their being,
invented to amuse and astonish a jaded autocrat.

Hence we feel no shock in reading of an island where the commonest
utensils are made of gold, a nursery of whales, five months in the
interior of an iceberg, or a journey among the clouds during a
thunderstorm. The demand for brevity strengthens Marryat's style, and
saves him from padding. He is very happy in contriving expediences, and
evinces considerable wit in the conception, for instance, of Yussuf the
water-carrier. Some of the stories, again, are really dramatic, and the
"Second Voyage of Huckaback" (p. 126) reaches a height of weird horror
that recalls, without paling before the thought, certain passages in
_The Ancient Mariner_.

* * * * *

_The Pacha of Many Tales_ was first published in _The Metropolitan
Magazine_, 1831-1835. During its appearance Marryat printed in the same
magazine (in 1833) a drama, _The Monk of Seville_, of which the plot is
almost exactly identical with _The Story of the Monk_ (p. 44). "Port
Royal Tom," the shark, and his Government pension, also appear in _Jacob
Faithful_, Chap. XXV.

_The Pacha of Many Tales_ is here printed, with a few corrections, from
the second edition in 3 vols. A.K. Newman & Co., 1844.

R.B.J

Chapter I

Every one acquainted with the manners and customs of the East must be
aware, that there is no situation of eminence more unstable, or more
dangerous to its possessor, than that of a pacha. Nothing, perhaps,
affords us more convincing proof of the risk which men will incur, to
obtain a temporary authority over their fellow-creatures, than the
avidity with which this office is accepted from the sultan; who, within
the memory of the new occupant, has consigned scores of his predecessors
to the bowstring. It would almost appear, as if the despot but elevated
a head from the crowd, that he might obtain a more fair and
uninterrupted sweep for his scimitar, when he cut it off; only exceeded
in his peculiar taste by the king of Dahomy, who is said to ornament the
steps of his palace with heads, fresh severed, each returning sun, as we
renew the decoration of our apartments from our gay parterres. I make
these observations, that I may not be accused of a disregard to
chronology, in not precisely stating the year, or rather the months,
during which flourished one of a race, who, like the flowers of the
Cistus, one morning in all their splendour, on the next,