not without their serious
place in the pages of "Hajji Baba." The French ambassador who is
represented in chapter lxxiv. as retiring in disgrace from Tehran, was
Napoleon's emissary, General Gardanne, who, after his master had signed
the Peace of Tilsit with the Tsar, found a very different estimate of
the value of the French alliance entertained by the Persian Court.
The English embassy, whose honorific reception is described in chapter
lxxvii., was that of Sir Harford Jones. The disputes about hats, and
chairs, and stockings, and other points of divergence between English
and Persian etiquette, are historical; and a contemporary oil-painting
of the first audience with the Shah, as described by Morier, still
exists on the walls of the royal palace of Negaristan in the Persian
capital. There may be seen the portraits of Sir Harford Jones and Sir
John Malcolm, as well as of General Gardanne, grouped by a pardonable
anachronism in the same picture. There is the king with his spider's
waist and his lordly beard; and there are the princes and the ministers
of whom we have been reading. The philanthropic efforts of the
Englishmen to force upon the reluctant Persians the triple boon of
vaccination, post-mortem examinations, and potatoes, are also authentic.

Quite a number of smaller instances may be cited in which what appears
only as an incident or an illustration in the story is in reality a
historical fact. It is the case t