ich like "Abdullah of the Land, and Abdullah of
the Sea," [453] concerns mer-folk, amply atones for it. This, too, is
the tale of the Arabian Circe, Queen Lab, who turns people into animals.
In "Sayf al Muluk," we make the acquaintance of that very singular jinni
whose soul is outside his body, and meet again with Sindbad's facetious
acquaintance, "The Old Man of the Sea."

"Hasan of Bassorah" is woven as it were out of the strands of the
rainbow. Burton is here at his happiest as a translator, and the
beautiful words that he uses comport with the tale and glitter like
jewels. It was a favourite with him. He says, "The hero, with his
hen-like persistency of purpose, his weeping, fainting, and versifying,
is interesting enough, and proves that 'Love can find out the way.' The
charming adopted sister, the model of what the feminine friend should
be; the silly little wife who never knows that she is happy till she
loses happiness, the violent and hard-hearted queen with all the cruelty
of a good woman; and the manners and customs of Amazon-land are outlined
with a life-like vivacity."

Then follow the stories of Kalifah, Ali Nur al Din and Miriam the Girdle
Girl [454]; the tales grouped together under the title of "King Jalead
of Hind;" and Abu Kir and Abu Sir, memorable on account of the black
ingratitude of the villain.

"Kamar al Zaman II." begins with the disagreeable incident of the
Jeweller's Wife--"The Arab Lady Godiva of the Wrong Sort"--and the
wicked plot which she contrived in concert with the depraved Kamar al
Zaman. However, the storyteller enlists the reader's sympathies for the
Jeweller, who in the end gains a wife quite as devoted to him as his
first wife had been false. The unfaithful wife gets a reward which from
an Arab point of view precisely meets the case. Somebody "pressed hard
upon her windpipe and brake her neck." "So," concludes the narrator, "he
who deemeth all women alike there is no remedy for the disease of his
insanity." There is much sly humour in the tale, as for example when we
are told that even the cats and dogs were comforted when "Lady Godiva"
ceased to make her rounds. "Abdullah bin Fazil" is simply "The Eldest
Lady's Tale" with the sexes changed.

The last tale in the Nights, and perhaps the finest of all, is that of
"Ma'aruf the Cobbler." [455] Ma'aruf, who lived at Cairo, had a shrewish
wife named Fatimah who beat him, and hauled him before the Kazi because
he had not been able