DRAWN BY W. H. BROOKE, F. S. A., ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY G. BAXTER,

1834.

breath, how they laugh and weep, how they participate with the narrator and with the hero of the tale, in the magic of the descriptions, and the frenzy of the passions. It is a perfect drama, but one in which the audience are at the same time the actors. Is the hero of the story threatened by imminent danger, they shudder, and cry aloud, 'No, no, no, God forbid, it cannot be !' (La, la, la, istaghferallah!) Should he be in the midst of the fight, mowing down the hostile squadrons with his sword, they grasp their own, and stand up, as if they would fly to his aid. Does he fall into the snares of treachery and falsehood, their foreheads contract in wrinkles of displeasure, and they cry, 'The curse of God on the traitor!' Does he succumb at last beneath the multitude of his foes, a long and glowing ‘Ah!' comes from their breast, accompanied by the blessing of the dead,' May the mercy of God be upon him! may he rest in peace!' But if he returns from the fight victorious and crowned with fame, the air is filled with loud cries of Praise God the Lord of Hosts!' Descriptions of the beauties of nature, and especially of the spring, are received with repeated exclamations of Taïb, taïb, i. e. "Good, good!' and nothing can compare with the satisfaction that sparkles in their eyes when the narrator leisurely and con amore draws a picture of female beauty.

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They listen with silent attention; and when he ends his description with the exclamation, ‘Praised

be God, who hath created beautiful women!' they all, in the enthusiasm of admiration and gratitude, shout out in full chorus, 'Praised be God, who hath created beautiful women!' Forms of speech of this kind frequently introduced into the course of the narrative, and lengthened out with well-known sayings and circumlocutions, serve, as it were, for resting-places to the narrator, to enable him to take breath, or to continue quietly and easily spinning on with them the thread of the narrative, without any new demand on his memory or imagination. Where the narrator to a European audience would say, 'And now they continued their journey,' the Arabian orator says, 'And now they went on over hills and dales, through woods and plains, over meads and deserts, over fields and pathless wilds, up hill, down dale, from the morning dawn till the evening came.' While uttering these forms of speech, which flow unconsciously from his lips, he collects his attention, and then goes on with his story, till the declining night, or the fatigue of his lungs, enjoins him to break off his narrative, which, with the good-will of his auditors, would never come to a termination. A story-teller, however, never ends his tale the same evening, but breaks off in one of the most interesting parts, promising to give the continuation or the conclusion the next evening: and if it should happen to terminate early in that evening, he immediately begins another, the continuation of which again is put off till the following evening: and thus

evening after evening are woven together in a series of narrations 1."

It is a general, but I believe an erroneous idea, that the Thousand and One Nights are familiarly known all over the Mohammedan East. Mr. Jonathan Scott says that he never heard any of them in India. I do not recollect that Mr. Morier, or any of our travellers in Persia, makes any mention of them as forming a part of the literary funds of the story-tellers of that country. M. Hammer says, that when he went to Constantinople in the year 1799, he was charged by the Austrian minister for foreign affairs to purchase for him a copy of these tales, at any price; and the result of his inquiries at the book-mart and among the Meddah, or coffee-house narrators, was, that they were totally unknown at Constantinople, and were only to be had in Egypt. And in effect it is only in Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and the north coast of Africa, that is, in the countries where the Arabic language is spoken, that copies of this work can be procured 2.

Yet Persia is evidently the original country of the Thousand and One Nights. M. Hammer quotes the following passage from the Golden

1 This explains the artifice of Shehrzade in the Arabian Nights.

2 The Arabic Thousand and One Nights is now made attainable to all orientalists by a very neat edition, published lately in Germany by Dr. Habicht, from a manuscript procured from Tunis.