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military frock-coat, faced with rows of diamonds and large rubies; his belt and the scabbard of his scimetar were likewise bright with jewels, and so was his cap. It was a quarter to four when he left the hotel, accompanied by our Princes, and started by a special train of the South-Eastern Railway for London. The Duke of Cambridge and others were at Charing Cross station, in company with the Prince of Wales. The arrival of the Shah was awaited with much interest outside Charing Cross. People gathered in large numbers, and as the royal carriages emerged from the station there were ringing cheers from the crowd. The entire route through Whitehall and the Mall to Buckingham Palace was lined with spectators. Before the palace was reached, the rain, which began falling on his arrival at Charing Cross, increased to a heavy shower, which speedily dispersed the people.

The suite of apartments in Buckingham Palace placed at the disposal of his Imperial Majesty the Shah, under arrangements made between her Majesty's Lord Chamberlain and Dr. Siemens, had been placed in direct communication with the instrument-room of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, and arrangements had been perfected by which the Shah was enabled at any moment, standing in his apartments in Buckingham Palace, to speak direct with his own capital of Teheran, a distance of about 3800 miles.

On Thursday his Majesty received the Corps Diplomatique and her Majesty's Ministers at Buckingham Palace. In the evening he dined at Marlborough House with their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, and went to a ball given by the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford House.

On Friday, the 20th, the Shah was received by the Queen in state at Windsor Castle.

At Windsor the preparations for the reception of our Eastern visitor were worthy of the royal borough. Like the terminus at Paddington, the Windsor station was hung thickly with streamers and flags of every variety. The platform was covered extensively with crimson cloth, and the reception-room, facing which the Shah would alight, was artistically laid out with flowering plants, while in the station yard seats were erected for the accommodation of the Eton boys and a limited number of special ticket-holders.

As the royal train steamed into the station, the Princes and others in waiting to receive his Majesty slightly advancing, the Persian King, who was in a gorgeous state uniform of brilliants, stepped out of the carriage. The Mayor and Recorder then came forward and read an address, to which the Shah briefly replied, both the address and reply being translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson. Accompanied in the same carriage by Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, the Shah was driven to the Castle, where her Majesty received him at the foot of the staircase. The reception was held in the White Drawing Room. The Shah conferred upon the Queen the Persian Order, and also the New Order which he has instituted

for ladies. Luncheon was served in the Oak Room, after which the Queen accompanied the Shah to the foot of the staircase on his leaving the Castle.

In the evening there was a magnificent entertainment given to his Majesty by the Lord Mayor at Guildhall, to which 3000 guests had been invited.

Buckingham Palace was quitted about half-past nine. The gates were thrown open, and the gilded state coaches, all equipped as in some fairy tale, drove at a gentle and showy trot from the portals of the palace along the open way, lined on each side with masses of the people. The last carriage of the line of ten or more, escorted by the Horse Guards with all the pomp of military display, was that conveying the Persian Monarch. The crowd cheered to the echo. In the Strand a powerful lime-light from the roof of the Gaiety Theatre filled all the thoroughfare. The royal and distinguished personages bowed in recognition of the cheering, the Shah himself frequently waving a white-gloved hand as his carriage went on eastwards. It was ten o'clock when his Majesty and his suite drove up to the entrance in a number of the Queen's carriages, with an escort of cavalry. Long before he arrived his coming was heralded by the cheers of the people in the streets, and this was the signal for a ringing of church bells in the neighbourhood of Guildhall. When the Shah was alighting the bands struck up the Persian national air. There was a general clapping of hands in the vestibule as the Lord Mayor conducted the royal procession on its way to the Library. First came the Shah, leading the Princess of Wales; next the Prince of Wales and the Cesarevna; then the Cesarewitch and the Lady Mayoress, followed by the Duke of Edinburgh and his sister Princess Christian, and then by Prince Arthur and the Duchess of Teck. The Duke of Cambridge, Prince Christian, Count and Countess Gleichen, and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar were also of the company, whose progress through the building was announced with shrill blasts by four trumpeters in antique dresses of velvet and gold. The procession reached the Library, where a distinguished company had assembled on and around the dais; and the Shah was escorted to his place on the dais, having the Princess of Wales and the Lord Mayor on his left hand and the Cesarevna on his right. The rest of the members of the royal family, with the Cesarewitch, stood on each hand of the Lord Mayor in front of the dais. The Shah wore a blue uniform, with a belt of diamonds, and with the ribbon, the George, and Star of the Garter which had been conferred upon him at Windsor during the afternoon. The variety of costume among the company, the scarlet, blue, and other uniforms, the Court dresses of the old style and the new, the rich colours worn by the ladies in their robes, and the lustre of their jewellery, were displayed to great advantage in the old hall, with its painted giants and marble monuments. When the Shah had taken his seat the first quadrille was formed. Of course the Shah never dances. The Lord Mayor

danced with the Cesarevna, the Prince of Wales with Miss Waterlow, the Cesarewitch with the Princess of Wales, and the Duke of Edinburgh with another Miss Waterlow; while Prince Arthur, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Christian, and the Duke of Teck led off the Duchess of Manchester, Princess Christian, Princess Mary, and Lady Spencer. After one or two sets of quadrilles had been danced, about eleven o'clock the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs and the Entertainment Committee conducted the Shah and certain of the distinguished guests to the principal supper-table, which was spread in the Council Chamber. At the conclusion of this banquet, shortly before twelve o'clock, the Shah, with the Prince and Princess of Wales and the other members of the royal family, took leave; the Lord Mayor and the rest of the civic dignitaries escorting them to the entrance, preceded by trumpeters as before. His Majesty and the rest of the royal party were cheered by the people outside as they took their departure. Before the company left the library the address of the Corporation to the Shah was telegraphed to Teheran by the Indo-European Telegraph Company, using an instrument in the hall, and a reply was afterwards received from his Majesty's principal Minister there.

The magnificent entertainment at the Guildhall was the first of many on the same scale. The Shah was introduced in rapid succession to a review of artillery at Woolwich and another of the fleet at Spithead, a State performance at the Italian Opera, the International Exhibition and a concert in the Albert Hall, and a review in Windsor Park of seven or eight thousand troops of the Guards and other favourite regiments, with cavalry and artillery, while throughout the whole of these the curiosity and enthusiasm of the British public of all grades continued unabated, the various shows being, on the whole, admirably managed. But the greatest success of all, from the peculiar nature of the sight, was perhaps the Shah's visit to the West India Dock and Greenwich on Wednesday, the 25th. He went about one o'clock, in an open carriage, from Buckingham Palace to the Tower, but did not stop there to see the armoury and regalia. At the Tower Wharf, kept by a guard of honour of the Coldstreams, he embarked in the river steamboat "Princess Alice," which was accompanied by the "Cupid," having on board the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince and Princess of Russia, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Teck and Princess Mary, Prince Christian, and the Duke of Cambridge, all in civilian dress. A salute was fired from the Tower guns, and the two steamers moved down the river, followed by other boats, one bearing the official persons of the Admiralty Board. The river was crowded with ships, barges, boats, and vessels of many different kinds. Their decks and rigging, as well as the wharves and roads on each bank, and windows and crane-stages of the warehouses, being thronged with people, it looked like all London upon the water and banks of the Thames, as it looks above Putney on the day of the University boat-race. Opposite the entrance to the West India Dock lay five

of the floating steam fire-engines of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, under the orders of Captain Shaw. They were closely lashed together in a line, and upon the deck of each stood the firemen, with the hose-pipes ready for a discharge. The word was given, and they all at once saluted the Shah with several hundred jets of water, thrown horizontally against the sides of the "Princess Alice" steamboat, after which they cast up as many perpendicular jets to a great height in the air with a very fine effect. The steamboat conveying his Majesty and the Princes entered the West India Dock by the Millwall gates, where the 26th Middlesex Volunteers formed a guard of honour. The West India Dock was full of shipping, packed close to each side, with an open channel between for the steamboats to pass. All the decks, rigging, and yards of the ships, and the ground and buildings around the dock, swarmed with an immense multitude of sightseers, amongst whom were foreign sailors of every nation. The Shah was more astonished by this scene than by anything else. Having passed out of the dock by the Blackwall gates, his steamboat went across to Greenwich, where the Shah and the Princes landed at the hospital stairs. They were conducted by Mr. Goschen, First Lord of the Admiralty, to luncheon in the Painted Hall. About five o'clock they came out, when the boys of the "Chichester" training-ship, in honour of the Shah, manned the yards of the model-ship rigging, on the masts erected in the grounds of the Greenwich Royal Hospital School. The Shah and their Royal Highnesses again embarked in the steamboats, and were conveyed up the river to Westminster Bridge. In the evening, by command of the Queen, a State ball was given at Buckingham Palace, at which the Persian Sovereign and the British Princes and Princesses were present.

On Thursday, the 26th, the Shah started on a visit to the north, and his receptions in Liverpool, Manchester, and other places, were repetitions of the scenes in London. He was introduced to countryhouse life by the Duke of Sutherland, with whom he stayed at Trentham, and returning to London on Saturday, the 28th, he went in the afternoon to a garden party given by the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Duke of Richmond's villa at Chiswick. The company at this entertainment was so numerous that a mere list of their names fills nearly three columns of the Times. Her Majesty the Queen was there. On Monday morning, the 30th, there was an inspection for his Majesty of the engines and men of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, under Captain Shaw, in the gardens behind Buckingham Palace. In the afternoon his Majesty went to the Crystal Palace, with nearly all our Princes and Princesses, to see a special entertainment, consisting of gymnastic performances, the playing of the great fountains, and a display of fireworks.

JULY.

5. THE VISIT OF THE SHAH OF PERSIA was brought to a close today. The entertainments in his honour continued to the last.

His occupations on Tuesday (the 1st) were an unceremonious visit to the Bank of England, the Tower of London, and St. Paul's Cathedral; an afternoon fashionable party at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone; a look in at the House of Lords and the House of Commons, while they were sitting; and a walk through Westminster Abbey with Dean Stanley. The next day the Shah again went to Windsor, for the third time, and paid a farewell visit to the Queen at the castle. He also called on Prince and Princess Christian at Frogmore. Having returned to town about seven o'clock, he went to see Madame Tussaud's Gallery of Waxwork Figures in Baker-street, where M. Victor Tussaud showed him every part of the exhibition. He was most struck with the effigy of the late Emperor Napoleon III.'s dead body as it appeared when lying in state at Chiselhurst; but he also took much notice of the relics of Napoleon I., and the figures of Queen Victoria with her family around her.

The Shah was so much pleased with the Crystal Palace that he chose to go there on the 3rd, instead of taking his departure from England, as he had intended, on that day. It was an ordinary shilling admission day, with no particular novelty or specialty in the list of entertainments. The Persian Monarch went on this occasion without his diamonds among the common crowd of English people. He wore a simple tunic, which covered even his swordbelt; not a jewel was to be seen about him and his companions, except one or two Persian officers in uniform, were as plainly dressed. The Chairman and Secretary of the Crystal Palace Company, with other directors, and Mr. Billings, the manager, received him as he arrived. He told them, in passable French, that he came again because he had enjoyed himself there so much on the Tuesday evening " C'était la plus heureuse soirée que j'ai goutée en Europe," ," said the Shah. Strolling among the stalls, he examined toys and photographs; tried a pair of opera glasses, which he turned on the people in the gallery, and heartily joined in their laughter, bowing to them as they bowed to him, when they found themselves exposed to his distant gaze. He saw the art-students modelling from statues in the Greek Court; admired the Alhambra Court, and made the acquaintance of Mr. Owen Jones; and then descended to the marine aquarium. As the Shah came to the glass front of each tank, the food on which the creatures in it are fed was dropped down from above. Nothing could exceed the interest manifested by the Shah in all that he saw. On leaving the aquarium the Shah walked through the Byzantine, Rénaissance, and Gothic courts on the eastern side of the building. He was photographed

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