by custom, a devil: and Sir John uses it, in the same sense in general. D'Herbelot uses it in the sense of demon, and yet in his article on "Solomon it is opposed to it, or simply means giant. Richardson tells us, that Peri means a beautiful creature of no sex; whereas according to Sir William Ouseley, it is always female; and Richardson himself gives us to understand as much another time. Upon the whole we think the following may be taken as the ordinary opinion, especially among authors of the greatest taste and genius. The Persians (for all these supernatural tales originated with the Persians, Indians, and Chaldeans, and not with the Arabs, except in as far as the latter became united with the Persians), are of opinion, that many kings reigned, and many races of creatures existed, before the time of Adam.* The geologists ought to have a regard for this notion, which has an air of old knowledge beyond ours, and falls in with what has been conjectured respecting the diluvial strata. According to the Persians, a time may have existed, when mammoths, not men, were lords of the creation; when a gigantic half-human phenomenon of a beast put his crown on with what was only a hand by courtesy; and elephants and leviathans conversed under a sky in which it was always twilight. Very grand fictions might be founded on imaginations of this sort; a Preadamite epic and knowledge and sensibility might be represented as gradually displacing successive states of beings, till man and woman rose with the full orb of the morning, — themselves to be displaced by a finer stock, * Giafar the Just, sixth Imam, or Pontiff of the Mussulmans, was of opinion, that there had been three Adams before the one mentioned in Scripture, and that there were to be seventeen more. - D'Herbelot, in the article "Giafar." if the efforts of cultivation cannot persuade them to be the stock themselves. The race immediately preceding that of human kind resembled them partly in appearance, but were of gigantic stature, various-headed, and were composed of the element of fire. These were the Genii, Deevs, or race of gigantic spirits (the Fann or Finn of the Arabs, — Pers. Jannian or Jinniàn).* They lived three thousand years each, and had many contests with other spirits, of whose nature we are left in the dark; but the heavens appear to have warred with them, among other enemies. A dynasty of forty, or according to others of seventy-two Solimans, reigned over them in succession, the last of whom was the renowned Soliman Jan-ben-Jan. His buckler, says D'Herbelot, is as famous among the Orien * Pronounced Jaun and Jinniaun. So Ispahaùm, Goolistaun, &c. It is a pleasure, we think, to know how to pronounce these Eastern words, and therefore we give the reader the benefit of our A B C learning. There is a couplet in Sir William Ouseley's "Travels " which haunted us for a month, purely because we had found out how to pronounce it, and liked the spirit of it. We repeat it from memory The real spelling ought to be kept, for many reasons; but it is agreeable to find out the sound. The above couplet was an extempore of a Persian boy at an inn, who was struck with the dandy assumptions and enormous appetite of a native gentleman of the party. This person had been commissioned to show Sir William the country, and upon the strength of his having the name of khan (as if one of us were a Mr. Lord), gave himself the airs of the title. The jest of the little mimic (who gives us an advantageous idea of the Persian vivacity), would run something in this way in English, a lion being a common term of exaltation: A lion-lord, indeed! You may know him by his feed. tals, as that of Achilles among the Greeks. He possessed, also, in common with other Solimans, the cuirass called the Gebeh, and the Tig-atesch, or smouldering sword, which rendered them invisible in their wars with the demons.* In his time the race had become so proud and so incorrigible to the various lessons given to them and their ancestors from above, that Heaven sent down the angel Hareth to reduce them to obedience. Hareth did his work, and took the government of the world into his hands, but became so proud in his turn, that the deity in order to punish him created a new species of beings to possess the earth, and bade the angels fall down and worship it. Hareth refused, as being of a nobler nature, and was thrust, together with the chiefs of those who adhered to him, into hell, the whole race of the Genii being dismissed at the same time into the mountains of Kaf, and man left in possession of his inheritance. The Genii, however, did not leave him alone. They made war upon him occasionally till the time of the greatest of all the Solimans, Soliman ben Daoud (Solomon the son of David) who having finally conquered and driven them back, was allowed to retain power over them, to give peace of mind to such as had yielded in good time, and to compel the rest to succumb to him whenever he thought fit, as angels overcame the devils. These last are the rebellious Genii of the "Arabian Nights." They are the Deevs, in the diabolical and now the only sense of the word, — Deev signifying a gigantic evil spirit; and are all monsters, more or less, and generally black; though the most famous of them is the Deev-Sifeed, or great white devil, whose conquest was the crowning glory of Rustam, the Eastern Hercules. * D'Herbelot, in the article "Soliman Ben Daoud." They appear to be of different classes, and to have different names, except the latter be provincial. Some are called Ishreels, others Afreets, and another is our old acquaintance the Ghoul (pronounced ghool). They are permitted to wander from Kaf, and roam about the world, "as a security," says Richardson, "for the future obedience of man." They tempt and do mischief in the style of the Western devil, the lowest of them infesting old buildings, haunting church-yards, and feeding on dead bodies. The reader will recollect the lady who supped with one of them, and who used to pick rice with a bodkin. These are the Ghouls above mentioned. They sometimes inhabit waste places, moaning in the wind, and waylaying the traveller. A Deev is generally painted with horns, tail, and saucer eyes, like our devil; but an author now and then lavishes on a description of him all the fondness of his antipathy. The following is a powerful portrait of one of them, called an Afreet, in the Bahar Danush, - or "Garden of Knowledge" (translated from the Persian by Mr. Gladwin): — "On his entrance, he beheld a black demon, heaped on the ground like a mountain, with two large horns on his head, and a long proboscis, fast asleep. In his head the divine Creator had joined the likenesses of the elephant and the wild bull. His teeth grew out like the tusks of the wild boar, and all over his monstrous carcase hung shaggy hairs, like those of the bear. The eye of the mortal-born was dimmed at his appearance, and the mind, at his horrible form and frightful figure, was confounded. "He was an Afreet created from mouth to foot by the wrath of God. "His hair like a bear's, his teeth like a boar's. No one ever beheld such a monster. "Crooked-backed and crab-faced; he might be scented at the distance of a thousand furlongs. "His nostrils were like the ovens of brick-burners, and his mouth resembled the vat of a dyer. "When his breath came forth, from its vehemence the dust rose up as in a whirlwind, so as to leave a chasm in the earth; and when he drew it in, chaff, sand, and pebbles, from the distance of some yards, were attracted to his nostrils." Some of these wanderers about the world appear nevertheless to be of a milder nature than others, and undertake to be amiable on the subject of love and beauty: though this indeed is a mansuetude of which most devils are rendered capable. In the story of Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess of China, a "cursed genie "makes common cause with a good fairy in behalf of the two lovers. The fairy makes no scruple of chatting and comparing notes with him on their beauty, at the same time addressing him by his title of "cursed," and wondering how he can have the face to differ with her. The devil, on the other hand, is very polite, calling her his "dear lady" and "agreeable Maimoune," and tremblingly exacting from her a promise to do him no harm, in return for his telling her no lies. The question demands an umpire; and, at a stamp of Maimoune's foot, out comes from the earth "a hideous, humpbacked, squinting, and lame genie, with six horns on his head, and claws on his hands and feet." Caschcasch (this new monster) behaves like a well-bred arbiter ; and the fairy thanks him for his trouble. In the "Arabian Tales; or, sequel to the Arabian Nights,"* is an evil *The "Arabian Tales" are unquestionably of genuine Eastern groundwork, and amidst a great deal of pantomimic extravagance, far inferior to the |