ntral Africa before
the last half-century; thus the interest is that of the "personal
narrative" of a grand exploration, to one who delights in travels. The
pleasure must be greatest where faith is strongest; for instance,
amongst imaginative races like the Kelts, and especially Orientals, who
imbibe supernaturalism with their mothers' milk. "I am persuaded,"
writes Mr. Bayle St. John, "that the great scheme of preternatural
energy, so fully developed in 'The Thousand and One Nights,' is believed
in by the majority of the inhabitants of all the religious professions
both in Syria and Egypt." He might have added, "by every reasoning being
from prince to peasant, from Mullah to Badawi, between Marocco and Outer
Ind."...

Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of 'The Tempest':--"Whatever might
have been the intention of their author, these tales are made
instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with
boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature,
extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. Here
are exhibited princes, courtiers, and sailors, all speaking in their
real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits and of earthy
goblins, the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures
on a desert island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the
punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of those for whom our
passions and reason are equally interested."

We can fairly say this much and far more for our Tales. Viewed as a
_tout ensemble_ in full and complete form, they are a drama of Eastern
life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith and the highest
emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the fullness of atoning
equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is vanquished, and the ways of
Allah are justified to man. They are a panorama which remains
ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form a phantasmagoria in which
archangels and angels, devils and goblins, men of air, of fire, of
water, naturally mingle with men of earth; where flying horses and
talking fishes are utterly realistic; where King and Prince meet
fisherman and pauper, lamia and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi,
eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and
pious sit down to the same tray with the pander and the procuress; where
the professional religionist, the learned Koranist, and the strictest
moralist consort with the wicked magician, t