Pertaining to the former is a dome of the most exquisite tile-work, which, partly broken away, discloses the mud underneath; a pair of massive gates of solid silver, beautifully carved and embossed; a large shady and well-kept garden in the centre of the Madrassa, with huge marble tanks of water, surrounded by an oblong arcade of students' rooms--sixty queer little boxes about ten feet by six, their walls covered with arabesques of great beauty.
These are still to be seen--and remembered.

With the exception of the "Maidan Shah," or "Square of the King"-- a large open space in the centre of the city, surrounded by modern two-storied houses--the streets of Ispahan are narrow, dirty, and ill-paved, and its bazaar, which adjoins the Maidan Shah, very inferior in every way to those of Teheran or Shiraz.
The palace of "Chil Situn," or "The Forty Pillars," is like most Persian palaces--the same walled gardens with straight walks, the usual avenues of cypress trees, and the inevitable tank of stone or marble in the centre of the grounds.

It is owing to the reflection of the _facade_ of the palace in one of the latter that it has gained its name.

There are in reality but twenty pillars, the forty being (with a stretch of imagination) made up by reflection in the dull and somewhat dirty pool of water at their feet.

The palace itself is a tawdry, gimcrack-looking edifice, all looking-glass and vermilion and green paint in the worst possible taste.