bles; not to mention the richness of the furniture, which was inestimable; the whole disposed with such profusion, that the prince, instead of ever having seen any thing like it, acknowledged that there could not be any thing in the world that could come up to it.

"Prince,' said the fairy, if you admire my palace so much, which is indeed very beautiful, what would you say to the palaces of the chief of our Genii, which are made much more beautiful, spacious, and magnificent? I could also charm you with my garden; but we will leave that till another time. Night draws near, and it will be time to go to supper.'

"The next hall which the fairy led the prince into, and where the cloth was laid for the feast, was the only apartment the prince had not seen, and it was not in the least inferior to the others. At his entrance into it he admired the infinite number of wax candles, perfumed with amber, the multitude of which, instead of being confused, were placed with so just a symmetry, as formed an agreeable and pleasant sight. A large beaufet was set out with all sorts of gold plate, so finely wrought, that the workmanship was much more valuable than the weight of the gold. Several choruses of beautiful women, richly dressed, and whose voices were ravishing, began a concert, accompanied with all kinds of the most harmonious instruments he had ever heard. When they were set down to table, the fairy, Pari Banou, took care to help Prince Ahmed to the most delicious meats, which she named as she invited him to eat of them, and which the prince had never heard of, but found so exquisite and nice, that he commended them in the highest terms, saying, that the entertainment which she gave him far surpassed those among men. found also the same excellence in the wines, which neither

He

he nor the fairy tasted till the dessert was served up, which consisted of the choicest sweetmeats and fruits.

"After the dessert, the Fairy, Pari Banou, and Prince Ahmed, rose from the table, which was immediately carried away, and sat on a sofa, at their ease, with cushions of fine silk, curiously embroidered with all sorts of large flowers, laid at their backs. Presently after, a great number of genii and fairies danced before them to the door of the chamber where the nuptial bed was made, and when they came there, they divided themselves into two rows, to let them pass, and after that retired, leaving them to go to bed.

"The nuptial feast was continued the next day; or rather, the days following the celebration were a continual feast, which the fairy, Pari Banou, who could do it with the utmost ease, knew how to diversify, by new dishes, new meats, new concerts, new dances, new shows, and new diversions; which were all so extraordinary, that Prince Ahmed, if he had lived a thousand years among men could not have imagined.

"The fairy's intention was not only to give the prince essential proofs of the sincerity of her love, and the violence of her passion, by so many ways; but to let him see, that as he had no pretensions at his father's court, he could meet with nothing comparable to the happiness he enjoyed with her, independent of her beauty and her charms, and to attach him entirely to herself, that he might never leave her. In this scheme she succeeded so well, that Prince Ahmed's passion was not in the least diminished by possession; but increased so much, that, if he had been so inclined, it was not in his power to forbear loving her."

This is a pretty satisfaction to the imagination, and good

only can come of it. They are under a great mistake who think that romances and pictures of perfection do harm. They may produce mounting impatience and partial neglect of duties here and there, but in the sum total they give a distaste to the sordid, elevate our anger above trifles, incline us to assist intellectual advancement of all sorts, and keep a region of solitude and sweetness for us, in which the mind may retreat and recreate itself, so as to return with hope and gracefulness to its labors. Imagination is the breathing room of the heart. The whole world of possibility is thrown open to it, and the air mixes with that of heaven.

Ulysses did not the less yearn to go back to the wife of his bosom, because a goddess had lain there. Affectionate habit is a luxury long drawn out; and constancy, made sweet by desert, is a sort of essence of immortality distilled.

To conclude the remarks on our story: Prince Ahmed, to be sure, had every reason to be faithful; but we feel it was because a sweet, sincere, and intelligent woman loved him, rather than a wonder-working fairy. She is a Cleopatra in what is pleasing, but she is also as unlike her as possible in what is the reverse; being very different as she says, from her brother Schaibar, who was resentful and violent. Such is the fairy of the East, the sweetest of all fairies, and fit kinswoman, by humanity, to the only creature we like better, which is the Flying Woman of our friend Peter Wilkins. With the former, we could live for ever, if disengaged and immortal; but with the latter, somehow, like Ulysses, we would rather die.

There remains one more supernatural being, the Arabian fairy, who lives in a well; for so she has been distinguished from her more elegant sister of the palace.

The Arabs, leading a hard and unsettled life, seem not to have had time, even in imagination, for the more luxurious pictures of Persia. They had all the imagination of home feeling, were devoted patriots and intense lovers, and have poured forth some of the most heart-felt poetry in the world. A volume of poems might be collected out of the romance of Antar, unsurpassed as effusions of passion. But the total absence of airy and preternatural fiction in their works is remarkable. When the two nations became united, and the successors of Mahomet shifted their throne from their old barren sands to the luxurious halls of Bagdad, the mythologies of their poets gradually became confounded; and it is difficult to pronounce, after all, how far the supposed Arabian fairy differs from the Pari, her sister ; how many wonders she might have drawn out of her well, or how far the Pari could not inhabit a hole in the well on occasion, as the fairies of Italy do in the old stones of Fiesole. She was, no doubt, distinct originally, a coarser breed, like the gnome of the desert compared with the ladies of the court of Darius; but the distinction seems hardly to have survived. If Maimoune lives in a well, we have seen that Denhasch pronounced her charming; and though we might regard this as the flattery of a devil, the Fairy herself gives us to understand that she was a good spirit, one of those who submitted to Solomon; therefore charming by implication, and at all events mixed up with the spirits of Persia. The Jinns, male and female, are all capital architects, who can make a palace in a twinkling for others. We can hardly doubt they can do as much for themselves; and that Maimoune, if she had wished to please a lover, could have raised as splendid a house of reception for him as. Banou.

The spiritual beings of the East then may, perhaps,

safely be classed as follows, according to the most received ideas :

The Deev, or evil genius.

The Jinn, or good genius, if not otherwise qualified.

The Pari, or good female genius, always beneficent and beautiful.

Individuals of all these classes are permitted to roam about the world, and reside in particular places; but their chief residence, or Fairy-land, is understood to be in Jinnistan, or the place of the Genii, which is situated on the Greek mountain of Kaf, and divided into what may be called Good-land and Bad-land, or the domains of the good, and the domains of the rebellious Genii. In the former is the province of the good Genii, the land of Shadukam, or pleasure and desire :— and the Cities Juharbad, or the City of Jewels; —and Amberhabad, the City of Ambergris. In the latter stands Ahermanhabad, the City of Aherman, or the Evil Principle, over which reigns the bad King Arzhenk, a personage with a half-human body and the head of a bull. He is a connoisseur, and has a gallery of pictures containing portraits of all the different sorts of creatures before Adam.

All Genii, bad and good, being subjected in some sort to the human race, whom they all in the first instance agreed not to worship, are compellable by the invocations of magic, and forced to appear in the service of particular rings and talismans. In this they resemble the Genii of the Alexandrian Platonists and the Cabala. Sometimes a man possesses a ring without knowing its value, and happening to give it a rub, is shocked by the apparition of a giant, who in a tone of thunder tells him he is his humble servant, and wants to know his pleasure. Invocations must be practised after their particular form and letter, or the