he scoffer, and the
debauchee-poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor,
and where the sweep is bedded with the noble lady. And the characters
are "finished and quickened by a few touches swift and sure as the
glance of sunbeams." The whole is a kaleidoscope where everything falls
into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground caves
and deadly wolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid; seas
dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys of the
Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of ocean; the
duello, the battle, and the siege; the wooing of maidens and the
marriage-rite. All the splendor and squalor, the beauty and baseness,
the glamor and grotesqueness, the magic and the mournfulness, the
bravery and baseness of Oriental life are here: its pictures of the
three great Arab passions--love, war, and fancy--entitle it to be called
'Blood, Musk, and Hashish.' And still more, the genius of the
story-teller quickens the dry bones of history, and by adding Fiction
to Fact revives the dead past; the Caliphs and the Caliphate return to
Baghdad and Cairo, whilst Asmodeus kindly removes the terrace-roof of
every tenement and allows our curious glances to take in the whole
interior. This is perhaps the best proof of their power. Finally the
picture-gallery opens with a series of weird and striking adventures,
and shows as a tail-piece an idyllic scene of love and wedlock, in halls
before reeking with lust and blood.

A JOURNEY IN DISGUISE

From 'The Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah'

The thoroughbred wanderer's idiosyncrasy I presume to be a composition
of what phrenologists call "inhabitiveness" and "locality," equally and
largely developed. After a long and toilsome march, weary of the way, he
drops into the nearest place of rest to become the most domestic of men.
For a while he smokes the "pipe of permanence" with an infinite zest; he
delights in various siestas during the day, relishing withal a long
sleep at night; he enjoys dining at a fixed dinner hour, and wonders at
the demoralization of the mind which cannot find means of excitement in
chit-chat or small talk, in a novel or a newspaper. But soon the passive
fit has passed away; again a paroxysm of _ennui_ coming on by slow
degrees, Viator loses appetite, he walks about his room all night, he
yawns at conversations, and a book acts upon him as a narcotic. The