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 had previously seen in the summer as water, with birds swimming and boats rowing upon it, was now transformed into an immense sheet of ice as hard as rock, on which thousands of persons, men, women, and children, were actually walking, running, and figuring in the most extraordinary manner.  I saw men pass with the rapidity of an arrow, turning, wheeling, retrograding, and describing figures with surprising agility, sometimes on both, but more frequently on only one leg; they had all a piece of steel, turned up in front somewhat in the manner of our slippers, fastened to their shoes, by means of which they propelled themselves as I have described.  After much persuasion, I went on the ice myself; though not without considerable fear; yet such a favourite sport is this with the English, and so infatuated are some of these ice players, that nothing will deter them from venturing on those places which are marked as dangerous; and thus many perish, like moths that sacrifice themselves in the candle flame.  They have, therefore, parties of men, with their dresses stuffed with air-cushions, whose duty it is to watch on the ice, ready to plunge in whenever it breaks and any one is immersed.”