ters man is saved, not by faith, but by want of faith. have also a saying not unlike ours—

"She partly is to blame who has been tried,

He comes too near who comes to be denied."

They

The evil of this system is that they, like certain southerners, pensano sempre al male, always suspect, which may be worldly wise, and also always show their suspicions, which is assuredly foolish. For thus they demoralize their women, who might be kept in the way of right by self-respect and a sense of duty. To raise our fellow-creatures we have only to show that we think better of them than they deserve-disapprobation and suspicion draw forth the worst traits of character and conduct.

From ancient periods of the Arab's history we find him practicing "knight-errantry," the wildest form of chivalry. <<<The Songs of Antar,'" says the author of "The Crescent and the Cross," "show little of the true chivalric spirit." What thinks the reader of sentiments like these? "This valiant man," remarks Antar (who was "ever interested for the weaker sex"), "hath defended the honor of women." We read in another place, "Mercy, my lord, is the noblest quality of the noble." Again, "It is the most ignominious of deeds to take freeborn women prisoners." "Bear not malice, O Shibub!" quoth the hero, "for of malice good never came." Is there no true greatness in this sentiment ?- "Birth is the boast of the fainéant; noble is the youth who beareth every ill, who clotheth himself in mail during the noontide heat, and who wandereth through the outer darkness of night." And why does the "knight of knights » love Ibla? Because "she is blooming as the sun at dawn, with hair black as the midnight shades, with Paradise in her eye, her bosom an enchantment, and a form waving like the tamarisk when the soft winds blow from the hills of Nejd?" Yes, but his chest expands also with the thoughts of her "faith, purity, and affection," it is her moral as well as her material excellence that makes her the hero's "hope and hearing and sight." Briefly, in Antar I discern

and I lament to see so many intelligent travelers misjudging the Arab after a superficial experience of a few debased Syrians

or Sinaites. The true children of Antar have not "ceased to be gentlemen."

In the days of ignorance, it was the custom of Bedouins, when tormented by the tender passion which seems to have attacked them in the form of "possession," for long years to sigh and wail and wander, doing the most truculent deeds to melt the obdurate fair. When Arabia islamized, the practice changed its element for proselytism. The Fourth Caliph is fabled to have traveled far, redressing the injured, punishing the injurer, preaching to the infidel, and especially protecting women- the chief end and aim of knighthood. The Caliph El Mutasem heard in the assembly of his courtiers that a woman of Sayyid family had been taken prisoner by a "Greek barbarian" of Ammoria. The man on one occasion struck her, when she cried: "Help me, O Mutasem!" and the clown said derisively: "Wait till he cometh upon his pied steed!" The chivalrous prince arose, sealed up the wine cup which he held in his hand, took oath to do his knightly devoir, and on the morrow started for Ammoria with seventy thousand men, each mounted on a piebald charger. Having taken the place, he entered it exclaiming: "Labbayki, Labbayki! Here am I at thy call." He struck off the Caitiff's head, released the lady with his own hands, ordered the cupbearer to bring the sealed bowl, and drank from it, exclaiming: "Now, indeed, wine is good!" To conclude this part of the subject with another far-famed instance: When El Mutanabbi, the poet, prophet, and warrior of Hams (a. h. 354), started together with his son on their last journey, the father proposed to seek a place of safety for the night. "Art thou the Mutanabbi," exclaimed his slave, "who wrote these lines:—

"I am known to the night, and the wild, and the steed,

To the guest, and the sword, to the paper and reed'?»

The poet, in reply, lay down to sleep on Tigris's bank, in a place haunted by thieves, and, disdaining flight, lost his life during the hours of darkness.

It is the existence of this chivalry among the "Children of Antar" which makes the society of Bedouins ("damned saints," perchance, and "honorable villains "), so delightful to the traveler who, like the late Haji Wali (Dr. Wallin), understands and is understood by them. Nothing more naïve than his lamentations at finding himself in the "loathsome company of Persians," or among

Arab townspeople, whose "filthy and cowardly minds" he contrasts with the "high and chivalrous spirit of the true Sons of the Desert." Your guide will protect you with blade and spear, even against his kindred, and he expects you to do the same for him. You may give a man the lie, but you must lose no time in baring your sword. If, involved in dispute with overwhelming numbers, you address some elder, "Dakhilak ya Shaykh!". (I am) thy protected, O Sir,- and he will espouse your quarrel, and, indeed, with greater heat and energy than if it were his But why multiply instances?

own.

The language of love and war and all excitement is poetry, and here again the Bedouin excels. Travelers complain that the wild men have ceased to sing. This is true if "poet" be limited to a few authors whose existence everywhere depends upon the accidents of patronage or political occurrences. A far stronger evidence of poetic feeling is afforded by the phraseology of the Arab, and the highly imaginative turn of his commonest expressions. Destitute of the poetic taste, as we define it, he certainly is: as in the Milesian, wit and fancy, vivacity and passion, are too strong for reason and judgment, the reins which guide Apollo's car. And although the Bedouins no longer boast a Lebid or a Maisunah, yet they are passionately fond of their ancient bards. A man skillful in reading "El Mutanabbi" and the "Suspended Poems" would be received by them with the honors paid by civilization to the traveling millionaire. And their elders have a goodly store of ancient and modern war songs, legends, and love ditties, which all enjoy.

I cannot well explain the effect of Arab poetry to one who has not visited the desert. Apart from the pomp of words, and the music of the sound, there is a dreaminess of idea and a haze thrown over the object, infinitely attractive, but indescribable. Description, indeed, would rob the song of indistinctness, its essence. To borrow a simile from a sister art - the Arab poet sets before the mental eye the dim grand outlines of a picture,which must be filled up by the reader, guided only by a few glorious touches, powerfully standing out, and the sentiment which the scene is intended to express; whereas, we Europeans and moderns, by stippling and minute touches, produce a miniature on a large scale so objective as to exhaust rather than to arouse reflection. As the poet is a creator, the Arab's is poetry, the European's versical description. The language, "like a faithful

wife, following the mind and giving birth to its offspring," and, free from that "luggage of particles" which clogs our modern tongues, leaves a mysterious vagueness between the relation of word to word, which materially assists the sentiment, not the sense, of the poem. When the verbs and nouns have - each one - many different significations, only the radical or general idea suggests itself. Rich and varied synonyms, illustrating the finest shades of meaning, are artfully used; now scattered to startle us by distinctness, now to form as it were a star about which dimly seen satellites revolve. And, to cut short a disquisition which might be prolonged indefinitely, there is in the Semitic dialect a copiousness of rhyme which leaves the poet almost unfettered to choose the desired expression. Hence it is that a stranger speaking Arabic becomes poetical as naturally as he would be witty in French and philosophic in German. Truly spake Mohammed el Damiri, "Wisdom hath alighted upon three things—the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs."

ROBERT BURTON

(1577-1640)

HE author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy" had no predecessor in English literature and he has found no successor. In the variety of his learning and in the complete abandonment of all restraint with which he uses it, he is unlike any other essayist in the whole range of literature. Among the Ancients, Athenæus is nearest to him in ability to quote in connection with any given subject illustrations which no one else would have thought of in that or any other connection. This ability and his own quaintness immortalized Burton. Hundreds of writers, famous or obscure, whose works are now to be reached only on the dustiest shelves of the great libraries, are quoted by him as if they were his familiar friends. It is charged that he supplied Sterne with much of the curious learning which helped to make "Tristram Shandy" celebrated, and it might as easily be charged that other reputations for extensive scholarship more pretentious than that of Sterne would collapse if "The Anatomy of Melancholy" were drawn from under them. Now, however, when handbooks of classical quotations are so abundant and cheap, Burton is thrown upon his own merits for survival, and as there is scarcely a bookstore of any pretension in England or America without "The Anatomy of Melancholy" in stock, it may fairly be said that he is standing the test. It is asserted that he was led by his own melancholy disposition to undertake the analysis of melancholy in all its physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. In carrying out this purpose he touches on almost every subject then imaginable as earthly, besides making frequent excursions into the region of the celestial and the infernal.

He was born in Leicestershire, England, February 8th, 1577. After graduating at Oxford, he was elected "student" of Christ Church College. He was afterwards vicar of St. Thomas and rector of Segrave under the English Church. Those who know him best as the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy" will be most inclined to doubt his success in doing the work of a parish, though no doubt he did as well as Rev. Robert Herrick, not to mention Rev. Dr. Swift or Rev. Dr. Sterne himself.