text:  Though Mirza Abu-Talib at the beginning of the present century was present at the feast given to Lord Nelson during the mayoralty of Alderman Coombe the description of a civic entertainment as it appeared to an Oriental must always be a curious _morceau_; and doubly so in the present instance as given by a spectator to whom it was as the feast of the Barmecide--since Kerim Khan unlike his countryman the Mirza religiously abstained throughout from the forbidden dainties of the Franks and sat like an anchorite at the board of plenty