into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment.» He then again took them up with his trunk, set them on shore, and immediately vanished with his boat.

"Now we may talk,' said Morabec: 'the island we are on belongs to the King of the Genii; there are no more such in the world. Look round you, prince; can there be a more delightful place? It is certainly a lovely representation of the charming place God has appointed for the faithful observers of our law. Behold the fields, adorned with all sorts of flowers and odoriferous plants; admire these beautiful trees, whose delicious fruit makes the branches bend down to the ground; enjoy the pleasure of these harmonious songs, formed in the air by a thousand birds of as many various sorts, unknown in other countries!' Zeyn could not sufficiently admire those with which he was surrounded, and still found something new as he advanced farther into the island.

"At length they came to a palace made of fine emeralds, encompassed with a ditch, on the banks whereof, at certain distances, were planted such tall trees, that they shaded the whole palace.

"Before the gate, which was of massy gold, was a bridge, made of one single shell of a fish, though it was at least six fathoms long, and three in breadth. At the head of the bridge stood a company of Genii, of a prodigious height, who guarded the entrance into the castle with great clubs of China steel.

"Let us go no farther,' said Morabec; 'these Genii will knock us down; and, in order to prevent their coming to us, we must perform a magical ceremony.' He then drew out of a purse he had under his garment four long slips of yellow taffety; one he put about his middle, and laid the other on his back, giving the other two to the prince,

who did the like. Then Morabec laid on the ground two large table-cloths, on the edges whereof he scattered some precious stones, musk, and amber. Then he sat down on one of these cloths, and Zeyn on the other; and Morabec said to the prince, ‘I shall now, sir, conjure the King of the Genii, who lives in the palace that is before us: may he come in a peaceable mood to us! I confess I am not without apprehension about the reception he may give us. If our coming into the island is displeasing to him, he will appear in the shape of a dreadful monster; but if he approve of your design, he will show himself in the shape of a handsome man. As soon as he appears before us, you must rise and salute him, without going off your cloth; for you would certainly perish, should you stir off it. You must say to him, "Sovereign Lord of the Genii, my father, who was your servant, has been taken away by the angel of death; I wish your majesty may protect me as you always did my father." If the King of the Genii,' added Morabec, 'ask you what favor you desire of him, you must answer, "Sir, I most humbly beg of you to give me the ninth statue."'

"Morabec having thus instructed Zeyn, began his conjurations. Immediately their eyes were dazzled with a long flash of lightning, which was followed by a clap of thunder. The whole island was covered with a thick darkness; a furious storm of wind blew, a dreadful cry was heard, the island felt a shock, and there was such an earthquake as that which Asrayel is to cause on the day of judgment.

'Zeyn was startled, and began to look upon that noise as a very ill omen; when Morabec, who knew better than he what to think of it, began to smile, and said, 'Take courage, my prince, all goes well.' In short, that very moment the King of the Genii appeared in the shape of a

handsome man, yet there was something of a sternness in his air."

The king promises to comply with the prince's request, but upon one condition that he shall bring him a damsel of fifteen a virgin beautiful and perfectly chaste; and that her conductor shall behave himself on the road with perfect propriety towards her, both in deed and thought. "Zeyn," says the story, "took the rash oath that was required of him;" but naturally asks, how he is to be sure of the lady? The Genius gives him a looking-glass on which she is to breathe, and which will be sullied or unsullied accordingly. The consequences among the ladies are such as Western romancers have told in a similar way; but at length success crowns the prince's endeavors, and he conducts the Genius's damsel to the enchanted island, not without falling in love, and being tempted to break his word and carry her away to Balsora. The king is pleased with his self-denial, and tells him that on his return home he will find the statue. He goes, and on the pedestal where it was to have stood, finds the lady! The behavior of the lady is in very good taste, and completes the charm of the discovery.

"Prince,' said the young maid, 'you are surprised to to see me here: you expected to have found something more precious than me, and I question not but that you now repent having taken so much trouble: you expected a better reward.'

"Madam,' answered Zeyn, 'Heaven is my witness that I more than once was like to have broken my word with the King of the Genii, to keep you to myself. Whatsoever be the value of a diamond statue, is it worthy the satisfaction of enjoying you? I love you above all the diamonds and wealth in the world.'"

All this to us is extremely delightful. We can say with the greatest truth, that at the age of fifty we repeat these passages with a pleasure little short of what we experienced at fifteen. We even doubt whether it is less. We come round to the same delight by another road. The genius is as grand to us, if not so frightful as of old; the boatman is peculiar; and the lady is charming. Such ladies may really be found on pedestals, for aught we know, in another life (one life out of a million). In short, we refuse to be a bit older than we were, having, in fact, lived such a little while, and the youth of eternity being before us. So now, in youth and good faith, to come to our last and best genius, the peri! We call her so from custom, but pari is the proper word; and in the story above-mentioned, it is so spelled. We shall here observe, that the French have often misled us by their mode of spelling Eastern words. The translation of the "Arabian Nights" (which came to us through the French) has palmed upon our childhood the genie, or French word, for the genius of the Latins, instead of the proper word jinn. The French pronunciation of peri is pari; and in Richardson's Dictionary the latter is the spelling. It would have looked affected, some years ago, to write pari for peri; though, in the story just alluded to, an exception is made in favor of it but in these times, when the growth of general learning has rendered such knowledge common, and when Boccaccio has got rid among us of his old French misnomer of Boccace (which a friend of ours very properly called bookcase), we might as well write pari and jinn, instead of peri and genie, loth, as we confess we are, to give up the latter barbarism—the belief of our childhood. But, somehow, we love any truth when we can get it, fond as we are of fiction.

Pari, then, in future, we will venture to write it, and jinn shall be said instead of genie or even genius; with which it is said to have nothing to do. This may be true; and yet it is curious to see the coincidence between the words, and for our part we are not sure, if the etymology could be well traced, that something in common might not be found between the words as well as the things. There might have been no collusion between the countries, and yet a similarity of sound might have risen out of the same ideas. This circumstance in the philosophy of the human history is, we think, not sufficiently attended to on many occasions. Fictions, for example, of all sorts have been traced to this and that country, as if what gave rise to them with one people might not have produced them out of the same chances and faculties with another; obvious mixtures and modifications may be allowed, and yet every national mind throw up its own fancies, as well as the soil its own flowers. The Persians may have a particular sort of fancy as they have of lilac or roses; but fairies, or spirits in general, are of necessity as common to all nations as the grass or the earth, or the shadows among the

trees.

Thus out of similar grounds of feeling may issue the roots of the same words. It is curious that jinn, jinnian, and geni-us, should so resemble one another; for us is only the nominative termination of the Latin word, and has nothing to do with the root of it. The Eastern word pari, and our fairy, are still more nearly allied, especially by the Arabic pronunciation, which changes p into f. It has been justly argued, that fairy is but a modern word, and meant formerly the region in which the Fay lived, and not the inhabitant. This is true; but the root may still be the same, and the Italian word fata, from which it has